Bersenbrück Monastery
| St. Marien Monastery in Bersenbrück | |
|---|---|
 Monastery gate with gatehouse from 1700 |
|
| location | District of Osnabrück, Lower Saxony |
| Coordinates: | 52 ° 33 '19.4 " N , 7 ° 57' 0.3" E |
| Patronage | St. Mary |
| founding year | 1231 |
| Year of dissolution / annulment |
1964 |
The St. Marien monastery in Bersenbrück (Latin Monasterium Ste. Dei Genitricis et Virginis Mariae) is a former Cistercian abbey in Bersenbrück .
history
In 1231, Count Otto II. Von Ravensberg and his wife Sophia from the Oldenburg-Wildeshausen house donated their Bersenbrücker property to the Cistercian order for the establishment of a convent. The deed of foundation states:
“ .... In the name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity. Otto, Count by the grace of God, and Sophia, Countess von Ravensberg .... wish. ... to publicly announce that at the suggestion of the Holy Spirit .... we also have our property in Bersenbrugge, namely the church with its property and all accessories also gave the adjoining (main) courtyard in the same village with a mill, two allodes, farms, servants, meadows, fisheries, forests, pastures and everything else that belongs to the court in honor of our Lord Jesus Christ and his glorious bearer , the Virgin Mary, the patron saint there, ... that ... a monastery of the Cistercian order, namely a women's monastery, will be built there, in which God has rendered the Lord a worthy service and an eternal memory of our parents and of us are piously preserved will ... "
The year 1231 was of particular importance for the donor couple: At Glandorf, an important peace treaty was concluded for the region, which ended the decades-long, heavy and bloody feuds between the Counts of Tecklenburg and Ravensberg. It brought a final reconciliation between the count families and a consolidation of episcopal sovereignty. Daughter Jutta was born that same year .
The first abbess (1231–72) was Clementia, presumably sister of the then Munster Bishop Ludolf von Holte . Numerous generous donations from the clergy and the nobility enabled the monastery to flourish unhindered. In 1243 Pope Innocent IV granted the "Great Privilege" and confirmed the incorporation of the order. This process was astonishing, since the General Chapter in Cîteaux had been resisting new admissions to the numerous female convents that were emerging from around 1220 and, as early as 1230, sent a petition to the Pope not to allow any more female monasteries. Presumably, the family ties between the donor couple and the Hohenstaufen dynasty played a role here; Otto's mother was Jutta von Thuringia , a niece of Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa . The monastery was subordinated to the abbot of Altenkamp monastery. Around 1440 the paternity of Altenkamp changed to the Marienfeld monastery . In 1484, the implementation of the Bursfeld resolutions came to an end, which brought the monastery considerable reputation. Nuns were also sent to other monasteries to support their reform efforts.
At the end of the 16th century, Reformation ideas gradually gained acceptance in the convent until almost all nuns under the Abbess of Meverden (1595–1614) professed Lutheran doctrine. But controversy and mismanagement shrank the convention. When, in 1609, Father Severinus Raeckmann, a confessor from Marienfeld, was admitted for the first time in 15 years, he set up an episcopal visitation commission, which attributed the desolate conditions in the monastery to the abbess and instructed her to leave the monastery. That happened in September 1614. Three Catholic nuns stayed behind. The convent was increased to eight nuns from neighboring Cistercian convents. The young Lucretia Elisabeth von Vincke was elected as the new abbess. Peter Severinus remained in the monastery as a confessor until his death in 1693. During this time he wrote an extensive and important monastery chronicle. Abbess von Vincke ran the monastery for 55 years, excused it and led it through the turmoil of the Thirty Years' War . During this time, thefts, multiple looting and extortion of high protection payments were endured. For security reasons the convent had to leave the monastery three times for a short time.
After the Thirty Years' War, the monastery flourished again economically. At a time when the need for monasteries was increasingly being questioned, the cathedral chapter of Osnabrück decided to close a women's monastery to improve its own financial situation. The choice fell on the wealthy Bersenbrück. All attempts by the abbess and the abbot von Marienfeld to prevent the dissolution failed. With the indication of the use of the freed up income for a school fund for Catholics, Pope Pius VI. and Emperor Franz Josef II. their consent. On February 22, 1787, monastery life in Bersenbrück died out. The convent at that time had nine nuns and one novice. Three nuns remained in the monastery, the last of them died in 1806. With a rescript of June 10, 1791, the Archbishop of Cologne issued the statutes for a secular women's monastery without being required to be present in favor of widows and daughters of Osnabrück rulers and municipal servants from the class of scholars of the Catholic religion and civil status. With a patent dated November 4, 1802, King George III took over. of England as Elector of Hanover, the government of the Prince Diocese of Osnabrück and took possession of the spiritual goods, including the Bersenbrück monastery. The administration of the spiritual goods was initially entrusted to an interim general administration commission. During the Napoleonic occupation it was temporarily out of action, but was restored after its end in 1815. Since August 1, 1818, it has been replaced by the newly established provincial administration of the secularized ecclesiastical property in Osnabrück, which in turn handed over the administration to the Hanover Monastery Chamber on July 1, 1824 . The Bersenbrück Monastery was finally abolished in 1964.
The hour of death of the monastery was also the hour of birth of today's city of Bersenbrück. Because of the seclusion of the monasteries required by the order, the farmers settled at a distance of several hundred meters from the monastery. But now the first houses were built in front of the monastery gate, and the empty monastery buildings were increasingly used for administration and jurisdiction.
building
The way to the monastery district leads over a stone bridge (from 1728), over the monastery moat through the baroque gatehouse from 1700, as proclaimed by the stone coat of arms above the archway. Behind it, the view first falls on the church with the massive, square tower and on the west wing of the monastery. The northern nave , the former own and parish church of the Ravensbergers, was built in the 12th century as a three-bay nave with a straight choir. In the 14th and 15th centuries, some of the originally narrow windows were replaced by larger, pointed arches with Gothic tracery . The monastery church with initially only two bays and a crypt was built on the south wall of this church from 1264 to 1287 . The early Gothic vaulting of both churches probably took place during this long construction phase, but they remained separated by a central wall with a barred window in the choir area. In the 14th century the monastery church received its third yoke (west yoke), so that now both churches stood side by side in the same size. This can still be seen today on the west and east gables. Around 1495 a common high gable roof was built over both churches. The roof turret , which is typical of Cistercian churches, has now been moved from the old roof of the monastery church to the new roof at choir height . With the construction of the 49 m high tower in front of the west gable of the old parish church in 1510, the most important building measures were completed. Around 1800 the demolition of the partition wall between the two churches began, the crypt was filled and the floor level of the monastery church was lowered, which can still be seen from the raised pillar bases. This resulted in a two-aisled hall church (approx. 28 × 18 m). Today the church belongs to the Catholic St. Vincentius parish of Bersenbrück. The monastery buildings adjoining the south and east sides of the church are well preserved. The south and west wings, renovated from 1781 to 1783, are two-story plastered buildings with narrow, high, sandstone-framed windows. The north wing, which was enlarged in the 17th century, has two symmetrically arranged half-timbered gables. Its east side borders the Mühlenhase, a canal derived from the Hase in the 13th century to operate the second monastery mill and to feed the monastery moat. The dormitory from the 13th century with an early Gothic cloister, made of quarry stone, closes off the monastery area to the east. Today the district court and museum are housed in the buildings.
Web links
- Description of Bersenbrück Monastery on the Lower Saxony monastery map of the Institute for Historical Research