Past

The St Gall Abbey Archives are the archives of the former Benedictine monastery of St Gall. Their oldest holdings date back to the foundation of the monastery around 719, making them one of the most ancient archives, and they can look back on a continuity of over 1300 years.

The first known archivist of St. Gallen Abbey is Waldo. He was born around 740 and died on 29 March 814 in the monastery of Saint-Denis near Paris. Waldo belonged to the inner circle of the Carolingians, worked as an agent for Charlemagne in Alemannia, and was also abbot of the monastic communities at St Gall, Reichenau and St Denis. Moreover, he acted as an ambassador and was later appointed Bishop of Pavia and of Basel. We are familiar with his handwriting from 14 original documents in the St Gall collection dating from 773 to 782.

Like the library, the Abbey Archives survived the secularisation of the abbey (1805), and have remained independent to this day as the joint property of the Canton and the Catholic Administration of the Canton of St.Gallen.