Summary Page:  Former House

Name: Zukowo, Assumption of the B.M.V.

Circary at the Time: Polonia

Years of Activity: 1209 - 1834 

Galleries: (Gallery One:  click here)

               (Gallery Two:  click here)

Map:  Click Here (Source:  © MapQuest  http://www.mapquest.com)

Monasticon Praemonstratense (I, 348)

Approximate modern location: West of Gdansk, east of Kartuzy. 

Elm-Number [See below]: None.* 

Other Comments: 

"Our best source for information about Zukowo and its relation to a location known as Stolpa is a Polish book - Dzieje Zukowa - edited by B. Sliwinski, Zukowo, 2003.  The following is an approximate summarizing translation from this work.  "Following the foundation of this cloister (1212 - the same year as the great reforming meeting which took place in Makolno), we learn that the convent was built in a place called "Stolpa" (this is the ancient name of the river in the area).  This area is comprised of four villages, including Zukowo, which was probably the closest village to the cloister itself.  In a document from 1224 there again appears the phrase "the cloister was built in a place called 'Stolpa'."  Circa 1229 the name "Stolpa" disappears from the sources, and the convent started to become identified as "the cloister in Zukowo village".  The probable cause for this change in identification / relocation are some political events in the Pomeranian region.  Beginning in 1226 there were a series of Prussian socio-military expansions into the region of 'Pomorze Gdanskie' (Pomerania) which accentuated what was to become a painful history of Polish-German relations.  During this series of incursions, the convent was entirely destroyed, and all of the sisters martyred.  So, in 1226, everything which had been built up in the convent at 'Stolpa' ceased to exist.  There was a need to restore and rebuild, in a more secure, but less devastated place - Zukowo - which was situated only a few hundred meters from the old convent location in 'Stolpa'." 

* This listing (and the numbers, with a few adjustments after 1995) is based on the map contained in Kaspar Elm's Norbert von Xanten: Adliger, Ordensstifter, Kirchenfürst, Wienand Verlag, Köln, 1984, page 328-329.