An Independent Abbey

In 1866, the priory of St. John’s in Minnesota became an independent abbey, and in 1876, St. Benedict’s in Kansas achieved the same status. Thus, early in the tenure of Fr. Gerard Pilz, OSB, as prior in Newark (1882-1884) it was felt that the time had come for the independence of St. Mary’s.

Fr. Gerard first set about the construction of a more suitable home for the community, removing the old buildings and erecting that part of the present monastery adjacent to the church. On 16 April 1883. the new monastery was blessed by Newark’s Bishop Winand Wigger in the presence of Abbot Boniface Wimmer and about fifty priests. The building was opened for inspection and many admired what they saw, especially the painting of the Last Supper executed by the famous artist William Lamprecht that still adorns the Newark Abbey monastic refectory today.

In addition to the new monastery, at a special meeting on 14 April 1884, the “Board of Directors” of OSBNJ decided to purchase for $12,500 the two-hundred eight acre farm known as the “Protectory,” in Denville, New Jersey that had been offered by Bishop Wigger.  The minutes do not indicate the reason for this purchase and, oddly, one of the first decisions of the Chapter of the new abbey was to approve its sale the following year, 1885. Oddly again, the farm was not, in fact, sold until some ten years later during the abbacy of Hilary Pfraengle. In a somewhat surprising and significant move, at a meeting on 15 October 1883 the Board of the OSBNJ had decided that the office would henceforth be recited in common. With a new monastery, common prayer, a college, a farm, and numerous missions Abbot Boniface deemed St. Mary’s ready and petitioned the Holy See for the independence of the Newark community.

By a brief (letter) of Pope Leo XIII dated 19 December 1884, St. Mary’s Priory on High Street in Newark was raised to the dignity of an independent abbey. The brief arrived at St. Vincent on 15 January 1885. Now there remained the task of electing  an abbot. All Benedictine priests of the province, that is, all ordained members of abbeys and priories east of the Mississippi, were called to be present at St. Vincent Abbey by 9 February 1885 to elect abbots for both Newark and the new abbey at Belmont, North Carolina. Of the one hundred and eighteen eligible electors, the majority attended. The nearly four hundred novices, juniors, and lay brothers, however, had no vote. On 11 February 1885 James Zilliox was elected first abbot of Newark on the second ballot, thus making St. Mary’s Abbey one of the few monasteries whose first abbot was elected by the members of the mother house and not the community itself.

It fact there was no community, because as there were as yet no members with a vow of stability to the new abbey. Zilliox was an abbot without subjects. This strange situation was soon remedied, however, when the following twelve monks elected to transfer their stability from St. Vincent to St. Mary’s Abbey: Fathers Aloysius Gorman, Theodosius Goth, Cornelius Eckl, Frederick Hoesl, Bonaventure Ostendarp, Leonard Walter, Alexander Reger, Ernest Helmstetter, Hugo Paff, Ephraim Hetzinger, Polycarp Scherer, Florian Widmann, and a year later, Ambrose Huebner and Sylvester Joerg, a group of fifteen in all, including Abbot James.