HERMANN of LEHNIN. - Monk of the vanished Cistercian abbey of Lehnin near Berlin, who lived and composed his Vaticinium in Latin in the thirteenth century. Various abbots, but no monk bearing this name, have been identified.
The text of the Vaticinium Lehninense consists of 100 Leonine hexameters, which predict the ruin of Protestantism and of the House of Hohenzollern. Verses 94 ff. read: « Israël infundum scelus audet morte piandum. Et pastor gregem recipit Germania regem ». In its present form (preserved in about 30 manuscripts) it is a forgery, a « vaticinium ex eventu »; the verses contain allusions to the end of the seventeenth century. Some ideas, a common inheritance of this literary genre, may go back to an older text. The verses served as a weapon of combat against the Hohenzollern dynasty, before the question of authenticity had been clarified. On the other hand, the polemic against authenticity reveals prejudices and ignorance concerning Catholicism and the prophetic charism.
BBL.: Text (Vaticinium b. Fratris Hermannii monachi in Lehnin) in F. Kampers, Die Lehnische Weissagung, Münster 1897. The best bibliographical survey is provided by W. E. Peuckert in H. Bächhold-Stäubli, Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, V, Lipsia 1927, pp. 1019-23; O. Zöckler, Lehnische Weissagung, in Realencyk. f. post. Theol. u. Kirche, XI, pp. 351-53; K. H. Schäfer, Lehnin, in LThK, VI, col. 454 ff.