Dom Edmund Obrecht OCSO Gethsemani Abbey Collection

Photo of Dom Edmund Obrecht

Dom Edmund Obrecht (1852-1935) served as abbot of the Gethsemani Abbey for 37 years. At the age of 23 he entered the monastic community in La Trappe, France. He was ordained in 1879 and sent to Rome as secretary to the procurator general of the three Trappist observances.

In 1892, he traveled to the United States and, following a brief return to Rome, was appointed the fourth abbot of the Abbey of Gethsemani, in Trappist, Kentucky. Over the course of his life he was a visitor to many monasteries throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America, and was known to four popes.

Dom Edmund spent much of his early years collecting medieval manuscripts and incunabula for his community. In his collecting, he tried to recreate a typical medieval Cistercian library to illustrate to his monks their heritage. In 1973, Gethsemani Abbey placed Dom Edmund's collection on permanent loan with the Institute of Cistercian Studies, at Western Michigan University.

The collection consists of nearly 100 manuscripts, and close to 60 incunabula. The collection also holds hundreds of volumes from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries that researchers and students of the medieval, or later periods, may find valuable.

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