Wrchlab Monastery

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The Wrchlab Monastery (also Monastery Heinrichsau ; Latin Cella Wrchlabiensis also Cella sancte Marie in Albea seu Wrchlab olim Heynrichs ; Czech Klášter Heinrichow ) was a Benedictine monastery on the Upper Elbe in Eastern Bohemia. It was probably founded before 1250 as a subsidiary of the Opatowitz Abbey downstream of the Elbe and became extinct in the Hussite Wars .

history

Very little information has come down to us about the Wrchlab monastery. It is also not known exactly where it was. The assumption that it must have been in Wrchlabi / Hohenelbe because of its name is rejected by recent research. Presumably it was between Klášterská Lhota , whose older name is said to have been "Heinrichow" or "Heinrichsau", and Gutsmuts ( Dobrá Mysl ) , which lies downstream . Also "Mönchsdorf", as the German name of Klášterská Lhota is, indicates that a monastery was located there or that it belonged to a monastery.

The oldest known documentary mention of the Provosty Wrchlab contains a document of the Prague Archbishop Ernst von Pardubitz from July 4, 1348. It was by Pope Clemens VI. Confirmed in 1349 and has been preserved in the register books of the papal chancellery. The document shows that the monastery of St. Maria was consecrated ("cella sancte Marie in Albea seu Wrchlab olim Heynrichs") and was subordinate to the mother monastery Opatowitz. In addition, the document mentions that the monastery suffered from a great lack of income and therefore only had a few monks. This also led to frequent changes of the provosts and to negligence in the monastery order. In agreement with the Opatowitz abbot Jan Neplach , Archbishop Ernst decreed that the then Wrchlab provost Leo could only be recalled if there was an important reason. At the same time he decreed that there should always be seven members of the order, five priests and three lay brothers in Wrchlab. The services they had to perform were precisely defined. In 1349 Abbot Neplach decreed that the monks were only allowed to leave the monastery with the provost's permission. Since the Wrchlab / Heinrichsau monastery had no real estate until then, Abbot Neplach had to transfer the village of Benátky and the taxes there to the Wrchlab provost . Subsequently, the monastery came to a coherent property on the Upper Elbe.

At the beginning of the Hussite Wars , the Wrchlab Propstei went out. The monastery was probably destroyed in 1421 by the owners of the neighboring Arnau rulership , the brothers Johann and Hynek Kruschina von Lichtenburg ; older sources indicate that it was destroyed by Jan Žižka in 1424. Since the mother monastery was also destroyed during this time, the Wrchlab / Heinrichsau monastery was not rebuilt.

Ownership of the Provosty Wrchlab

The villages that were combined to form the Wrchlab Propstei only emerged from a document that was issued after the monastery was destroyed when King Sigismund gave the noble Hynek Kruschina von Lichtenburg in 1436, who owned the Arnau rulership at that time, the villages an der Oberen that formerly belonged to the Wrchlab monastery Elbe pledged. It is possible that Hynek had already appropriated these villages, which formed a coherent property.

The villages belonged to the provost of Wrchlab:

  • Mönchsdorf
  • Čistá (acquired between 1380 and 1390)
  • Kalná ( now Horní Kalná and Dolní Kalná ), was acquired in 1372 and the purchase was approved by King Charles IV .
  • a Meierhof near Arnau
  • Pelsdorf
  • Slemen ( slemeno )
  • Ždirnitz ( Serenz ) consisting of Přední Ždírnice ( front Serenz ) and Zadní Ždírnice ( rear Serenz )
  • as well as a subject in Borownitz .

literature

  • W. Hieke: On the history of Hohenelbe. 1. Where was the Opatowitz Propstei Wrchlab? In: Communications of the Association for the History of the Germans in Boehmen, Vol. 33, 1895, pp. 264-270.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Since the monastery was probably founded earlier than the town of Vrchlabí, the Czech name Wrchlab or Vrchlab could have been just a geographical reference to the Upper Elbe / Vrchní Labe .
  2. ↑ Heinrichow
  3. ↑ W. Hieke: Zur Geschichte von Hohenelbe ... suspects on p. 267 that Heinrichow / Heinrichsau is identical with Hennersdorf / Dolní Branná