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No 166 - 2003
4. The Abbey of Saints Adrian and Denis, Lamspringe, Germany
by Abbot Geoffrey Scott OSB
THE English Benedictine abbey of Lamspringe nestles among rolling hills about twenty miles south of the ancient cathedral city of Hildesheim in Lower Saxony. It was suppressed by the Prussian government in 1803 along with hundreds of other monasteries which were victims of that governments policy of secularisation of monastic property and land. Founded as an English Benedictine monastery in 1643, Lamspringe was the sixth monastery established by the English Benedictines in the first half of the seventeenth century. It came after Douai (now Downside), Dieulouard (now Ampleforth), St. Malo (dissolved in the late seventeenth century), Paris (now Douai at Woolhampton), and Cambrai (now Stanbrook). There had been a monastery at Lamspringe throughout the medieval period, and it took its name from a miracle which involved the appearance of a lamb which cured some townspeople of the plague. This lamb leapt over a stream which is today the spring, the Lamme, which flows through abbeys extensive garden, and which is depicted on the monasterys coat-of-arms.
At the time of the Reformation, the monastery was inhabited by nuns who had become Lutheran. Meanwhile, in the 1620s, the English Benedictine monasteries were, apparently, bulging at the seams and were unable to support all those seeking entry. Therefore, in 1628, the English monks requested property from the German Bursfeld Benedictine Congregation. Their request was supported by the Emperor Frederick II, for, as the forces of the Catholic Counter-Reformation in Germany pushed Protestantism back, Catholic rulers, like Frederick, determined to establish religious houses in regions newly-won for Catholicism. Lamspringe lay within lands which belonged to the bishop of Hildesheim, but it was not far from Protestant Brunswick. Lamspringe was, and indeed remains, a predominantly Lutheran town, but once it had been occupied by Catholics, the Lutheran nuns were replaced by Catholic monks of the Bursfeld German Benedictine Congregation. It was this Congregation which the English Benedictines approached in the hopes that they might be given empty monasteries, like Lamspringe. The English monks took possession of the monastery in 1630, but with the Thirty Years War still being fought, it was not until 1645 that its first abbot, Clement Reyner, having arranged for pensions to be paid to the two surviviing Lutheran nuns as well as to the local Lutheran pastor,set about the mammoth task of repairing the property. From the outset, Lamspringe was distinctive among English Benedictine monasteries; it was larger, wealthier, and more remote than the others, all of which lay in France and Flanders. Furthermore, unlike the other mens monasteries which were small priories ruled by priors elected every four years, Lamspringe had a life abbot.
Throughout the life of Lamspringe, from 1644 until 1802, two hundred and eleven monks were professed. Most of these came from northern England, sailing from Hull to the Hook of Holland, and then journeying overland to Saxony. Those returning from Germany to the mission in England also tended to work in northern England, especially in Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland. The distances involved meant that monks in the abbey rarely returned home to England and monks on the mission rarely returned to their abbey, except for major events such as abbatial elections. However, a small school was established in 1671, attached to the monastery, which educated mostly English boys, many of whom, again, came from Catholic gentry families in northern England. Two hundred and sixty eight of these pupils are known by name. During the abbeys existence, local Catholics were cared for by a succession of German parish priests, appointed by the abbot, who used the abbey church as the parish church. The abbey had vast estates, collected tithes, and possessed feudal rights over many surrounding villages, to whose inhabitants the abbot administered justice. As one approaches the monastery today, attached to a pillar is a pair of iron manacles used for chaining recalcitrant serfs.
Little remains of the early medieval buildings, but those which were erected by the English Benedictines survive practically intact. The church had been begun in 1670, but work only started in earnest in 1691 under Abbot Maurus Corker (1690-95), a monk who frequented the Stuart court and was responsible for the conversion to Catholicism of the poet, John Dryden. Corker had been imprisoned in Newgate during the Popish Plot (1678-80) and had there ministered to his fellow prisoner, Oliver Plunkett, Archbishop of Armagh. After Plunketts execution, Corker was instrumental in conveying to the new church at Lamspringe the relics of Plunkett, who was eventually canonised as a martyr in 1976. Until their transference to Downside in the late 19th-century, these relics reposed in the crypt. The other noteworthy relic venerated at Lamspringe was the head of St Thomas of Hereford.
