The Medieval Elbe
Slavs and Germans on the Frontier

The Deeds of Wiprecht

Reinsdorf

One of them, Ludiger, who afterwards became abbot in Reinsdorf, was appointed his prior.
At the same time, a certain very rich matron, granddaughter of the above-mentioned Count Frederick of Lengenfeld, gave herself to the same place with her own estates worth fifteen talents. Squandering this wealth in the freehandedness of nobility, with goods for herself and with the number of her companions, she gravely offended the lord Wiprecht, whose spirit was always restrained with respect to the pious way of life. He did not long hide his punishment of this offense. Its location seemed to bring about no small opportunity for impiety, and so he thought to change not only the very order—or rather, disorder—but even the location of the place. Therefore, under threat, he ordered the aforesaid group of virgins, since they were fools, to desert the place, so that they might not disadvantageously occupy thereafter a place that those serving God might be able to inhabit advantageously. Wiprecht took advice from the lord Bishop Otto of Bamberg, whose reputation for piety and devotion had by then spread very widely: he should found a monastery along the Unstrut River, in the vicinity of that same castle, and having brought monks together there, he should confirm for them the estates of the aforesaid place. Wiprecht did not delay at all in complying; in a place called Reinsdorf, he began again to be a founder of the pious way of life. He summoned his abbot Windolf, so that some man, industrious and advantageous for the work, might be put in charge of that place. The abbot, eager to satisfy him quickly in all things, thought to put in charge of that monastery a venerable brother, the lord Ludiger, whom we mentioned above. Ludiger had been given to him as prior but had been received back again at Corvey, where he was administering the office of dean when Windolf arranged to be given him as abbot. And so Ludiger was recalled to Pegau and elected according to the Rule. Meanwhile, the lord Wiprecht sent a messenger swiftly ahead and ordered the aforesaid sisters to give up the place as soon as possible; he demanded that they depart without any hesitation and that they not presume to wait for his arrival on any account, since he himself would be following after with the abbots and brothers.

Analysis

These two paragraphs tracing the transformation of the women's monastery at Vitzenburg into the men's house at Reinsdorf plainly result from the same pen, but perhaps not from the that of the previous paragraph, describing Wiprecht's quasi-inheritance of Vitzenburg and Sigena's death and burial there. It may have been written by a monk at Pegau familiar with the vita of Otto of Bamberg, mentioned here, written by an anonymous monk at the Bavarian monastery of Prüfening.  That text  describes the transfer of Vitzenburg to Reinsdorf, but ascribes it to St. Otto.  At Pegau, the monks' memories may have preserved the memory of an alternate account, once in which Wiprecht was both instrumental and linked to the saint--and this story was the result. Other sources suggest 1112 as the date of Reinsdorf's foundation.  The scribe-compiler was not altogether wrong, then, in inserting is here, under the year 1110 but only loosely dating to that time.