Reformation
The religious revolution, and especially the consequent risings of the peasants in Germany, greatly retarded the progress of the Bursfelde Reform. In 1579, Andrew Lüderitz, the last abbot of Bursfelde, was driven out by the Lutheran Duke Julius of Brunswick, and, after an existence of almost five hundred years, Bursfeld ceased to be a Catholic monastery. The possessions of the abbey were confiscated, and the abbot was replaced by an adherent of Luther.
About forty other Benedictine abbeys belonging to the Bursfelde Congregation were also dissolved, their possessions confiscated by Lutheran princes, and their churches demolished or turned to Protestant uses. Though greatly impeded in its work of reform, the Bursfelde Congregation continued to exist until the compulsory secularization of all its monasteries at the end of the eighteenth, and the beginning of the nineteenth, century. Its last president was Bernard Bierbaum, abbot of Werden Abbey in the Rhine Province, who died in 1798. The Congregation was formally abolished in 1803.
Read more about this topic: Bursfelde Congregation
Famous quotes containing the word reformation:
“Go on then in doing with your pen what in other times was done with the sword; shew that reformation is more practicable by operating on the mind than on the body of man.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)