Shaftesbury Abbey

Shaftesbury Abbey was a nunnery in Shaftesbury (Dorset). The abbey was founded in 888 was considered the wealthiest Benedictine nunnery in England and was an important pilgrimage destination. It was destroyed in 1539 by order of Thomas Cromwell.

Foundation / Early History

Shaftesbury Abbey was founded by King Alfred the Great and his daughter Æthelgifu after they had established eight years earlier, the same city. Æthelgifu became the first abbess of the monastery. The abbey founded quickly led to strong growth of the place. Between 924 and 939 authorized King Athelstan two money Präger to coin money in Shaftesbury. 932 he gives the Abbey extensive lands.

In the year 981 the remains of the murdered in Corfe Castle by his stepmother King Edward the Martyr were transferred to an extensive procession of Wareham in the abbey. The conversion was monitored by St. Dunstan and Earl Ælfhere of Mercia, began on 13 February 981 in Wareham and Shaftesbury reached after seven days. Here the remains were received by the nuns of the abbey and buried with full royal honors on the north side of the altar. During the transfer of Wareham after Shartesbury a miracle supposed to have happened. Two crippled men were brought close to the stretcher. As this was lowered from the carriers to their height, the health of the two cripples to have been fully restored. The procession and the events were re-enacted in 1981 on the occasion of the 1000th anniversary in memory of a procession.

From the year 1001, it is narrated that the coffin in which Edwards bones had been placed, had risen from the earth. King Æthelred gave the bishops the order to exhume the coffin of his brother and bring them to a more appropriate place. Then the bishops withdrawals the grave the bones and put them to other relics. This survey of the coffin is said to have taken place on 20 June 1001. In this year Edward canonized as a saint.

Shaftesbury Abbey has now been re-consecrated the Mother of God and the Holy Edward. The city was renamed in Edwardstowe and received its original name after the English Reformation again. Many miracles are said to have taken place on the grave of St. Edward, including the healing of leprosy and the blind. The abbey became the wealthiest Benedictine nunnery in England.

1035 died King Canute at Shaftesbury Theatre. He is buried in Winchester, his heart said to have been buried in Shaftesbury.

1074, the last Anglo-Saxon abbess Leofgifu is separated from the first Norman abbess Eulalia. At the abbey begin extensive remodeling and expansion in the Norman style. The city gradually loses importance, the monastery wins but as a pilgrimage site for the Holy Edward continued to fame. The Domesday survey of 1086 states that Shaftesbury has now 80 of the 257 houses that it had at the time Edward the Confessor lost. William of Malmesbury wrote in 1125 that Shaftesbury was not a city, but only a village. 1218, the Pope to the abbess, to limit the number of nuns to a maximum of 100.

1240 visited Cardinal Otto Candidus, papal legate of Pope Gregory IX. , The abbey and founded a charter, which was recorded as the first in the cartulary of Glastonbury. 1252 has King Henry III. his judges, Shaftesbury and seek to promote trade here. 1275 King Edward I gives the monastery 12 oak trees of the royal forest in Gillingham for construction work.

Elizabeth de Burgh, wife of Robert the Bruce, spent about 1310 parts of their captivity here.

From 1340 reported that the mayor of the city had to take his oath of office before the abbess. 1491 to King Henry VII held at the Abbey, Catherine of Aragon in 1501 returned here on the journey to her wedding to Prince Arthur a.

Destruction

From the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries is narrated that it was said that if the abbess of Shaftesbury Abbey and the Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey could get married, her son by his heir would be richer than the King of England. On this occasion Thomas Cromwell could not do without, at the instigation of King Henry VIII ordered the dissolution of the abbey. 1539 declared the last abbess, Elizabeth Zouche writing her resignation, the abbey was destroyed and sold the lands and large parts of the city. Thomas Arundell, 1st Baron Arundell of Wardour, acquired in 1540, the abbey and the largest part of the city. When he was expelled from the country later went over to the possession of Pembroke, later in the hands of Anthony Ashley -Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, and finally the Duke of Westminster.

Today's fixing of Gold Hill Shaftesbury represents the remains of the original defensive walls of the Abbey

The relics of St. Edward had been hiding in 1539 to avoid their desecration. They were rediscovered in 1931 by Mr. Wilson - Claridge during an archaeological dig and identified by extensive research as genuine. Further investigation in 1970 confirmed that the young man had died the same death as that is narrated by Edward. Wilson - Claridge handed over the remains of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, which they brought in a church in Brookwood Cemetery, in Woking, Surrey.

Thomas Hardy wrote about the ruins of the abbey:

" Vague imaginings of its castle, its three mints, its magnificent apsidal Abbey, the chief glory of south Wessex, its twelve churches, its shrines, chan ministries, hospitals, its gabled freestone mansions -all now ruthlessly swept away - throw the visitor, even against his will, into a pensive melancholy Which the stimulating atmosphere and limitless landscape around him can scarcely dispel. "