Abbaye St-Vincent (Metz)
The Abbaye St-Vincent (German: Abtei St. Vinzenz ) is a former Benedictine abbey in Metz , which was founded in the 10th century . The buildings now house the Fabert grammar school.
history
Before 968: a modest oratorio
In the 9th century there was a chapel for the residents of the suburbs. The name of the Rue de la Vignotte indicates that vines thrived in the neighborhood. This is why the winemakers dedicated the church to their patron, Vincent of Valencia . The island on which the abbey was built was then called Chambière Island. At the end of the 9th century a powerful abbey was supposed to replace the modest parish.
968–1248: The abbey of Dietrich I.
In 968 , Bishop Dietrich I ruled the diocese of Metz . Elevated to the bishopric of Saint Clement in 965 , Dietrich was a lord of high birth who was in contact with the kings of France, but especially with the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire , whom he followed on his travels to Italy, from where he had the Relics of St. Vincent of Valencia brought with him. To house these relics, Dietrich decided to found a Benedictine abbey . He appealed to the two most famous monasteries in his diocese: the Gorze Abbey , founded by the great Bishop Sankt Chrodegang , and the Sankt Arnulf Abbey , burial place of the Carolingian kings. The first abbey church of St-Vincent to replace the oratory of the winemakers on Chambière Island was the work of the monk Odilbert (or Odolbert), provost of Gorze and later abbot of St-Vincent. Bishop Dietrich inaugurated the new church on August 6, 972 , with the visible burial of the relics of Saint Vincent and Saint Lucia , which he had brought back from his travels to Italy with Otto I , the first Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. So the new abbey was placed under the protection of Saint Vincent, but also Saint Lucia, which is still the case today.
The bishop was buried in this church in 984.
The abbey church was consecrated in 1030 by Bishop Dietrich II . Emperor Otto II took them under his protection, as did Pope John XIII. This freed the abbey from the yoke of all worldly power and gave its abbot a prominent position. He was empowered to celebrate mass in the cathedral in the bishop's absence . These rights were confirmed in 1051, 1096, and at the end of the 16th century. St. Vincent Abbey was not only very powerful, it was also a teaching center or university before the term even existed. The first Scholaster of St-Vincent was Adalbert, who left a beautiful eulogy for the city of Metz. The most famous scholaster, however, was Sigebert von Gembloux , who arrived in St-Vincent in 1051. He directed the Metz schools for twenty-five years. He was a renowned scholar who left a story called chronography . All monastic schools offered the same instruction, divided into two courses, one for the use of religious and novices in the house, and the other for external students, clergy or lay people without vows. The first were trained, regardless of the lessons they received, by copying manuscripts , the essential foundation of the library's progress , the art of miniature painting and the organ playing .
The course was divided into two stages, the trivium and the quadrivium . St. Vincent's Abbey was very rich and most of its monks came from Gorze and Sankt Arnulf. In the middle of the 13th century the abbey was expanded due to the increasing growth.
1248–1768: St-Vincent to the rhythm of the whims of history
After the building became too cramped and too old and unworthy of the size and power of the Benedictine community that inhabited it, Abbot Warin ordered the demolition of the old - Romanesque - abbey church and at the same time the construction of a new, more prestigious sanctuary in Gothic style Place at. On December 7, 1248 Abbot Warin laid the foundation stone for St Vincent. According to the abbey's necrology , construction began as early as 1251 , with the death of the initiator, thanks to the considerable financial resources that the monastery had at its disposal. Even so, it was probably not completed until 1376 .
The appearance of the building is relatively classic. In the west there was a tall bell tower on the front , while in the east two smaller ones flank the choir with a view of the Moselle , which flows a little below. The upper parts of these three towers were destroyed by fire in 1395. The presence of towers framing the choir is a direct adaptation of the plan of the Toul Cathedral .
In 1376, Bishop Dietrich Bayer von Boppard proceeded to consecrate the future basilica. In 1395 a fire destroyed the towers of the basilica, including the bells and the roof. The walls resisted. The inscription on the tombstone of the Abbot of Gonaix (1452) recalls the construction of a Way of the Cross and the restoration of the towers. The siege by France in 1444, ruinous for the city, and the annexation by the Kingdom of France in 1553 were the first cause of serious financial difficulties and subsequently the fall of the local republic.
From the 17th century the monastery only had commendatars ; the most famous of them was Cardinal Mazarin . However, the monks did not neglect their church: in 1613 they replaced the great altar; In 1655, the explosion of a powder magazine destroyed glass windows that the monks also replaced. In the years 1682, 1686 and 1724 small changes were made in the church in keeping with the times. The big issue for the monks of the 18th century was the question of the great tower, which was threatened with ruin since the middle of the previous century. In 1656 the bells broke off and were only supported by rotten wood. Some repairs were made to the tower where a large clock was placed in 1692. On the night of August 28-29, 1705, a new fire broke out, which in turn damaged the tall bell tower. The bells fell, melted by the fire. The tower was repaired again but eventually fell victim to a storm five years later.
