Franziskanerkloster Leipzig

The Franciscan monastery in Leipzig once stood near today’s Matthäikirchhof in the city’s north-west. Founded around 1250 by friars of the Saxon Franciscan province, it grew from a simple hall church into a two-aisled Gothic hall with a high roof and cross-shaped pillars. The church was first dedicated to the Holy Spirit but became widely known as the Barefoot Church because the friars wore sandals or walked barefoot as part of their vow of poverty. The monastery acquired considerable land, including woodland in the Rosental donated by the friars in 1458 to meet their rule of neediness. It also ran a semi-monastic house for women, giving them work and basic security. Between 1458 and 1464 the Leipzig community adopted the Martinian constitutions, a middle way in the order’s great poverty dispute. After the Reformation reached Leipzig in 1539 the friars were expelled and their buildings taken over; the choir was pulled down and the cloister turned into housing. A later rebuilding created the Matthäikirche on the same site, destroyed in the Second World War. The narrow lane called Barfußgäßchen still recalls the friars’ barefoot route to the market. Its name preserves the memory of the Franciscan monastery and the lost church that once stood where the modern city centre meets the old streets.