Ziesar Monastery

In the Brandenburg bishop city of Ziesar, there were two monasteries in the Middle Ages: a Franciscan monastery in the 13th century and a Cistercian nunnery from the 14th century until the Reformation. The surviving monastery buildings are listed as historical monuments.

As early as 1226, the year of the death of Francis of Assisi, brothers of the Franciscan order, founded in 1210, have been documented in the city of Ziesar, a residence of the Brandenburg bishop. The Brandenburg bishop Gernand supported the settlement. The Ziesar pastor Helias, a learned priest by his title "Magister," endowed the order with the convent in Ziesar. The Franciscan monastery only existed for a few decades, as there had been military unrest in Ziesar. By around 1250 – at the earliest 1237, and at the latest 1258 – the itinerant monks relocated to the significantly larger old town of Brandenburg, where they subsequently built the monastery and the Church of St. John near the Havel. Pastor Helias apparently had close ties to the Franciscans, for they translated his remains to Brandenburg and placed them in their new monastery church, clothed in a Franciscan robe.

Wikipedia