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Founded: ca. 1250Category: Miscellaneous historic sites in Sweden
Historical period: Consolidation (Sweden)
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The Franciscan Monastery in Enköping was built during the 1200s, probably around 1250. The founder is alleged to have been a Peter Olai from Roskilde. In a letter to the monastery from 1275 Master Palne asks to be buried there, when his wife is already buried in the monastery. For this, he promises a large sum of money, a boat and a tent as gifts to the monastery. The monastery was reconstructed several times during the Middle Ages. The single nave church was built first and enlarged later.
in 1530 Gustav Vasa of Sweden wrote a letter to the monastery, where he ordered it to operate as a hospital for poor lepers. The letter also states that the monks are not obliged to stay, but if they want to help patients they are allowed to stay. Hospital was moved later in the 1530s back to Stockholm, and the monastery's operations may have ceased completely around 1540, probably due to the Reformation.
Monastery buildings were demolished finally in the 1600s, but parts of the monastery was used still in the manufacturing of gunpowder. In the 1930s excavations revealed the remains of the monastery. Towards the end of the 1980s an extensive renovation of the park area was undertaken. The place of the monastery is marked by a large brown cross and stones.
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.