The abbey church is a broad and lofty German hall church, with most of its baroque furniture and fittings intact. It houses an exceptionally fine 17th-century organ as well as paintings and examples of scagliola executed by the Flemish lay-brother, Jerome Sies or Six. The ornate choir of the monks contains large portraits of Anglo-Saxon monastic saints such as St. Augustine of Canterbury and St. Cuthbert.
The monastery buildings form an L-shaped range attached to the church. They are approached from a grand courtyard around which is stabling for horses. This monastery was conceived and build by the Yorkshireman, Abbot Joseph Rokeby (1730-61) in the early eighteenth century.
It is a rather severe classical range of buildings, with a white stuccoed faade relieved by ochre window frames and lintels. Rokebys arms and an inscription in Latin, England sent Joseph to German shores under whose auspices this monastery was erected in 1731, decorate the main portal which leads into a reception foyer graced by statues representing the four continents of the world (Australasia had yet to be discovered). Beyond this, is the refectory whose walls are still decorated with rustic scenes. Much of the monastery building now houses the local town council and the parish priest, but upstairs and open to the public is the abbots Saal or reception room, which can house up to two hundred persons and which stretches along the entire length of the building.
The abbots of Lamspringe lived in grand style, occupying most of the front of the monastery. The monks cells were in the building behind, and were much more modest. To the right of the main doorway was the library. This was dispersed at the suppression in 1803, and seven of its books are today at Woolhampton. By far its most precious volume was the magnificent 12th-century Romanesque manuscript, known as the St. Albans Psalter, which has forty full-page miniatures of the life of Christ, and was certainly at Lamspringe by 1657. It was written at St Albans Abbey sometime before 1123 and came into the possession of the female anchoress, Christina of Markyate, and the small community she founded. It is now at the church of St Godehard in Hildesheim.
The last, and longest ruling, abbot of Lamspringe was Abbot Maurus Heatley (1761-1802), who succeeded Abbot Rokeby. He was a Lancashire man, and his portrait came to Douai Abbey from Fort Augustus in 2000. It now hangs in the guests gallery. Heatley is shown wearing the abbatial cross and ring, and pointing to a view of the abbey, whose debts he was principally involved in clearing. At his side, his coat-of-arms, quartered with the arms of the abbey, can be seen. Heatley studied at the University of Douai and then went on the English mission, becoming chaplain at Cheam to Lady Petre, before he returned to Lamspringe as abbot. He died in 1802 just before the suppression of the monastery.
One of the last professed monks at Lamspringe was Dom Austin Birdsall who was professed in 1796. As a missioner in England, after the closure of the monastery, he established the Benedictine mission at Cheltenham which was served by Douai monks until 1998. As President General of the English Benedictines (1826-34), Birdsall attempted in 1834 a short-lived revival of Lamspringe at Broadway, Worcestershire, using the pension he had been granted by the Prussian government following the suppression of Lamspringe itself. Birsdall was followed later as President by Dom Alban Molyneux (1850-54), who had been one of the last generation of schoolboys at Lamspringe before the school closed. In 2002, a portrait of Molyneux was brought to Douai by Hugh Dinan, a descendant of Molyneux.
As to the suppression of Lamspringe itself, Bishop John Douglass, Vicar Apostolic of the London District, noted in his diary on 3 January 1803: On the third of this month the Abbey of Lamspringe, which in the partition of Germany called Indemnities, had been given away to the King of Prussia was dissolved by orders from Berlin. A layman was appointed to reside in the monastery and take care of the lands. The English monks are permitted to remain in their cells & to keep choir, & are allowed an annual pension, each monk, amount to 50, more or less, in English money. O tempora! O mores! Thus has this Abbey, belonging to the English Benedictine Monks, been lost.
Fr Wilfrid Sollom 1926 - 2003 - Obituary
Fr Wilfrid Sollom - Personal Tributes
Spirituality in the Workplace by David Westcott
From The Douai Magazine 100 Years Ago
Douai Abbey Newsletter 19 including Community Notes
Go to index of Douai Newsletter.
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The Douai Magazine is published at Douai Abbey, Upper Woolhampton, Reading, Berks, RG7 5TQ. Phone: 0118 971 5300 Fax: 0118 971 5303 E-mail editor@douaiabbey.org,uk
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