page_title: Zehdenick Abbey
section_title: Foundation legend
hierarchical_section_title: Zehdenick Abbey / Foundation legend
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Stadtansicht Zehdenick, Kupferstich
context_page_description: Zehdenick Abbey was a Cistercian nunnery founded in 1250 or shortly after in Zehdenick in Mark Brandenburg, Germany It was dissolved in 1541 during the Reformation. The buildings were mostly destroyed during the Thirty Years' War. Those that remain are used for various religious and community purposes.
context_section_description: The circumstances leading to the foundation of the abbey are described in a legend transmitted by the märkische chronicler Andreas Angelus, according to which Zehdenick became a place of pilgrimage after a "miracle of the host" took place there in 1249: a woman innkeeper is said to have buried a consecrated host beneath her beer barrel in the cellar in order to obtain God's help in increasing the beer consumption of her guests. When she confessed this blasphemous act to her priest, he ordered the host to be dug up again. When this was done, blood flowed from the ground in several places, which was caught in a vessel and put on the altar of the church. A chapel was built over the site, still commemorated today in Kapellenstraße ("Chapel Street") in Zehdenick. The reports of this "blood miracle of Zehdenick" (Blutwunder von Zehdenick) drew many pilgrims to the town.
  The Margraves of Brandenburg Otto III and Johann I and their sister Matilda of Brandenburg, Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg, founded the abbey partly, to be sure, on account of the increasing number of pilgrims, but doubtless largely also from strategic considerations regarding the establishment of the power of the Ascanians in their recently acquired territory of the Uckermark.
  The nunnery was initially dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint George, but in 1409 the later dedication to the Holy Cross is documented for the first time, in a letter of the Antipope Alexander V.
caption: Copper engraving by Merian, c. 1660; an idealised representation of the abbey is to the left
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