Benediktinerinnenkloster Bubenbach

The ruins of the Benedictine convent of Bubenbach stand in a narrow valley beside the Cornberger Wasser stream, close to the modern village of Rautenhausen. The site once belonged to a hamlet first recorded in 1230 but probably older, lying about seven kilometres north-east of Bebra in north Hesse. A railway tunnel now passes beneath the ridge above, and the busy road from Bebra to Sontra runs just west of the vanished village. The nuns began as a group of laywomen called Beginen who followed an unorthodox life without private property. Under pressure from the local clergy they accepted the Benedictine rule in 1230 and became a daughter house of Hersfeld Abbey. Their first prioress was Adelheid, guided by the parish priest Ekebertus. For decades they kept to the Beginen ideal, earning their living by manual work, until they acquired land in 1259. By 1275 gifts and purchases had brought fields in several nearby villages, though the community remained poor. No large stone convent was ever built at Bubenbach. The small village church of St Nicholas served both villagers and nuns, and when the sisters moved to the new convent of Cornberg in 1296 the old site was gradually abandoned. The Black Death of 1348–49 finished the hamlet, and by 1600 nothing remained but traces of the church and a few graves. Excavations in the last century uncovered wall stones, roof tiles and human bones, but no clear remains of a cloister.