Shaftesbury Abbey
Shaftesbury Abbey was a women's convent in Shaftesbury, Dorset . The abbey, founded in 888, was considered the wealthiest Benedictine abbey in England and was an important pilgrimage destination. It was destroyed in 1539 on the orders of Thomas Cromwell .
Foundation / early history
Shaftesbury Abbey was founded by King Alfred the Great and his daughter Æthelgifu after they founded the city of the same name eight years earlier. Æthelgifu became the first abbess of the monastery. The foundation of the abbey quickly led to strong growth in the area. Between 924 and 939, King Athelstan authorized two minters to mint coins in Shaftesbury. In 932 he donated extensive land to the abbey.
In 981, the remains of King Edward the Martyr, who had been murdered by his stepmother at Corfe Castle, were transported in a large procession from Wareham to the abbey. The overpass , supervised by St. Dunstan's and Ælfhere , Earl of Mercia , began in Wareham on February 13, 981 and reached Shaftesbury in seven days. Here the bones were received by the nuns of the abbey and buried with full royal honors on the north side of the altar . A miracle is said to have happened during the transfer from Wareham to Shartesbury. Two crippled men were brought close to the stretcher. When this was lowered to its height by the porters, the two cripples are said to have been completely restored to health. The procession and the events were re-enacted in 1981 on the occasion of the 1000th anniversary in a commemorative procession .
It is said from the year 1001 that the coffin in which Edward's bones had been placed rose from the earth. King Æthelred commissioned the bishops to exhume his brother's coffin and move it to a more suitable location. The bishops then removed the bones from the grave and placed them with other relics. This elevation of the coffin is said to have occurred on June 20, 1001. That year Edward is canonized as a saint.
Shaftesbury Abbey has now been rededicated to the Mother of God and Saint Edward. The city was renamed Edwardstowe and only got its original name again after the English Reformation. Numerous miracles are said to have taken place at the tomb of St. Edward, including the healing of leprosy and the blind. The abbey developed into the wealthiest Benedictine abbey in England.
In 1035 King Canute the Great died in Shaftesbury. He is buried in Winchester and his heart is said to have been buried in Shaftesbury.
In 1074 the last Anglo-Saxon abbess Leofgifu is replaced by the first Norman abbess Eulalia. Extensive renovations and extensions in the Norman style begin at the abbey. The city gradually lost its importance, but the monastery continued to gain fame as a pilgrimage site for Saint Edward. The Domesday census of 1086 states that Shaftesbury has now lost 80 of the 257 homes it had in the time of Edward the Confessor. William of Malmesbury wrote around 1125 that Shaftesbury was no longer a town, but only a village. In 1218, the Pope instructed the abbess to limit the number of nuns to a maximum of 100.
Cardinal Otto Candidus , papal legate of Gregory IX, visited in 1240 . , Abbey and established a Charter that in the first Kopialbuch of Glastonbury was added. In 1252 King Heinrich III. his judges to go to Shaftesbury and promote trade here. In 1275 King Edward I donated 12 oaks from the Royal Forest at Gillingham to the monastery for construction.
Elizabeth de Burgh , wife of Robert the Bruce , spent parts of her captivity here around 1310.
It is recorded from 1340 that the mayor of the city had to take his oath of office before the abbess . In 1491 King Henry VII stayed in the abbey, in 1501 Catherine of Aragón came here on her journey to her wedding with Prince Arthur .
destruction
From the time of the dissolution of the English monasteries , it is said that if the abbess of Shaftesbury Abbey and the abbot of Glastonbury Abbey could marry, their son would be richer in inheritance than the King of England. In this occasion Thomas Cromwell could not do without, at the instigation ordered King Henry VIII. The dissolution of the abbey. In 1539 the last abbess, Elizabeth Zouche , declared her resignation in writing, the abbey was destroyed and the lands and large parts of the city sold. Thomas Arundell, 1st Baron Arundell of Wardour , acquired the abbey and most of the city in 1540. When he was later expelled from the country, the property went to Pembroke, later in the hands of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury , and finally the Duke of Westminster .
The current fortification of Shaftesbury's Gold Hill is what remains of the abbey's original protective wall.
The relics of Saint Edward were hidden in 1539 to avoid their desecration. They were not rediscovered until 1931 by Mr. Wilson-Claridge during an archaeological excavation and identified as genuine in extensive investigations. Further investigation in 1970 confirmed that the young man had died the same death as that of Edward is recorded. Wilson-Claridge gave the remains to the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad , which placed them in a church in Brookwood Cemetery in Woking , Surrey .
Thomas Hardy wrote of the ruins of the abbey:
"Vague imaginings of its castle, its three mints, its magnificent apsidal Abbey, the chief glory of south Wessex, its twelve churches, its shrines, chantries, hospitals, its gabled freestone mansions - all now ruthlessly swept away - throw the visitor, even against his will, into a pensive melancholy which the stimulating atmosphere and limitless landscape around him can scarcely dispel. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ St Edward the Martyr . In: Catholic Encyclopedia . Robert Appleton Company. 1909. Retrieved September 21, 2007.
- ↑ a b St Edward the Martyr . In: Necropolis Notables . The Brookwood Cemetery Society. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 21, 2007.
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 0 ′ 19.1 ″ N , 2 ° 11 ′ 55 ″ W.