!? 'THE LEHNIN PROPHECY' - "ABBOT HERMANN of LEHNIN" (c. 1330s)
STATUS - 18th century forgery.
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The Lehnin Prophecy (Lehninsche Weissagung, Vaticinium Lehninense), is a poem in 100 Leonine verses, reputed to be from the pen of a monk, Hermann of Lehnin, who it was claimed lived about the year 1300. This poem made its first appearance about 1690 and caused much controversy.
This so-called prophecy bewails the extinction of the Ascanian rulers of Brandenburg and the rise of the Hohenzollern dynasty to power; each successive ruler of the latter house down to the eleventh generation is described, the date of the extinction of the race fixed, and the restoration of the Roman Catholic Church foretold.
But, the narrative is only exact in details down to the death of Frederick William, the great elector, in 1688, all prophecies that concern the future after that were falsified by events according to the Encyclopedia Brittanica. This shows that the author of the work had benefit of hindsight of history to make it appear the earlier prophecies seemed true, but then, the work fell flat when future events could not be presented without falsification. According to John von Döllinger (“Prophecies and the Prophetic Spirit in the Christian Era”, 1876), the latter half of the manuscript is fake to the point of being 'monstrous' as it is obvious the author blatantly attempted to take prophecies and force them to align with known facts, therefore, it is outright obvious the text was a forgery. The poem therefore came to be regarded as a compilation and the date of its authorship placed about the year 1684 sometime when the details of falsification began to appear.
The first to uncover the fraud was Pastor Weiss, who proved in his "Vaticinium Germanicum" (Berlin, 1746) that the Hermann pseudo-prophecy was really written between 1688 and 1700. It is commonly believed that Andreas Fromm (d. 1685), rector of St Peter’s church in Berlin, once an ardent Lutheran, was the forger. This cleric, resisting certain measures taken by the elector Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg (d. 1688) against the Lutheran pastors, fled the country in 1668 to avoid prosecution. However, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church at Prague and was appointed canon of Leitmeritz in Bohemia, where he died.
From this information, we see the author of this text converted to Catholicism, and, he may have heard about the Great Monarch prophecies, since the bogus 'Abbot Herman prophecy' features the restoration of Catholicism and the Holy Roman Empire, but strangely, rather than promote authentic prophecies, took it upon himself to write a poetic forgery! Or, possibly, wanted to publish his own interpretation of future events using the known prophecies, but, wanted to lend more credibility to the text by tacking on a fake medieval history and author to the text. It has happened before. Lehnen Abbey was a Cistercian monastery founded in 1180, and claiming a text came from an abbot of the 14th century would give it some 'clout', but this was definitely a deceptive thing to do. The 'Abbot Hermann' prophecies are in no way authentic, and, not included in the Timeline.
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Oct. 13, 2023.
