Vroege benedictijner kloosterboerderijen in Zuidwest-Friesland

Abstract

Early Benedictine monastic farms in southwest Friesland. At Hemelum in southwestern Friesland, a monastic farm was excavated in 2017, dated dendrochronologically to 1155- 1157, which made it the oldest known monastic farm in the Netherlands. It belonged to the Benedictine nunnery of Hemelum, which was under the St Odulfus abbey of Staveren. This essay compares its size and layout with those of another monastic farm identified as a grange of the Staveren abbey, which, founded in 1132, is considered the oldest monastery in Friesland. Both farms, like other monastic granges, appear to have been agricultural centres of outsize scale that were operated under the management of the monks themselves with the help of lay brothers. The main research question was whether the Benedictines in Friesland applied the grange system earlier than the Cistercians did. A comparison with granges of other orders makes it possible to answer this question in the affirmative. A second question was whether the excavation results could also help us determine the hitherto unknown foundation date of the Hemelum convent. An analysis involving the mother house of Staveren and Hemelum, Oostbroek abbey near Utrecht (founded ca. 1122), and Vrouwenklooster near De Bilt (1138), which was dependent on it, leads to the conclusion that the Hemelum convent, as a women’s dependency of Staveren, dates from the same time as the excavated convent farm. It may be assumed that the convent was established simultaneously with the farm in the years 1155-1157.