The group, led by Hildeswidis von Marcboldestorpe, was allowed to move into a vacant chapel that had been built as a hermitage for a monk from Lüneburg in 1140.

The foundation charter was signed by Hugo, bishop of Verden, Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria, and Berthold II, abbott of the monastery St Michael in Lüneburg.

To cover the general living expenses, the convent relied first and foremost on the yearly income from the local saltworks that it held as a Pfandherr (pledge lord) since 1229.

In 1367, the community had grown so influential and wealthy that it openly refused to accept its papally appointed provost Giles of Tusculum, a powerful cardinal bishop, and instead elected their own candidate, the lesser known Conrad of Soltau.

In the end, both parties agreed on a third candidate, Johannes Weigergang, and Pope Urban V granted the nuns the privilege to elect their own provost.

In 1395, the Lüne provost was granted the full sacramental care of the nuns, so that the convent was now de facto autonomous, both politically and spiritually.

[6] The emerging reform theologians viewed the rich and influential convents of the north as having diverted from the original, rightful teachings of Christianity, first and foremost the ideal of poverty, but also their interference in the temporal sphere and a decline in Latin education were criticised.

In most examined cases, however, the production of Latin writing within the women’s convents shows no sign of the alleged decline in education.

[10] The monastic convents had to fear for their survival, as the new movement set out to secularize and expropriate what they saw as an expression of the decadence and detachment from the faithful in the outside world.

In 1525, as many German territories had to face peasant uprisings, Duke Ernest I tried to quickly consolidate his budget by sending a demand over 28,000 guilders to all convents in Brunswick-Lüneburg which he threatened to enforce by a military show of force, if necessary.

[14] The female convents of Brunswick-Lüneburg, tightly knit together since the monastic reform of 1481, staunchly opposed the duke’s demands, and the situation effectively went into a standstill for the next four years.

Duke Ernest, on the other hand, surprisingly accepted that the convent remained a secular foundation for unmarried Protestant women (Damenstift), and did not dissolve the institution as a whole.

Outwardly, it was treated as a purely secular retirement institution, but inwardly, the community still led a highly devoted spiritual life in Benedictine tradition.

The abbess, Artemisia von Bock, anticipated an upcoming occupation of the convent and quickly sold a large stock of artworks, manuscripts and books from the library, some into private hands, some into the care of larger archives and depositories nearby.

The extant amounts of manuscripts originating within the convent walls suggest a thorough education of the nuns in the Latin, Liberal Arts and theology.