Afternoon excursion...local monastery

For a Sunday afternoon excursion Tom and I went exploring. Tom had an itch to go out and do something and pulled up Google Earth. He located our house and then just started looking at photos of places near us. He found a former monastery - the Kloster Bebenhausen - just about 30 minutes away from us. Bebenhausen is located on a highway that runs from the Alps to the Rhine valley. The surrounding forest is referred to as a great medieval empire forest.

The monastery was founded in 1183 and construction started shortly thereafter. It served as a Cistercian monastery. The Order of the Cistercians is a Catholic religious order of enclosed monks and nuns. Bebenhausen was monks only. They are sometimes called the White Monks, because of the white habit they often wear. The emphasis of Cistercian life is on manual labor and self-sufficiency. This monastery managed a glass factory.

After the Reformation there was an almost even split between the monks supporting Luther and those supporting Catholicism. The monastery eventually became a Protestant monastery and school. The school was later secularized in 1806. Later the monastery was claimed as real estate for the royal family and portions of the monastery were used as a hunting lodge.

When King William II of Wurttemberg abdicated his throne in November 1918, he and his wife, Queen Charlotte, chose to move to Bebenhausen, making it their home. The king died there in October 1921. The former queen - Duchess Charlotte, lived there until her death in 1946. In the 1970s the site became a protected historic site.

These are pictures inside the summer refectory, which dates back to 1335 and is where the monks would eat during the warm summer months.

In the summer refectory

The mural below is inside the winter refectory, which was heated. The mural was painted by a traveling artist. The painting depicts a Spanish order that fell under the monks at Bebenhausen. The artist though had never been to the Spanish order so the church in the mural looks a lot like Bebenhausen's.

The photo below was taken inside the Romanesque three-nave church. The choir area dates to 1228, while the transept and crossing tower date back to 1409. The "crossing" is where the four arms of a cross-shaped "cruciform" church meet and the tower is above that point. A crossing tower is very common in Romanesque and Gothic churches. There were four long ropes in the sanctuary that are still used today to manually ring the church bells. The altar, the far right of the photo, had different Biblical stories depicted on it but it certainly has that German flare. Close-up view below.

Altar with a German flair

Here is the dormitory. The rooms are very small and the monks were not allowed any personal items.

The room below is essentially their study room. It is right off what was the library.

The monks were not allowed to talk during the day - the focus was prayers and work/service. There was only one room where they could talk openly - the parlatorium - and they could only go in there once a day.

I loved all the ceiling paintings and other artistry.

Faint cross etched into wall

This next room is the Chapter House where a chapter out of the Law of Saint Benedict was read daily by the prior. Special and important announcements were made here and the monks also voted for new priors here. The only person permitted to speak in the Chapter House was the prior.

Chapter House

Views into the courtyard. As you can tell Tom was taking all the pictures.

View into courtyard

Below is the cloister. The monastery's website states that the cloister is the core of any monastery complex, and the most important rooms are arranged around it. It served as a covered walk and procession area, for meditation and as a kind of common area. The cloister which exists today, which had a predecessor from the years 1281 - 1305, was built toward the end of the 15th century. The Bebenhausen cloister is one of the most important and best-preserved late Gothic complexes of this type in southwestern Germany. The entrance to the church is straight ahead.

Bebenhausen Cloister

When we were finished in the monastery we went out and walked around the grounds.

It had started raining but we'd come prepared with an umbrella and rain jacket. In Germany it is always a good idea to be prepared for sudden changes in weather.

We found these roses along the path near the church. I thought they were gorgeous and loved the way they were clustered together. I thought this was a fitting rose for a community of monks who were themselves tightly clustered together.