Around 1720, the church replaced a previous Romanesque building that had been donated by Welf IV in 1056 as a burial place for the Welfs. The church and the associated Benedictine monastery stand on the site of a palace on the Martinsberg that dates back to the 10th century and were endowed with the property of this original ancestral castle of the Swabian Guelphs. This in turn was built on the site of an Alamannic mansion, which was located next to a Germanic sanctuary. The Guelphs who immigrated from the core area of the Franconian Empire in the Meuse/Moselle area consecrated the church to the Franconian national saint Martin of Tours.
The cornerstone of the baroque church was laid on August 22, 1715. It replaced the Romanesque church of the Benedictine abbey. The new building was consecrated during the term of office of Abbot Sebastian Hyller on September 10, 1724 by the Bishop of Constance Johann Franz Schenk von Stauffenberg; the titular saints are Martin von Tours and Oswald.
With a dome height of 67 meters and a length of 102 meters, the church is the largest baroque church building in Germany and north of the Alps. Abbot Hyller, after whom a street in Weingarten is named, deliberately chose almost half the dimensions of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome for the new church. The rich stuccowork was made by the plasterer Giacomo Antonio Corbellini under the architect Donato Giuseppe Frisoni. The Wessobrunner Franz Schmuzer created six side altars. The choir stalls were carved between 1720 and 1724 by the sculptor and plasterer Joseph Anton Feuchtmayer.
Since the dissolution of the Benedictine Abbey in 1803, the church has served as the parish church of the Catholic parish of St. Martin. From 1922 to 2010 it was also the monastery church of the repopulated Benedictine Weingarten Abbey. On the occasion of the 900th anniversary of the founding of the Benedictine abbey by the Guelphs, the church was opened in 1956 by Pope Pius XII. elevated to a minor basilica.
The Holy Blood relic kept in the church is the object of religious veneration throughout Upper Swabia. It is the focus of one of the largest equestrian processions in Europe, the annual Blood Ride (Wikipedia).