Qualla: Dueholm Priory

Dueholm Priory: Introduction

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leif Jørgensen, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1627 the archive of Dueholm burned. Everything the Knights Hospitaller of Mors had accumulated over two and a half centuries - deeds, grants, correspondence, the paper skeleton of a religious house - had been moved to Dueholm Castle for safekeeping, and it went up when the castle was sacked. It should have been a total loss. It was not, because a century earlier some careful person had noticed that the older letters were falling apart and had sat down to copy them out. Two volumes of transcripts survived. Almost everything we know about daily life at Dueholm comes from a clerk's decision to recopy documents that were merely getting shabby.

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Image: Leif Jørgensen | CC BY-SA 4.0

Dueholm Priory: A Bishop's Gift, 1370

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit J. P. Trap, Public domain. Bishop Sven of Børglum founded the priory in 1370, just outside the town of Nykøbing on Mors, and dedicated it to St John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene. The land had come to the diocese before that from a Lady Mette Pedersdatter. In 1380 the Hospitallers were granted the rights ...

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Image: J. P. Trap | Public domain

Dueholm Priory: Knights Who Ran a Hospital

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stephan Hense, CC BY-SA 4.0. At its height in the early sixteenth century Dueholm held twelve brother priests under a prior, who was frequently a secular nobleman acting as the house's advocate in worldly affairs. Alongside them worked lay brothers - not monks, but men living a religious life bound up with t...

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Image: Stephan Hense | CC BY-SA 4.0

Dueholm Priory: The Quarrel Over the Holy Ghost Hospital

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leif Jørgensen, CC BY-SA 4.0. The townspeople of Nykøbing built their own hospital for the poor and sick, staffed by lay brothers of the Order of the Holy Ghost. The Hospitallers wanted it. In 1445 King Christopher of Bavaria confirmed the town's rights to the property its citizens had paid for, but the prior...

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Image: Leif Jørgensen | CC BY-SA 4.0

Dueholm Priory: Two Books That Outlived the Fire

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Poul Krogsgård, Public domain. The older letter book was copied before 1527 and covers letters from 1371 to 1539; the younger was copied in 1527 and includes a register of arrivals at the priory and the places they came from. An inventory made in 1591 lists what still survived in the archive then, along with a...

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Image: Poul Krogsgård | Public domain

Dueholm Priory: One Wing Left Standing

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ragnar1904, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Reformation reached northern Jutland slowly, but in 1536 Dueholm and its income properties reverted to the crown. The dissolution here was quiet rather than violent, because the brothers' main work was running the town's hospitals and the citizens had every reason to want tha...

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Image: Ragnar1904 | CC BY-SA 4.0