Korvei, Or Corvey, a village of Westphalia, Prussia, in the district and 42 m. S. E. of Min-den, on the left bank of the Weser; pop. about 600. It is beautifully situated, and has a harbor and an annual fair. It is the residence of Prince Victor of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst, upon whom the title of duke of Ratibor and prince of Korvei was conferred in 1840. The church is a fine Gothic building, and the palace contains a large library and a collection of rare illustrated works. - Korvei acquired celebrity through a Benedictine abbey, founded early in the 9th century by the emperor Louis le De-bonnaire as a branch of that of Corbie in Pi-cardy, whence the name (Corbeia Nova). It was directly under the authority of the pope, and became next to Fulda the greatest missionary centre for the diffusion of Christianity. Among its members were Anscarius, the apostle of the north, Bruno, who became pope as Gregory V., Wittekind, Wibald, and other renowned personages. A copy of Tacitus, with the only manuscript extant of the first six books of the " Annals," was discovered in the extensive library of the abbey in 1514, but was taken away, and is said to have passed into the hands of Pope Leo X., and to have been transferred to Florence. The abbey had a vote in the German diet, and claimed possession of the island of Rugen, which according to tradition had been given to it by the emperor Lothaire. At the end of the 18th century Pius VI. promoted the abbey to a see; and after having belonged to the duchy of Nassau (1803) and the kingdom of Westphalia (1807), it was allotted to Prussia in 1815. The abbey was suppressed by the pope in 1816, while the king of Prussia in 1821 raised the territory belonging to it to a principality, which was bestowed on the landgrave of Hesse-Rheinfels-Rothen-burg, and subsequently inherited by Prince Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst. Among the most renowned intellectual treasures of the former abbey was the Chronicon Corbeiense, long regarded as a high authority on mediaeval history.

It was first edited in 1824, but its genuineness has been impugned by Ranke and others. The Annates Corbeienses, however, included in vol. iii. of Pertz's Monument a Germanice Historica, are regarded as authentic. (See Wigand, Die Korveischen Geschichtsquellen, Leipsic, 1841.)