BURSFELD, ABBEY OF

Former benedictine abbey on the Weser River, about eight miles from Münden (Hanover), Germany, Diocese of Mainz (patrons, SS. Thomas and Nicholas). Bursfeld or Bursfelde was founded in 1093 by Count Henry the Fat of Northeim, its first monks coming from cor vey. Emperor Henry IV accorded it his imperial protection and the right of coinage; Abp. Ruthard of Mainz confirmed the foundation. The abbey church, a Hirsau-type structure of the 12th century, was restored in 1433 and 1589, but was drastically altered in the process; it was again restored in 1846 and shows traces of successive decoration. In 1574 a fire destroyed all the early monastic buildings. Popes Eugene III and Boniface VIII confirmed all Bursfeld's possessions and privileges. Under Abbots Henry II (d. 1334) and John II (d. 1339) discipline deteriorated, and in 1433 it was necessary for the zealous reformer Johann Dederoth, Abbot of Clus, to renew and revive the impoverished and almost extinct monastery at the insistence of Duke Otto (the One-eyed) of Brunswick. Under his successor several other monasteries amalgamated with Bursfeld into a Benedictine reform congregation; hence the beginning of the Bursfeld Congregation. Bursfeld itself flourished until the Reformation; Abbot Melchior Böddeker (d. 1601) became a Protestant. The Restitution Edict brought back two Catholic abbots (1629–80), but Protestant abbots continued to rule side by side with them. Since the 19th century the head of the Protestant Theological Faculty of the University of Göttingen has always been titular abbot of Bursfeld and receives revenues from that office. The abbey church is used for Lutheran services.

The Bursfeld Congregation was a 15th-century development. Johann Dederoth, Abbot of Clus, took over Bursfeld in 1433, uniting it in his person with Clus. On a journey to Rome he had become acquainted with the Benedictine Reform of S. Giustina (Padua), and from Abbot Johann Rode of Sankt Matthias in Trier he received two monks each for Clus and Bursfeld to initiate the new reform. Reinhausen, Huysburg, and Cismar soon joined what was to become a real reform movement. Dederoth's successor at Bursfeld, Abbot Johann von Hagen,(d. 1469) received much help and inspiration from the canon regular Johann Busch. The first general chapter of the Bursfeld Congregation as such was held from May 1 to 16, 1446, at Bursfeld, which was to remain head of the congregation until the abbey itself would become Protestant. (Clus could not lead the reform movement, as it was a proprietary monastery of the Convent of gandersheim.) Meanwhile, Pope Pius II approved the congregation in 1459, and it grew rapidly. By 1780 there were 111 abbeys (excluding convents) united in the congregation; the acts of the general chapters from 1458 to 1780 are extant. Bursfeld had its own seminary for monastic priests from 1616 to 1740 at the University of Cologne. The Bursfeld Congregation, or Union, came to an end with the secularization of 1802–03.

Bibliography: l. h. cottineau, Répertoire topobibliographique des abbayes et prieurés, 2 v. (Mâcon 1935–39) 1:534–535. p. volk, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. j. hofer and k. rahner, 10 v. (2d., new ed. Freiburg 1957–65) 2:796–798, including list of congregation members; ed., Die General-kapitels-Rezesse der Bursfelder Kongregation, v.1 (Siegburg 1955) 1–5.

[p. volk]