Kanonissenstift Essen
Query URLs
https://term.museum-digital.de/md-de/persinst/230539
- Name (English)
- Kanonissenstift Essen
- Short name
- Essen Abbey
- Short Description
- Essen Abbey (Stift Essen) was a community of secular canonesses for women of high nobility that formed the nucleus of modern-day Essen, Germany. It was founded about 845 by the Saxon Altfrid (died 874), later Bishop of Hildesheim and saint, near a royal estate called Astnidhi, which later gave its name to the religious house and to the town. The first abbess was Altfrid´s kinswoman, Gerswit.
Apart from the abbess, the canonesses did not take vows of perpetual celibacy, and were able to leave the abbey to marry; they lived in some comfort in their own houses, wearing secular clothing except when performing clerical roles such as singing the Divine Office. A chapter of male priests were also attached to the abbey, under a dean. In the medieval period, the abbess exercised the functions of a bishop, except for the sacramental ones, and those of a ruler, over the very extensive estates of the abbey, and had no clerical superior except the pope. - Entity Encoding
- kir
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