within the precincts of the abbey. In the last decade of the 11th century the abbey seems to have been fully restored to papal favour, and it continued to prosper for a long subsequent period. The town of Hersfeld, now Bad Hersfeld, grew up outside the abbey, and flourished, to the extent that it found itself strong enough to assert its independence, and in 1371 formally placed itself under the protection of the Landgraves of Hesse. As time went on the state of the monastery again deteriorated, and in 1513 it had reached such a low point that abbot Volpert Riedesel resigned his office into the hands of Pope Leo X, and the abbot of Fulda was authorized by the Emperor Maximilian to incorporate the house into his own abbey. According to a contemporary account, the library was in a state of ruin and decay, many precious volumes had altogether disappeared, and manuscripts containing the archives and records of the house were used in the kennels as litter for the dogs. Reformation This forced union between Hersfeld and Fulda lasted little more than two years, after which a new abbot of Hersfeld was chosen. Abbot Krato, who held office in 1517, was however in sympathy with Lutheranism. (Martin Luther stopped at the abbey on his return from the Diet of Worms in 1521 and gave a sermon). Krato swore allegiance to the Lutheran Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, in 1525. The abbey church was consequently closed to Roman Catholic worship, Mass being said only in a chapel inside the monastery. Dissolution For the rest of the century the abbey continued as a Protestant establishment under the close supervision of the rulers of Hesse, and on the death of the last abbot (Joachim Röll) in 1606, Otto, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, was elected lay administrator. The pope made a vain attempt, after Otto's death, to bring the abbey back under Catholic administration. It continued in the hands of the princely family until after the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Hersfeld, as an imperial fief, was united to Hesse as the secularised Principality of Hersfeld which maintained its seat in the Reichstag. Buildings The abbey church, in the Romanesque style, was built in the early part of the 12th century, but was used as a powder magazine and then destroyed by the French in 1761 during the Seven Years' War.