Corvey, Abbey of (also called NEW CORRIE), a Benedictine monastery in the Diocese of Paderborn in Westphalia, founded c. 820 from Corbie in Picardy, (I, 979) by the Emperor Louis the Pious and St. Adelhard, Abbot of the older Corbie, from which the new foundation derived its name. Corvey soon became famous, and its abbots ranked as princes of the empire. In its school were cultivated all the arts and sciences, and it produced many celebrated scholars. To it the world is indebted for the preservation of the first five books of the “Annals” of Tacitus. From its cloisters went forth a stream of missionaries who evangelized Northern Europe, chief amongst them being Ansgar, the Apostle of Scandinavia. Here, too, Widukind is believed to have written his history of the Saxons (see Saxons), and the “Annales Corbejenses”, which issued from the same scriptorium, figure largely in the “Monumenta Germanise” collected by Pertz. (These “Annales” must not be confounded with the forged “Chronicon Corbejense” which appeared in the nineteenth century.) The Cosa school of Corvey declined after the fifteenth century, but the abbey itself continued until 1803, when it was secularized and given to the family of Oranje-Nassau. them, he secured de la Cosa’s services as cartographer The famous abbey library has long since been dispersed.
G. CYPRIAN ALSTON