Ossiach Abbey

Ossiach Abbey is a former Benedictine monastery in Ossiach, in the Austrian nation of Carinthia. The website is one of the venues of an annual track competition known as Carinthian Summer. In 878 the East Frankish king Carloman of Bavaria committed the Treffen estates round Lake Ossiach to the Benedictine monastery of Otting.

In the overdue 10th century the lands handed to the Bishops of Passau and later to Emperor Henry II, who conferred them to a certain Count Ozi, affiliated with the Styrian Otakar dynasty and father of Patriarch Poppo of Aquileia. A church probably already existed at Ossiach, while Count Ozi about 1024 established the Benedictine abbey, the primary inside the medieval Duchy of Carinthia. The first priests likely descended from Niederaltaich Abbey in Bavaria. Ozi's son Poppo succeeded in doing away with the proprietary monastery from the affect of the Salzburg archbishops and to affiliate it with the Patriarchate of Aquileia, confirmed through Emperor Conrad II in 1028.