Margarethe Vermersen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Margarethe Vermersen († December 18 or 19, 1482 in Hamburg ) was an abbess of the Harvestehude monastery .

Live and act

Margarethe Vermersen came from a family that belonged to the Hamburg upper class and was related to the family of Mayor Kersten Miles . She had a sister and a cousin who were nuns in the Harvestehude monastery, which Margarethe Vermesen took over from Elisabeth von der Hove in 1465. The monastery building was extensively renovated by Hoves and the provost Johann Schreye. In addition to repairs to the roof of the church, farm buildings and a renovated dormitory were built . In the run-up to the renovation work, a brotherhood had been set up in Hamburg that donated food to the nuns and hoped for their own welfare from it. The construction work proved costly than such that the monastery was in financial difficulties, had to use their own reserves and only to a small extent with bonds could act.

Margarethe Vermersen therefore took over the management of the monastery under difficult circumstances. She had to find new ways so that the monastery could benefit from the willingness of the devout population to donate. The opportunity arose in the early autumn of 1482, when a glowing head of cabbage was allegedly found in a field in Eppendorf . The sisters of the monastery organized a procession to the field to take a look at the supposed miracle. Since the roots of the unearthed cabbage resembled a cross, a farmer was accused of the sacrilege of the host . She buried a blessed host in the ground in the field in order to increase the harvest. so the charge. The peasant woman was then killed. The nuns took the cabbage with them and displayed it in a specially made monstrance in the church that cost 200 pounds of silver. The monastery then developed into a place of pilgrimage for women who prayed for the fulfillment of their children's wishes before the supposed miracle. The head of cabbage with roots in the shape of a cross was a man-made fake that is now kept in the Hofburg in Vienna .

In addition to financing the monastery through donations, Margarethe Vermersen also had to solve other problems. Since the beginning of the 1430s, the monastery owned the village of Wellingsbüttel . It was a donation from two Hamburg citizens, for which the Archbishop of Bremen had the right of repurchase. In 1482 Heinrich von Schwarzburg was Archbishop of Bremen. He was considered assertive and aggressive and demanded that the monastery return Wellingsbüttel to the Archdiocese of Bremen. After Vermersen and Provost Johann Schreyer contradicted Schwarzburg's request, the latter announced a personal visit, during which he wanted to force the nuns to adhere to the strict rules of the Bursfeld congregation . The aim of his visit to the monastery on December 17, 1482 was also to depose Margarethe Vermersen as abbess with the support of the Hamburg council.

The bishop was received by indignant friends and relatives of the nuns who had followed Vermersen's appeal. Among them was Katharina Arndes, who lifted her skirts and angered the archbishop's chaplain. During the meeting, the nuns and the bishop decided to negotiate the disputed points in Hamburg's town hall the following day . A large crowd gathered there on December 18, 1482, threatening to murder the clergymen who had come from Bremen if they continued to harass the Harvestehude monastery. Margarethe Vermersen died as part of this conflict on December 18 or 19, 1482.

The disputes over Wellingsbüttel did not end with Vermersen's death. At the beginning of 1483 negotiations followed between the Archbishop of Bremen, a councilor of the city of Hamburg and the nuns of the monastery, who agreed to lay down their claims to the property. After a popular uprising in 1484, a settlement was made between the citizens and the City Council of Hamburg, in the context of which the council took over the patronage of the Harvestehude Monastery.

literature

personal data
SURNAME Vermersen, Margarethe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Abbess of the Harvestehude Monastery
DATE OF BIRTH 14th century or 15th century
DATE OF DEATH December 18, 1482 or December 19, 1482
Place of death Hamburg