In 1737, the site of the abbey was used to build a new road: Benediktinerstraße now separated the Saint Vincent Abbey from the adjacent Saint Clement Abbey.
In 1752 the bell tower collapsed in a storm and crushed the first two bays of the nave under the mass of its stones.
The following restoration was used to enlarge and beautify the church. From 1754 to 1756 two new bays were built at the height of the old facade.
1768–1803: Reconstruction and decline of the abbey
The abbey lay in ruins for a long time. The monks did not have enough money and waited for a competition to rebuild the facade in 1737, but the architects asked for the enormous sum of 120,000 francs; however, they had to bring themselves to this effort, and in 1768 work began. The first two yokes were restored in an exact copy of the thirteenth century. On the other hand, the old tower was demolished and replaced by a portal according to the taste of the times. The facade is inspired by the St Gervais Church in Paris under the direction of the architects Louis, Barlet and Lhuillier. The reconstruction shows the influence of the abbeys in the 18th century.
At the same time, the abbey buildings were rebuilt.
In 1770 the abbey house, which had no more practical use, was rented to the city, which built a poor house there.
In the course of the French Revolution , the abbey was dissolved in 1790. A religious refused to leave the place; he was found dead six days after he was forcibly evicted. The church became a parish church in 1791 . The Terreur , ruling in 1793 and 1794 , was also directed against religion. The church was looted, the bells were removed and melted down in the mint in Metz. Only from 1802 could services be celebrated in the church again. At the end of the 19th century, a stained glass window was used, which the workshops Marschall and Coffetier had made after a painting by Fra Angelico ( Coronation of Mary ). The majestic classicist facade was adorned in 1900 with statues and reliefs depicting the two patrons, St. Vincent and St. Lucia, and depicting her martyrdoms .
During the Revolution, the abbey served as a granary, as a workshop for army wagons , as a remand prison, as a prisoner of war camp and finally as a horse clinic. At the end of the revolutionary turmoil, the monastery buildings were in a pitiful state. In the notes of a priest from Metz it is said that there are "no more windows, no more doors and not even hardware". At least the structure was intact because the buildings were no more than thirty-five years old. One wing was used as a grammar school from 1803. At the beginning of the 19th century the abbey was further battered by the breach in the wall of the Rue Goussaud.
The abbey today
The church was founded in 1933 by Pope Pius XI. Elevated to the rank of basilica.
The Applied College of the Islands took the place of the abbey house, while a tobacco factory was built where the abbey's barns were once located.
But the greater part of the abbey remains visible in the walls of the Fabert Gymnasium: the abbey building, the remains of the cloister, the entrance hall that leads to the chapter rooms, the dining rooms that are still in service with their stylish marble tables and the administrative offices . A magnificent staircase leads to the first floor, where the headmaster's offices are located. The cloister is made up of round arched arcades and one side is extended by the abbey's large gallery, which is a replica, and on the side facing the church there are grotesque neo-Gothic gargoyles . The doors of the conventual halls are richly decorated and some of them have a niche for statues of saints. On the gable of the round arch, which forms the passage between the monastery and the monks' garden, now the school's playground, is the inscription with a verse by the Latin poet Ausonius : “Sunt etiam Musis sua ludicra”, which means “every muse has her own Deflection".
At the other end of the large gallery one can observe an architectural fantasy: a vault with uneven sides on pointed ridges, created to place a chimney. A little further up are the refectories. Two of them are very large and are separated in two by small columns ending in Corinthian capitals. The last, much smaller, is a room with four bays supported by a square column in the middle. The last convent hall is now occupied by the administration. Its walls have embossed ornaments depicting simple dishes and especially fish. It was probably a reception room. The abbey seems to have been richly decorated inside, which is in contrast to the sobriety of the street-side facades: the door frames are narrow, but very elegantly surrounded by stone. A large part of the first floor is occupied by the various functional apartments.
The abbey, owned by the city, was profaned along with the basilica in the late 1980s . It is open to the public every Saturday from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. in May until All Saints' Day, thanks to the volunteers of the Friends of St. Vincent Basilica. For almost 30 years, the city of Metz has been carrying out important work on the roofs, the facade, the nave and currently on the apse.
Former feudal rule of the abbey
Among the possessions of the abbey in the Middle Ages, we can mention the villages of (or part of them): Amanvillers , Borny , Courcelles-sur-Nied , Châtel-Saint-Germain , Glatigny (ban de St-Vincent), Laquenexy , La Maxe , Maizieres-les-Metz , Norroy-le-Veneur , Vany ...
Remarks
- ↑ Entry no. PA00106835 in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
See also
Web links
Coordinates: 49 ° 7 '24.9 " N , 6 ° 10' 22.4" E