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[beselich] |
Gottfried von Beselich came from a place (unsurprisingly called Beselich) that I discovered by accident. I'm extremely interested in him, partly because he was a near contemporary of Hildegard of Bingen, but even though we visited the area in July 2002, I'm finding it difficult to track down much information, so if you know anything about him, please contact me.
The picture on the right is of a statue of Gottfried in front of the church at Obertiefenbach. One of the web pages run by a local resident implies that he's quite famous, so I'm assuming that the paucity of information in comparison with Hildegard von Bingen and the major figures in the Begijn movement is that Gottfried was a man and therefore not an icon for the feminist movement. He founded the chapel at Beselich as well as several other monasteries, he was a wandering priest known as "Gottfried der Rufer" or "Gottfried Calamtor", and he seems to have been instrumental in the building of the first bridge at Limburg. This must mean that there's a fair bit of information about him, if only in the local area. Here's what I know (or think I know).
In 1149, Gottfried established a chapel on the Beselicher Hof. By 1170, the Monastery of Beselich had developed and a century later it was one of the richest houses in the area. Beselich is today a municipality just off the main road between Limburg and Weilburg, and the monastery ruins are still visible.
In the middle of the twelfth century, a timber bridge was built across the Lahn at Limburg, where there was already a ford. On the main trade route from the near-east to Antwerp. It owed its building to Gottfried, who must have had significant influence in what was to become an influential town. The bridge was replaced in 1315 with a stone bridge, now known as the Old Lahn Bridge. By 1341, King Ludwig reprimanded the town for raising tolls without his permission, although Karl IV eventually granted formal permission in 1357. Tolls from the bridge provided the majority of Limburg's income for centuries and the stone bridge was still important enough in 1944 to be a target for allied bombers.
In 1156, Gottfried founded another monatsrey in Wahldorf. This became a convent in the first half of the thirteenth century and by the mid fourteenth century had become wealthy, with about twenty-five nuns, almost all noblewomen from the leading families of the Nassau and Solms areas.
In 1170 he founded a third monastery, Altenberg in Solms, which is about as far north east of Weilburg as Beselich is south west of the town. After his death, in the second half of the thirteenth century, the monastery bloomed. Amongst others, Gertrud, the daughter of holy Elizabeth, lived there.