Beatrix of the County

Beatrix von Grafschaft († October 8, 1303 ) was canon in the Meschede Abbey and from 1298 to 1303 abbess of Freckenhorst Abbey .

Life

Beatrix came from the noblemen of Grafschaft . The exact allocation to the generation succession of the family is not completely undisputed. Johann Suibert Seibertz thought she was a sister of Adolf I von Grafschaft and the canon Sophie in Essen (who was also incorrectly referred to as the Abbess of Essen Monastery). This would make her a daughter of Heinrich von Grafschaft and a niece of the Abbot von Werden Gerhard von Grafschaft . Others see her as belonging to the next generation and as sister of Widukind I and Kraft I.

Beatrix was initially a canon in the Meschede Monastery and appears there as early as 1268 in a document from the Abbess Agnes von Arnsberg .

After the death of Abbess Jutta in Freckenhorst, the community there faced a difficult succession problem, because the position of abbess was reserved for a lady from the noble sex, but nobody in the convent itself came from this group. On May 7, 1298, in the absence of Beatrix, a group of voters from the community of canonesses and the priests of Freckenhorst, commissioned by the community, came to their postulation as the new abbess. It is also noteworthy that Beatrix was probably the first abbess in Freckenhorst who had to sign an election surrender . This had the preservation of the property of the church in Freckenhorst, the recovery of lost goods and a "proper administration" of the ladies and gentlemen to the content. In addition, the ladies' mortgage should only be awarded together with the convention. The same applied to the re-granting of church loans.

According to the monastery necrology, Beatrix died on October 8, 1303.

literature

• Wilhelm Kohl: The dioceses of the church province Cologne. The diocese of Münster III. Freckenhorst's free-worldly women's monastery (= Germania Sacra NF 10). Berlin 1975, ISBN 978-3-11-002098-4 , p. 305 f.