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Founded: early 1200sCategory: Miscellaneous historic sites in Estonia
Historical period: Danish and Livonian Order (Estonia)
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Kärkna Abbey, now ruined, was a former Cistercian monastery in Estonia. The monastery was founded before 1233 by the Bishop of Dorpat, Hermann von Buxhoeveden, and settled by monks from Pforta Abbey, of the filiation of Morimond. An early destruction by heathen inhabitants of the district is mentioned in 1234. After attacks by Russian forces from the principality of Vladimir-Suzdal and the Novgorod Republic it was rebuilt in about 1240 as a fortress surrounded by a moat and a rectangular granite wall. In 1305 it was placed under Stolpe Abbey on the Peene in Pomerania, which had joined the Cistercian order the previous year. In August 1558 the monastery was destroyed at the beginning of the Livonian War. There are remains of the foundations and of the perimeter walls.
The rectangular church was about 47 metres long, and consisted of a single nave of five vaulted bays. Unusually for a Cistercian church it also had a crypt of 10 bays containing two aisles, which was used not only as a place of burial but also as a place of shelter during hostilities. To the south of the church were attached the conventual buildings in the usual form of three ranges arranged in a square round a cloister and a central courtyard, with the chapter house in the east range.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.