Bursfelde Congregation - The Bursfelde Congregation

The Bursfelde Congregation

Although the monasteries reformed by him never united into a congregation, still Dederoth's reforms may be looked upon as the foundation of the Bursfelde Congregation. Dederoth had intended to unite the reformed Benedictine monasteries of Northern Germany by a stricter uniformity of discipline, but the execution of his plan was left to his successor, the celebrated John of Hagen.

In 1445 John of Hagen obtained permission from the Council of Basle to restore the Divine Office to the original form of the old Benedictine breviary and to introduce liturgical and disciplinary uniformity in the monasteries that followed the reform of Bursfelde. A year later, on 11 March 1446, Louis d'Allemand, as Cardinal Legate authorized by the Council of Basle, approved the Bursfelde Congregation, which then consisted of six abbeys: Bursfelde, Clus, Reinhausen, Cismar in Schleswig-Holstein, St. Jacob's Abbey near Mainz, and Huysburg near Magdeburg. The cardinal likewise decreed that the Abbot of Bursfelde should always ex officio be one of the three presidents of the congregation, and that he should have power to convoke annual chapters. The first annual chapter of the Bursfelde Congregation convened in the Abbey of Sts. Peter and Paul at Erfurt in 1446.

In 1451, while on his journey of reform through Germany, the papal legate, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, met John of Hagen at Würzburg, where the Benedictine monasteries of the Mainz-Bamberg province held their triennial provincial chapter. The legate appointed the Abbot of Bursfelde visitor for this province, and in a bull, dated 7 June 1451, the Bursfelde Congregation was approved, and favoured with new privileges. Finally, on 6 March 1458, Pope Pius II approved the statutes of the congregation and gave it all the privileges which Pope Eugene IV had given to the Italian Benedictine Congregation of St. Justina since the year 1431. In 1461 this approbation was reiterated, and various new privileges granted to the congregation.

Favoured by bishops, cardinals, and popes, as well as by temporal rulers, especially the Dukes of Brunswick, the Bursfelde Congregation exercised a wholesome influence during the second half of the fifteenth, and the first half of the sixteenth, century to promote true reform in the Benedictine monasteries of Germany. Its members included not only all the Benedictine monasteries in Lower Saxony, but also many in Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Denmark. At the death of Abbot John of Hagen thirty-six monasteries had already joined the Bursfelde Congregation, and new ones were being added every year. During its most flourishing period, shortly before the Reformation, at least 136 abbeys, scattered through all parts of Germany, belonged to the Bursfelde Congregation.