Our Ambrosian writer Nicola de’ Grandi recently visited the abbey of Salem in southern Germany, about 18 miles to the west of Ravensberg, half that distance from the city Constance to the south-west. It was founded as a Cistercian house within the lifetime of St Bernard, in the 1130s, and quickly grew to become of the largest and most important abbeys in all of the German Empire; by the end of the 13th century, the community had 300 members. The present Gothic church was begun in 1285, and consecrated in 1414, a simple but imposing structure, and in fact the largest Cistercian church in the world, very much in keeping with the austerity which characterized the order in its early centuries. However, as is the case with many Cistercian churches, the interior was completely redecorated in the much more elaborate Baroque style after the Counter-Reformation, in the 1620s.
