Clus Abbey (Kloster Clus) was an abbey near Bad Gandersheim in

Lower Saxony Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ...

. It was a daughter-house of

Gandersheim Abbey Gandersheim Abbey (german: Stift Gandersheim) is a former house of secular canonesses ( Frauenstift) in the present town of Bad Gandersheim in Lower Saxony, Germany. It was founded in 852 by Duke Liudolf of Saxony, progenitor of the Liudolfing or ...

, having been founded in 1127 by Agnes, Abbess of Gandersheim, niece of the Emperor Henry IV, and was part of the

Cluniac The Cluniac Reforms (also called the Benedictine Reform) were a series of changes within medieval monasticism of the Western Church focused on restoring the traditional monastic life, encouraging art, and caring for the poor. The movement began wit ...

Reform movement.

History

In 1433 Abbot Johann Dederoth also became abbot of Bursfelde Abbey and initiated the

Bursfelde Congregation The Bursfelde Congregation, also called Bursfelde Union, was a union of predominantly west and central German Benedictine monasteries, of both men and women, working for the reform of Benedictine practice. It was named after Bursfelde Abbey. Backg ...

. In this way Clus Abbey stands at the beginning of the great central

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

an monastic reform and unification movement. In the course of the

Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...

the abbey was dissolved in 1596. The former library is now part of the Herzog August Bibliothek in

Wolfenbüttel Wolfenbüttel (; nds, Wulfenbüddel) is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, the administrative capital of Wolfenbüttel District. It is best known as the location of the internationally renowned Herzog August Library and for having the largest c ...

Abbey church

The former abbey church of Clus was built between 1127 and 1159 as a three-aisled

basilica In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica is a large public building with multiple functions, typically built alongside the town's forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek East. The building gave its name ...

and shows some similarity to the abbey church at Gandersheim. In the choir, extended in the

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

style in 1485, is a high altar which was brought here from Lübeck in 1487.

References

*Heutger, Nicholas, 1975. ''Bursfelde und seine Reformklöster'' (2nd rev. ed.). Hildesheim: August Lax. Benedictine monasteries in Germany Monasteries in Lower Saxony 1120s establishments in the Holy Roman Empire 1127 establishments in Europe Religious organizations established in the 1120s Christian monasteries established in the 12th century {{LowerSaxony-struct-stub