Bentlage Monastery

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Bentlage Monastery
Inner courtyard of the Bentlage monastery

The Bentlage Monastery (also Bentlage Monastery / Castle ) is located on the banks of the Ems, north of the city of Rheine in the Münsterland .

history

prehistory

Binutloga ( Bentlage (Rheine) ), the place where the monastery was later founded , is mentioned for the first time in the Werden levy register from the year 890, which was compiled by the Benedictine abbey in Werden and lists the goods subject to tax at the monastery .

In the 11th century the place was mentioned as Buntlagi , when the land was donated to the maintenance of an own church of the Saxon noble family of Billunger , which Buntilagi was now in possession of. One of the St. Gertrud consecrated chapel with a small cemetery was built, but could not assert itself as an independent parish because it was denied the allocation of farmers .

The reason for this, as the local historian Anton Führer suspects in his History of the City of Rheine , is likely to be found in the resistance of the pastor of the neighboring Dionysius Church in Rheine , who fought against the splitting off of parts of his district ; not least because of the expected reduction in his income. At the latest with the representative new building of the Dionysius Church from around the year 1400, the situation for the Gertrudenkapelle became more and more untenable, as presumably despite the long distances more and more believers from Bentlage turned to the Dionysius Church in Rheine, which was imposing for the then conditions. The increasing attractiveness of the city of Rheine itself as a growing urban center may also have played a further role in turning the surrounding rural population away from the Gertrudenkapelle.

Founding of a monastery

In 1437 the chapel, including the land and the house of the rector of the chapel, was handed over to the monastery of Münster , which on March 5, 1437, gave ownership to the Order of the Holy Cross with permission to found a monastery. At the same time the Kreuzherren (also Kreuzbrüder) received the right to extract salt on their property and the fishing rights in the Ems. Both formed the first economic basis of the new monastery. On April 24, 1437, Pope Eugene IV confirmed the foundation of the monastery, which is now the third monastery of the Kreuzherren in Westphalia.

The first prior of the new monastery was Johannes ter Borch from Cologne. The first monastery brothers came from there and from Wuppertal. Initially, the brothers took quarters in the house of the former rector of the Gertrudenkapelle, which burned down the following year.

The relationship between the respective pastor of the Dionysius Church and the Bentlage monastery was initially dominated by competition, until two formal agreements were reached in 1459 and 1473 on the delimitation of the districts of the monastery and Dionysius church.

First heyday

In order to broaden the economic base of the monastery and to obtain a sufficiently large plot of land for the planned construction of a monastery complex, the Kreuzbrüder bought the Niederbentlage farm from the Monastery of Münster, which was in the immediate vicinity of their small property. This large expenditure and also a clumsy economic management in the early years brought the young monastery into serious financial difficulties, which threatened its existence. In 1445 the monastery finances were reorganized as part of a creditors' meeting. Not least thanks to donations from sponsors of the monastery, a new beginning could begin in small steps.

The initial difficulties seem to have finally been overcome when the construction of the large four-wing complex began in 1463. In the second half of the 15th century, the monastery experienced its heyday and was able to found other religious houses. The steadily growing brotherhood first built the east wing (1463 to 1466), a hall church (1468 to 1484), which closed the monastery to the south, a monastery school (1484) and the north wing (1504). The west wing was completed in 1645 - despite the turmoil of the Thirty Years War . The monastery also belonged to a number of handicraft businesses.

In 1465 four monks from the Bentlage monastery founded the monastery in Ter Apel , called Nova Lux in Latin New Light .

The height of the monastery development was reached in the years from 1490 to 1500, when the monastery housed more than 50 monks and its property comprised 21 estates and farms. From the beginning of the 16th century the slow decline began. A source from 1631 reports that only seven canons lived in the monastery.

Destruction in the Thirty Years War and reconstruction

The low point was reached when, during the Thirty Years' War, Swedish troops under the command of Hans Christoph von Königsmarck burned down the entire monastery on September 21, 1647 (except the kitchen and the bakery, the forge, two barns, a stable and the gatehouse). The reconstruction of the monastery complex extended to the year 1662. From this time a period of slow upswing began again, when in the second half of the 17th century around a dozen cross lords lived in the monastery and enough funds were available to support during the following one and a half Centuries of expansion, renovation and artistic design of the monastery.

Dissolution of the monastery

In the second half of the 18th century another decline began that could no longer be stopped. In 1803 the brotherhood was dissolved in the course of secularization . The monastery first came into the ownership of the small state of Rheina-Wolbeck , three years later it was handed over to the noble Looz-Corswarem family . This converted the former monastery into a castle, hence the current name monastery / castle. The monastery church was demolished in 1828, but its floor plan was later reconstructed and made visible to visitors. The monastery remained in the hands of the Looz-Corswarem family until 1946, before it became the property of the Baron von Boegaerde-Terbrugge by way of succession.

reconstruction

In 1978 the city of Rheine acquired the building and the surrounding land. 1990 began the reconstruction of the complex, which brought to light numerous finds valuable for historical research. The reconstruction work was completed in 2000 and the monastery palace opened to the public. The monastery is managed by the city of Rheine as an "own establishment" under the name "Cultural Meeting Place Monastery Bentlage".

