Austrian territory under direct St Gall rule. The reforms centralized the administration and legislation and reduced the rights of the local authorities. Religious and social life In the second St Gall rule Ebringen was a catholic village, no other cult was allowed, unlike in the Princely Abbey's Swiss territories, where the abbey also had to allow the Protestant cult. This formally ended in 1781 when the Patent of Toleration extended religious freedom to non-Catholic Christians in Austria. In family law it was common at least until the end of the St. Gall rule, that wives kept their maiden name for life, but legitimate children received the family name of their father. Deeds of ownership, church records, the census of 1792 and also Ildefons von Arx in his chronicle mention wives and widows always with their birth name, sometimes referring to their husbands with wife of. Chronology On 21 November 1621 the Abbey of St Gall bought back the undivided rule over Ebringen for 71,800 guilders from Hans Dietrich von Hohenlandenberg. The very next day the first St Gall officials arrived. Norsingen, 5 km (3 mi) southwest of Ebringen, had been under direct St Gall rule again since 1607. Ebringen again became the centre of the St Gall administration in the Breisgau. The abbey's possessions consisted of the direct rule over Ebringen and Norsingen and easements and properties in other locations in the Breisgau. Ebringen was next to St Gall, Wil, Rorschach and Neu St. Johann residence of a governor of the Princely Abbey. In 1622 bailiff Georg Buol got the right to hold the blood court by the Prince-Abbot. The self-administration of the blood court inflicting corporal punishment, including the death penalty, was an important factor of imperial immediacy. So this act indicates a highly independent status of Ebringen from the Austrian suzerain. In 1629 Ebringen was hit by the later so called Italian plague. In 1630 Sweden intervened in the Thirty Years' War and soon after, the fighting also reached the Breisgau. Towards the end of 1632 Swedish troops occupied Freiburg. In 1633 Friedrich Ludwig Kanoffsky (1592-1645) from Bohemia became commander of the Swedish garrison. Sweden was allied with the Margravate of Baden-Durlach, the predecessor of the later Grand-Duchy of Baden, which ruled over Ebringen's neighbouring villages Wolfenweiler and Schallstadt. In early June 1633 Austrian troops from Breisach had devastated some villages of the Margravate between Freiburg and Basel.