**HELFTA** (HELPEDE). - A Benedictine monastery (following Cistercian usages and habit), founded in 1258 near Eisleben (Saxony) by Gertrude of Hackeborn (q.v.), the great abbess. H. is the spiritual continuation of the monastery of Mansfield (founded in 1228) which was later transferred (1234) to Rossdorf. In this community, St Matilda of Hackeborn, sister of the foundress, entered in 1248, and in 1261 she was joined by the one who was to become its purest glory: St Gertrude the Great (q.v.).
At H., as in other Benedictine monasteries for women, the young girls received a refined moral and literary education (cf. Ch. Jourdain, *Excursions historiques et philosophiques*, Paris 1888, pp. 469 and 599). Matilda and Gertrude became highly educated. Around 1270, a beguine of exceptional gifts, St Matilda of Magdeburg, arrived at H. These great souls understood and loved one another: around them an atmosphere of fervent piety inspired by St Bernard and the emerging Dominican school developed. The notable works left by the three saints contain in embryo the theory and practice of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
In 1340 H. was destroyed by the soldiers of Prince-Bishop Albert of Brunswick, and the nuns took refuge in the city of Eisleben, in a place called New H. In the 16th century Luther did everything possible to secularize the pious religious houses. The law of 1874 definitively suppressed the monastery (which had been briefly reopened in 1848), which from the 14th century had reverted to exclusively Benedictine traditions.
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