Vreta Monastery
The monastery Vreta was a Cistercian - Abbey , located in today's Swedish community Linkoping , west of Lake Roxen . Apart from the completely intact monastery church Vreta with a medieval hagioscope , a so-called leprosy fissure, only one building and restored remaining walls exist today.
history
The monastery was established around 1100 by Inge I and his wife Helena on the advice of Pope Paschal II , making it the first monastery in Sweden. Initially it was an institution for nuns of the Benedictine order , but in 1162 it was converted into a monastery for nuns of the Cistercian order . The monastery also received royal estates and a residence from Charles VII. At that time, the residence was a simple wooden house that the nuns wanted to replace with a larger building. This new building had to be restarted due to several fires. The papal legate William of Modena visited the monastery in the middle of the 13th century and allowed the nuns to trade indulgences . This enabled the building to be completed in 1289 and inaugurated in the presence of King Magnus I. The monastery developed excellently thanks to rich gifts from many benefactors. Ingegerd, a sister of Charles VII, was the first abbess of the monastery and ran it successfully for over 40 years.
In 1533 the monastery was rented by King Gustav Wasa . He also achieved a conversion of the associated parish to the Protestant faith , which led to the slow decline of monastic life. The last abbess died in 1538 and the last nuns left the abbey in 1562.
The monastery ruins were excavated between 1916 and 1926 and larger sections are now visible north of the monastery church, which was restored between 1914 and 1917. Found objects, including an unusual wooden water pipe, are exhibited in the adjacent museum.
The only completely preserved building next to the church is the old granary. The cells in the Cistercian monastery were slightly larger than cells in other monasteries. The nuns in this order were allowed to wear different clothes at night than during the day and therefore the cells had to provide space for changing. Most of the stones from the earlier dining room were used to build a tower in Linköping Cathedral .
Web links
Coordinates: 58 ° 28 ′ 56 ″ N , 15 ° 31 ′ 5 ″ E