Archaeological findings indicate a church already existed at the site about 700 AD. The locality of
Stammes in the
Duchy of Bavaria was first mentioned in a 1063 deed, it became a possession of the
Counts of Tyrol. The
Meinhardiner count Meinhard II of Gorizia, sole ruler of Tyrol from 1271, established a proprietary monastery together with his wife
Elisabeth of Bavaria, widow of the
Hohenstaufen king
Conrad IV of Germany. The first Cistercian monks descended from
Kaisheim in
Swabia, itself a filial of
Morimond Abbey; they were enfeoffed with extended estates in
Silz,
Meran and
Mals and soon evolved to a spiritual centre of the region. It became the burial place not only of Count Meinhard and his consort, but also of his son Duke
Henry of Carinthia, of the
Habsburg duke
Frederick IV of Austria and his wife Anna of Brunswick, of his son Archduke
Sigismund of Austria and his wife
Eleanor of Scotland, as well as of
Bianca Maria Sforza, second wife of Emperor
Maximilian I. During the 16th-century
Protestant Reformation and
German Peasants' War the monastic community decayed. In the course of the 1552 rebellion against Emperor
Charles V, the premises were plundered by the troops of Elector
Maurice of Saxony; even the grave of Maurice' brother
Severinus was destroyed. The monastery was largely rebuilt in its present-day
Baroque style from the early 17th century onwards, including
Wessobrunner stuccowork by
Franz Xaver Feuchtmayer. Stams Abbey was temporarily dissolved in 1807 by order of King
Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria, who had received the Tyrolean lands by the 1805
Peace of Pressburg but re-established after Stams was restored to the
Austrian Empire in 1816. Again disseized by the
Nazi German authorities upon the Austrian
Anschluss in 1938, it was resettled by Cistercian monks after the end of
World War II, who established several educational institutions, including the
Skigymnasium Stams (Stams ski boarding school), the
Kirchliche Pädagogische Hochschule – Edith Stein school of education, and the
Meinhardinum gymnasium. The abbey church was elevated to the rank of a
minor basilica by
Pope John Paul II in 1984.
Population ==Image gallery==