Sorø Klosterkirke

Daughter monasteries

Ås ( 1194) Knardrup (1326)

The monastery of Soro is a former Cistercian abbey and in Denmark. It is located on the island of Zealand ( Sjælland ) in the city Soro between Slagelse and Ringsted.

History

The monastery was founded in the mid- 12th century as a Benedictine monastery and in 1161 at the invitation of the Bishop Absalon of Roskilde, taken over by the Cistercian monastery of Esrom, a daughter house of Clairvaux Abbey Primary. Soro became the most important Cistercian monastery in Denmark. It founded the monastery Ås (now in Sweden) and the monastery Knardrup. With the exception of the church, the monastery burned down in 1217. The then newly constructed buildings fell victim to a fire in 1813. Only the Klostertor remained. After the Reformation, the monastery was continued as a Lutheran convent, in 1586 a school was set up in 1623 a knight's academy, which still exists as a public school with boarding: Soro Akademi. Also in Soro a copy of the already -forgotten medieval manuscript Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum of scholastic Adam of Bremen was discovered in the late 16th century, today one of the most important historical sources of Northern Germany and Northern Europe.

Abbey

The towerless, 70 meters long church is an originally flat-roofed three-aisled basilica with a nave of five bays in a bound system, transept with three square yokes, two straight closed chapels on the east side and einjochigem rectangular choir. It was arched after the fire of 1247; The arches rest on short little columns. Aisles and chapels were well arched from the beginning. The church has a multi renewed roof skylights above the crossing. In the church, there are numerous epitaphs and tombs, including the grave of the founder of the monastery Absalon. She's grave lay more members of the Danish royal family. The poet Ludvig Holberg is buried in the church.

In the church there is a triumphal cross the Gothic sculptor Claus Berg.