Todays use

The older reliquary garden (skull shrine) from 1499
The younger reliquary garden from 1520

Today the Bentlage Monastery / Castle serves cultural purposes. It houses a museum that documents the art and cultural history of Westphalia from the Middle Ages to the present. The highlight of this exhibition are two reliquary shrines , which are unique in the German-speaking area in terms of their state of preservation and the scope of equipment. The shrines house more than 200 ornate relics of numerous saints, including the apostles Peter, Paul , Matthew and Andrew , Mary Magdalene , St. Helena , various martyrs such as St. Agnes or St. Lawrence and others. They also contain many relics of touch, objects from the places of activity of Jesus and the saints. The shrines, laid out in the style of the Paradiesgärtlein, were decorated by nuns in the Cistercian abbey of Bersenbrück for the Bentlage monastery; the older skull shrine was completed around 1499 and the younger around 1520.

Furthermore, the “Westphalian Gallery” can be seen in the Bentlage Monastery / Castle, an exhibition on the development of modernism in Westphalia since 1900.

Numerous temporary exhibitions with contemporary artists from all over the world have made the Bentlage Monastery / Castle known as a place of art education far beyond the regional borders. The numerous job opportunities for artists also contributed to this. There is an artistic graphics workshop run by the Bentlage Printing Association, which enables lithography , etching, screen printing and all relief printing processes.

Furthermore, Bentlage Monastery / Castle is the administrative headquarters of the European Fairy Tale Society founded there in 1956 . Events for families and adult education are also offered and concerts are given.

Because of its location on the Ems, in the middle of the several millennia old cultural landscape of the Bentlager Forest, the monastery castle is a popular destination for cyclists and culture lovers. The nearby Rheine Nature Zoo exerts an additional attraction.

Together with the Gottesgabe saltworks and the Bentlager forest, Bentlage Monastery / Castle forms the “Bentlager Dreiklang”, a cultural project of the city of Rheine, which was implemented as part of the 2004 Regionale .

literature

in order of appearance

  • Herbert Fühner, Christian Grovermann: Rheine. Volksbank Rheine, Rheine 1984.
  • Dr. Barbara Seifen, The building history of the late Gothic Kreuzherrenkloster Bentlage , Ed .: Manfred Wessels, Greven, 1994, ISBN: 3-924120-15-3
  • Rolf Breuing, Karl-Ludwig Mengels, Wolfgang Knitschky: The art and cultural monuments in Rheine - City of Rheine. Part 1: Rudolf Breuing, Karl-Ludwig Mengels: The church monuments, without Elte, Hauenhorst, Mesum. Tecklenborg, Steinfurt 2003, ISBN 3-934427-39-1 .7
  • Werner Friedrich: Bentlage Monastery. Edition Quadriga in Tecklenborg Verlag, Rheine 2007, ISBN 3-934427-95-2 .
  • Thomas Giessmann, Mechtild Huesmann, Lothar Kurz (arr.): The chronicle of the Bentlage monastery in front of Rheine. Edition and translation . Aschendorff, Münster 2011, ISBN 978-3-402-12889-3 .

Web links

Commons : Bentlage Monastery  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

swell

  • Anton Führer: History of the City of Rheine.
  • Series Rheine, yesterday, today, tomorrow.
  • Gießmann und Kurz: Chronicle of the City of Rheine.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Giessmann, Mechtild Huesmann, Lothar Kurz (arr.): The chronicle of the Bentlage monastery before Rheine. Edition and translation . Aschendorff, Münster 2011, p. 87.
  2. ↑ Thomas Giessmann, Mechtild Huesmann, Lothar Kurz (arr.): The chronicle of the Bentlage monastery before Rheine. Edition and translation . Aschendorff, Münster 2011, p. 203.
  3. ↑ Rudolf Breuning: The Cross in the Garden of Paradise - The Bentlager Skull Shrine from 1499 . Ed .: Förderverein Kloster / Schloss Bentlage eV (=  Rheine. Yesterday, today, tomorrow . Volume 37 ). Rheine 1996.
  4. ^ The Bentlager Reliquary Gardens; Research results on the late medieval reliquary gardens in Bentlage Monastery “Your bones will sprout like plants” . In: Westphalia . No. 77 . Aschendorff, 1999, ISSN  0043-4337 (special print from 2002).

Coordinates: 52 ° 18 ′ 7 ″  N , 7 ° 25 ′ 45 ″  E