HELFTA (HELPEDE). - Benedictine monastery (with Cistercian customs and habit), founded in 1258 near Eisleben (Saxony) by Gertrude of Hackeborn (v.), the great abbess. H. is the moral continuation of the monastery of Mansfeld (founded in 1228) and then transferred (1234) to Rossdorf. Into this community there entered in 1248 St. Matilda of Hackeborn, sister of the foundress, and in 1261 there was admitted she who was to be its purest glory: St. Gertrude the Great (v.).

At H., as in the other monasteries of Benedictine nuns, the young girls were given a refined moral and literary education (cf. Ch. Jourdain, Excursions historiques et philosophiques, Paris 1888, pp. 469 and 599). Matilda and Gertrude became very close. Around 1270 there arrived at H. a "beguine" endowed with exceptional gifts, St. Matilda of Magdeburg. These great souls understood and loved one another: around them there developed an atmosphere of deep piety inspired by St. Bernard and by the nascent Dominican school. The distinguished works that the three Saints left behind contain in germ the theory and practice of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

In 1340 H. was destroyed by the soldiers of the prince-bishop Albert of Braunschweig, and the nuns took refuge in the city of Eisleben, in a place called New H. In the 16th century Luther did everything to secularize the pious religious. The law of 1874 definitively suppressed the monastery (barely reopened in 1848), which since the 14th century had returned to exclusively Benedictine traditions.

Bibliography5 works

BIBL.: E. Michael, Die hl. Mechtild und die hl. Gertrud die Grosse Benediktinerinnen?, in Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie, 23 (1899), pp. 548-52; U. Berlière, La dévotion au Sacré-Coeur dans l'Ordre de 1st Benoît, Paris 1923, pp. 24-40; H. Hamon, Histoire de la dévotion au Sacré-Coeur, II, ibid. 1925, pp. 109-52; P. Pourrat, La spiritualité chrétienne, II, ibid. 1928, pp. 126-56; M. Grabmann, Storia della teologia cattolica, Italian trans., by G. Di Fabio, 2nd ed., Milan 1939, p. 181.

Antonio Piolanti

@incollection{ec6_helfta_helpede, author = {Piolanti, Antonio}, title = {Helfta (Helpede)}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VI}, pages = {1397}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1951}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/helfta-helpede} }

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