The abbey of Gandersheim was founded in 856, according to Eberhard’s Chronicle, by the duke Ludolf of Saxony and his wife Oda, who removed to the new domicile the nuns whom they had shortly before established at Brunshausen. Their own daughter Hathurnoda was the first abbess, who was succeeded on her death by her sister Gerberga. Under Gerberga’s government King Louis III. granted a privilege, by which the office of abbess was to continue in the ducal family as long as any member was found competent and willing to accept the same. Otto III. gave the abbey a market, a right of toll, and a mint; and after the bishop of Hildesheim and the archbishop of Mainz had long contested with each other about its supervision, Pope Innocent III. declared it altogether independent of both. The abbey was ultimately recognized as holding directly of the empire, and the abbess had a vote in the diet as a member of the Rhenish bench of bishops. The conventual estates were of great extent, and among the feudatories who could be summoned to the court of the abbess were the elector of Hanover and the king of Prussia. Protestantism was introduced in 1568, and Magdalena, the last Boman Catholic abbess, died in 1589; but Protestant abbesses were appointed to the foundation, and continued to enjoy their imperial privileges till 1802, when Gandersheim was incorporated with Brunswick. The last abbess was a princess of the ducal house, and kept her rank till her death. The memory of Gandersheim will long be preserved by its literary memorials. Hroswitha, the author of the famous ecclesiastical dramas, was a member of the sisterhood in the 9th century; and the rhyming Chronicle of Eberhard of Gandersheim ranks as in all probability the earliest historical work composed in Low German. The Chronicle, which contains an account of the first period of the monastery, is edited by Wieland, in Mοnurnentα Germ, historica (Vernacular section, vol. ii∙, 1877), and has been the object of a special study by Paul Hasse, Gottingen, 1872. See also “Agii vita Hathumodae abbatissae Gandershemensis primae,” in J. G. von Eckhart’s Veterum monumentorum quaternio, Leipsic, 1720; and Hase, Mittelalterliche Baudenkmäler Niedersachsens, 1870.