Veng Abbey Church

Facts

A Romanesque exemplar

Veng Church near Aarhus was originally the abbey church of one of Denmark's earliest Benedictine monasteries. Built in circa 1100, the church was abandoned by the Benedictines in the same century when they moved to Øm Abbey. The church is one of the most important Romanesque monuments of Danish church architecture on account of the strict floorplan and the two rounded naves. The design has no direct antecedent, but the decorative elements drew inspiration from Britain, the Rhineland and Normandy.

Public place

Selected entry

Buried outside the cemetery

Story written by Peter Pentz

Time / Periode 1100 1150

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" In former times, the Sophiendal estate, originally Veng Abbey, north of Veng Church, had its own private entrance to the cemetery. At this entrance is a curious, two-metre-tall, cast iron monument in two sections; a sepulchre with a cross and inscription and then a podium bearing a resting dog. The monument was erected in 1855 to Elizabeth Rosenkrantz, a member of the family that owned Sophiendal. But the church records reveal that the family was banned from burying Elisabeth Rosenkrantz in the ancestral vaults because she was not a member of the branch of the family in residence at Sophiendal. To get round this, the cemetery embankment facing Sophiendal was dismantled and moved a short distance to bring it onto the manorial estate where Elisabeth was laid to rest. The church wardens accepted the solution. "