St Vincent's Archabbey, Latrobe, Pennsylvania

SAINT VINCENT ARCHABBEY

Country : United States
Denomination : Roman Catholic

Established : 1855

Arms (crest) of St Vincent's Archabbey, Latrobe, Pennsylvania

Official blazon

Origin/meaning

St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, the oldest monastery in the United States, was founded in 1846 by monks from St. Michael’s Abbey in Metten, Bavaria under the leadership of Fr. Boniface Wimmer. They came to Pennsylvania funded by the Ludwigs-Missionverein, an organization started by the King Ludwig I of Bavaria to minister to German immigrants throughout the world.

The first archabbots used the same arms, which were maybe also the arms of the abbey itself. In 1930 with the election of St. Vincent’s fifth Archabbot, Alfred Koch (1930-1949), things changed. At that time the community decided to adopt abbey arms, which took the blue and white fusils in bend from the Bavarian arms and three plates on a black fess from the arms of William Penn, turned the fess into an inverted chevron (to create the letter “V” for “Vincent”) and charged the three plates with Benedictine crosses.