House of the Holy Ghost, Copenhagen

One of the oldest buildings in Copenhagen, it was part of the largest medieval hospital in Denmark which King Christian I turned into an Augustinian priory 1497.

Common people came to refer to it as 'Holy Ghost's', (Danish: Helliggestes), the pronunciation coming from the countless German merchants who frequented the city.

In 1472, King Christian I took the hospital, and all its properties, contents, and its brothers and sisters under his protection, most likely because it could no longer support itself.

The king invited contributions from throughout Denmark for the assistance to the poor and sick of Holy Ghost House.

In 1474 Christian I went on pilgrimage to Rome and stopped at the Augustinian Holy Ghost Hospital at Saxia de Urba, Italy.

Pope Sixtus IV issued a bull declaring on Christian's behalf that there was in all of Denmark only one Augustine hospital and in the capital where gathered princes, nobles, and knights there was no place to house or care for abandoned and bastard children and the poor.

No information about the rebuilding of the church is known, but it was completed before 1479 when a donation was made by Bernt Hakenberg to the St. Anne's Chapel in it.

Christian II added an unusual income source by decreeing that shipwreck goods on the Øresund which lay unclaimed were to be sold and the funds sent to the hospital.

Even before Denmark became officially Lutheran, the city fathers petitioned the king to separate the hospital from the monastery; in so many words asking that the Augustinian monks be expelled from their combined hospital-priory.

Once the furor of the Count's Feud ended and Christian III came to the throne, there was no money to pay for the new hospital.