Roskilde Abbey or Our Lady's Abbey was a monastery of nuns dedicated to Saint Mary the Virgin. It was founded in the early 12th century for Benedictine nuns, but in 1177 became part of the Cistercian reform movement.
It was chiefly known for the tomb of Saint Margrethe or Margaret of Ølsemagle or of Højelse (both names of places near Køge), who, although murdered by her husband, had been wrongly buried as a suicide on the beach at Køge. After miracles were declared to have happened round her grave, her remains were moved to the Abbey Church, the Vor Frue church, in 1176 by Absalon of Lund, Bishop of Roskilde, a kinsman of Margrethe; he arranged for the construction of a suitable shrine in the church, and transferred the nunnery to the Cistercians in the following year. Despite Absalon's best efforts, and also despite the local veneration, Margrethe was never formally canonised. The shrine was nevertheless later declared a place of pilgrimage by the Pope, and the nuns were allotted one third of the income generated by it. Despite all efforts, however, the center of the cultus remained the small chapel built near Margrethe's original grave on the beach.
The abbey was suppressed in 1536 during the Protestant Reformation in Denmark. Around 1600 the convent buildings and the eastern half of the church were demolished. Today the former abbey church has a beautiful furniture from the 17th century.
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.