Fredelsloh Abbey: A Romanesque Monastery Church in Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page10 sections
History
Fredelsloh Abbey is a former monastery church in Germany, located in Moringen. Adalbert I, Archbishop of Mainz, founded the abbey in 1132 as an Augustinian canons’ foundation dedicated to Saint Blaise. Its originally Romanesque church belonged to a strategically placed religious institution on the boundary of the Archdiocese of Mainz, beside territory largely controlled by the Prince-Bishopric of Paderborn.
Foundation and expansion
The foundation had a political as well as religious purpose. Mainz endowed Fredelsloh with extensive landholdings and revenues, strengthening its position in a contested border region. Adalbert II confirmed the foundation in 1138 and transferred several tithes to it. While construction was still in progress, a women’s community joined the canons between 1144 and 1146. This created a double monastery, an institution containing separate communities of men and women, and the dedication to the Virgin Mary probably dates from this expansion.
Pope Eugene III placed both communities under papal protection in 1146. He confirmed their possessions, including the churches at Stöckheim and Markoldendorf, which had been transferred to Fredelsloh in 1142, and granted the community the right to elect its provost, the head of the collegiate foundation. Further protection came from King Frederick I in 1153 and Archbishop Arnold of Mainz in 1155. Arnold also entrusted Fredelsloh with pastoral care and tithes in two newly founded villages.
Medieval decline and religious change
During the thirteenth century, the Counts of Dassel served as the monastery’s advocates, lay officials responsible for protecting the institution and representing its secular interests. They held this office until 1277. The canons departed toward the end of the century, while the women’s community continued for several more centuries.
A fire in 1290 severely damaged parts of the monastery complex. Economic and cultural decline followed in the succeeding centuries. In 1542, Duchess Elisabeth introduced the Reformation, the religious movement that brought Protestant institutions to the Principality of Calenberg. Fredelsloh was transferred to the Welf monastic fund, later administered by the Hanover Monastic Chamber, and continued as an evangelical women’s foundation until the Thirty Years’ War of 1618 to 1648, a major European conflict shaped by religious and political struggles within the Holy Roman Empire. The last documented member of the women’s foundation dates from 1660.
Dispersal, reuse, and rediscovery
After the foundation ended, the convent buildings were used as a source of building stone and were eventually demolished. Because the village congregation belonged ecclesiastically to Moringen, the surviving church was used as a grain store. A wall separating the western part of the building from the rest of the church dates from this period.
The former collegiate church was rediscovered as a medieval monument during the first half of the nineteenth century. Wilhelm Mithoff, Conrad Wilhelm Hase, and others investigated the ruins, and extensive repairs and reconstructions followed, particularly on the exterior. In the twentieth century, the church returned to worship under the Evangelical Lutheran parish of Leine-Weper, within the Leine-Solling church district. The Hanover Monastic Chamber carried out a comprehensive interior restoration from 1968 to 1973. After damage was identified in the tower joints in 2005, restoration work began in 2013 and was completed in 2015.
Relics and the monastery’s bells
Fredelsloh formerly possessed a valuable collection of relics. During the Thirty Years’ War, the last female head of the foundation moved the collection in two chests to safety in Einbeck. Part of it returned to Fredelsloh in 1652 and was still listed in 1774. In the sixteenth century, the chronicler Johannes Letzner described the relics as being kept in a chapel beside a spring that attracted many visitors and was associated with reported miracles. The collection included relics connected with Lazarus, Joseph’s donkey, Christ’s temptation in the desert, Gethsemane, Christ’s sweat cloth, Mary, Saint Peter, the Holy Blood, and Dismas, the repentant thief.
A 1736 bell from Parlin in Pomerania was taken to Hamburg during the Second World War for possible conversion into armaments. It survived in Hamburg’s bell cemetery after the war and was not returned to its place of origin, which had become part of Poland. In 1952, it was brought to Fredelsloh to replace a church bell surrendered for melting. The church is now a protected architectural monument and the only surviving building of the formerly extensive twelfth-century monastery complex.
Remains
The surviving church is an east-oriented basilica, a longitudinal church with a higher central nave and lower side aisles, built in Weser sandstone. Its Romanesque design uses massive masonry, round arches, and strong geometric forms. Three aisles meet a transept, the cross-arm intersecting the nave, while two square western towers with saddle roofs project before the west end. The rectangular choir closes with a half-height apse, a rounded termination, and smaller apses occupy the eastern sides of the transept arms beside the side aisles.
Exterior and entrances
The exterior has restrained decoration. Arched friezes beneath the roof eaves and horizontal string courses articulate the sandstone walls. The present main entrance is the portal in the north transept arm. Its masonry arch dates from the 1130s and is described as one of the oldest true arches in Germany.
Between the western towers stands a distinctive half stair tower, inserted like a western apse. Its spiral staircase originally gave separate access to the nuns’ gallery. A later alteration replaced the nuns’ choir with a gallery linking the staircase and the towers. The concealed double-helix staircase dates from the thirteenth century. Comparable stair constructions were otherwise associated mainly with the Orient or Levant, while the identity of its builder remains uncertain. A supporting wall added in the seventeenth century means that the staircase is not publicly accessible.
Western apse and gallery wall
The western apse carries an intertwined double-arch ornament on its exterior. This interlaced arched frieze is rare in northern Germany, with comparable examples identified at Jerichow Abbey Church and the church at Mandelsloh.
At the western end of the nave, a gallery wall rises in three arcaded levels. An arcade is a sequence of arches supported by columns or piers. The levels contain two, three, and four arches from bottom to top, making nine in all. They represent the nine choirs of angels, the traditional Christian hierarchy of angelic beings. Comparable buildings in Old Saxony generally have two arcaded levels, while Saint Michael’s Church in Hildesheim is an exception.
Interior alterations and furnishings
Repairs after the fire of 1290 changed the original regular alternation of columns and piers, with several columns replaced by piers. In the seventeenth century, a timber-framed wall was placed on the medieval rood screen, the partition separating the clergy’s area from the nave, at the west side of the crossing. This reduced the usable interior to the crossing, choir, and transept. Around 1730, additional buttresses were built after the church began to lean slightly southward on sandy ground.
Around 1850, the medieval rood screen and the wall above it were removed. A supporting wall was then built in front of the gallery wall, and the west building could be reached only through the western entrance. The choir contains twelve fourteenth-century reliefs of the apostles and a Romanesque stone baptismal font. Stained-glass windows from the 1970s show the church’s two patron saints, the Christ monogram, and Eucharistic symbols including a chalice and bread basket.
Two iron chandeliers hang in the transept arms. They are rare surviving elements of church furnishings made during Hase’s work in the 1880s. An electronic organ with three manuals and sixty registers was installed in 2017, replacing an obsolete electronic organ that had been used for about forty years.
Bells
The 1736 bell from Pomerania hangs in the south tower. The Scheel bell foundry in Stettin cast it for Parlin in the Naugard district. It weighs approximately 300 kilograms, has the tone B′, and serves as both a baptismal and clock bell. A second bell, cast in 1924 by the Radler firm of Hildesheim, has the tone A′. A larger bell acquired in 1958 from the Schilling bell-founders has the tone F-sharp′.
