It was founded in 1238 by Count Adolf IV of Holstein as alternative accommodation for Benedictine monks from Lübeck. In the mid-15th century it was one of the six original members of the influential Bursfelde Congregation, a Benedictine reform movement. After three prosperous centuries, based largely on its possession of a relic of the blood of Christ and a healing spring dedicated to John the Baptist, which made it a centre of pilgrimage, it was dissolved in 1561 during the secularisation brought about by the Reformation. The monastic library is preserved in the Staatsbibliothek in Copenhagen.