Barking Abbey

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Ruins of Barking Monastery
Barking Monastery bell tower

Coordinates: 51 ° 32 ′ 8 ″  N , 0 ° 4 ′ 31 ″  E

Barking Abbey was originally a double monastery founded in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Essex . After various community reforms, the site of the ruins of the monastery is now in the London borough of Barking and Dagenham .

history

Erkenwald , Bishop of London , built Barking Abbey in 666 for his sister Ethelburga , who was later canonized and who was also the first abbess of the double monastery. Based on the original place name, In-Berecingum , it can be assumed that the monastery was in a place of central importance for the surrounding population.

Ethelburga's successor as abbess Hildelith , who died after 716, dedicated his treatise on virginity to Aldhelm . Excavations prove the prosperity under Hildelith.

According to a later tradition, the Barking monastery is said to have been sacked by the Vikings in 870 . However, it was still capable of making glassware in the first half of the 10th century and was important enough to have a legacy between 946 and 951. In the second half of the 10th century, King Edgar re- founded the monastery as a Benedictine monastery , with St. Wulfhild becoming the first abbess.

During the construction of the Tower of London, Barking Monastery was the abode of William the Conqueror immediately after his coronation in December 1066. The nuns of the abbey belonged to the nobility under the Norman kings. The abbesses had the rank of baron through their office and were appointed by the king until 1214, only afterwards were they elected by the convent under pressure from the pope. Several members of the convent wrote chronicles, including a collection of legends of saints. Clemence of Barking wrote a biography of St. Catherine and another nun wrote a biography of King Edward the Confessor .

In the course of the Reformation, the monastery was dissolved in 1541 on the orders of Henry VIII . The buildings were then used as a quarry. A farm was later set up on the site.

Today a constituency of the borough is called Barking and Dagenham Abbey , after the excavated ruins of the monastery.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England , p. 161
  2. ↑ Beda, HE , IV, 6
  3. ^ Campbell, Essays , p. 113
  4. ^ Lapidge, Encyclopaedia , p. 53f.
  5. ↑ Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England , p. 599
  6. ^ British History Online: Houses of Benedictine nuns - Abbey of Barking. Retrieved April 9, 2015 .
  7. ↑ epistolae: Adelidis of Barking. Retrieved April 8, 2015 .

swell

  • B. Colgrave & RAB Mynors (Eds.): Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People . Clarendon, Oxford 1969, ISBN 0-1982-2202-5

literature

  • James Campbell, Eric John, Patrick Wormald: The Anglo-Saxons . Phaidon Press, London 1982, ISBN 0-7148-2149-7 .
  • James Campbell: Essays in Anglo-Saxon History . Hambledon Press, London et al. 1986, ISBN 0-9076-2833-8 ( History series 26).
  • Michael Lapidge et al. (Ed.): The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England . Blackwell, Oxford et al. 1999, ISBN 0-6311-5565-1 .
  • Frank Merry Stenton: Anglo-Saxon England. 3. Edition. Reissued. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2001, ISBN 0-19-280139-2 .

Web links

Commons : Barking Abbey  - collection of images, videos and audio files