page_title: Quedlinburg Abbey
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Quedlinburg Abbey / History
context_page_description: Quedlinburg Abbey was a house of secular canonesses in Quedlinburg in what is now Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It was founded in 936 on the initiative of Saint Mathilda, the widow of the East Frankish King Henry the Fowler, as his memorial. For many centuries it and its abbesses enjoyed great prestige and influence.
  Quedlinburg Abbey was an Imperial Estate and one of the approximately forty self-ruling Imperial Abbeys of the Holy Roman Empire. It was disestablished in 1802/3.
  Today, the mostly Romanesque buildings are a World Heritage Site of UNESCO. The church, known as Stiftskirche St. Servatius, is used by the Lutheran Evangelical Church in Germany.
context_section_description: Quedlinburg Abbey was founded on the castle hill of Quedlinburg in the present Saxony-Anhalt in 936 by King Otto I, at the request of his mother Queen Mathilda, later canonised as Saint Mathilda, in honour of her late husband, Otto's father, King Henry the Fowler, and as his memorial. Henry was buried here, as was Mathilda herself.
  The "Kaiserlich freie weltliche Reichsstift Quedlinburg" ("Free secular Imperial abbey of Quedlinburg"), as its full style was until its dissolution in 1802, consisted of a proprietary church of the Imperial family to which was attached a college of secular canonesses (Stiftsdamen), a community of the unmarried daughters of the greater nobility and royalty leading a godly life. The greatest and most prominent foundations of this sort were Essen Abbey, Gandersheim Abbey, Gernrode Abbey, Cologne Abbey and Herford Abbey, in the last of which the young Queen Mathilda had been brought up by her grandmother, the abbess. Through the efforts of Queen Mathilda, Quedlinburg Abbey became one of the scholastic centers of Western Europe.
  Thanks to its Imperial connections the new foundation attracted rich endowments and was soon a wealthy and thriving community. Ecclesiastically, the abbess was exempt from the jurisdiction of her diocesan, the Bishop of Halberstadt, and subject to no superior except the Pope. The Bishops of Halberstadt were constantly engaged in dispute with the abbesses, as they claimed to have spiritual jurisdiction over the abbey in virtue of subjection of women to men.
  The abbess, as head of an Imperial Abbey, had seat and voice at the Imperial Diet. She sat on the Bench of the Prelates of the Rhineland of the Ecclesiastical Bench of the College of Ruling Princes.
  During the Reformation the abbey became Protestant, under Abbess Anna II (Countess of Stolberg).
  In the course of the German Mediatisation of 1802 and 1803 the Imperial Abbey was secularized and its territory, properties and subjects were absorbed by the Kingdom of Prussia as the Principality of Quedlinburg. Between 1807 and 1813 it belonged to the short-lived French puppet state Kingdom of Westphalia.
caption: Former collegiate church of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg, now a Lutheran church
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