Saint-Claude Abbey

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The Abbey of Saint-Claude - also known as the Condat Monastery and the Saint-Oyend-de-Joux Monastery - was one of the oldest Benedictine monasteries in France , but only a few remains have survived. It existed from its founding around 420 until its dissolution in 1742 and was located in what is now the city of Saint-Claude .

history

Early middle ages

Foundation of the monastery

Large cloister of the Condat Monastery, now in the Abbey Museum of Saint-Claude

Around the year 420, the native of a wealthy family went Gallo Roman Romanus from that in the Maxima Sequanorum located Vicus Izernore in search of spirituality in the forests of the Jura that were near his family estate. In a grotto above the point where the two rivers Bienne and Tacon meet, he founded a hermitage near a settlement that guarded the transition to the Swiss plateau , which was named Condadisco after the Celtic word condate (confluence) .

Soon his brother Lupicinus and other monks joined him - the first cells were built in the shadow of the grotto and a monastery community was created that was based on the monastic rules of Christian saints such as Basil the Great , Pachomios and Johannes Cassianus . Their rules prescribed a strict fast, the monks had to keep an almost uninterrupted silence and the day was dedicated to the praise of God through hard physical work. As early as 445 , the monastic community had grown so much that Lupicinus founded another monastery under the name Laucone about six kilometers away, in the area of ​​today's Saint-Lupicin , and took some of the monks with him to the priory. Finally around 450 , the sister of Romanus and Lupicinus, Iola, entered the abbey of her brother Romanus and founded the Balma women's monastery as another priory in nearby Pratz , which was later named Saint-Romain-de-Roche and from Iola in the strictest sense Asceticism was directed.

As the economic maintenance of three monasteries and the feeding of a large number of monks and nuns in the barren landscape of the Jura became increasingly difficult over the years, Romanus and Lupicinus went to the court of the Burgundian king Chilperich I in Geneva for his Asking for help. The monarch then donated further lands to the monasteries, an annual donation of grain and wine, and regular income from the royal property.

Saint Eugendus

The son of the priest of Izernore, Eugendus (French: Saint Oyend ), was given to the Condat Monastery by his father around 457 when he was seven years old, where he was educated by Romanus and Lupicinus and instructed in Latin and Greek literature and the Holy Scriptures . He later joined the Monastic College of Condat and never left the monastery during his lifetime. Despite his deeply Christian life of prayer and abstinence, Eugendus always refused to be ordained a priest - nevertheless, after the death of his predecessor Minausius in 495, without ordination, he succeeded him as 4th abbot of the Condat monastery.

After a devastating fire at the beginning of the 6th century, to which the abbey fell victim, Eugendus had the wooden monastery buildings renewed and expanded in stone and finally ended the hermit monastery management of his predecessors with the construction of a dormitory , scriptorium and library . Under his leadership the Condat Abbey developed into the religious center of the Upper Jurassic and a place of special learning. Leading clergymen of their time were instructed and trained in the monastery school - for example, Saint Leutfred von Évreux and the later archbishops Romanus of Reims and Saint Viventiolus of Lyon .

When Eugendus died in 510 at the age of sixty, he was buried in the monastery. His successor in the Abbatiat, Antidiole, had a church built over the tomb and furnished it with relics of the three apostles Peter , Paul and Andrew , which he had received from Rome. As a result, the Saint-Pierre church and with it the Condat monastery developed into the most important pilgrimage center of the Maxima Sequanorum and a few years later it was renamed the Saint-Oyend monastery in honor of the saint .

Saint Claudius

Saint Claudius, 16th century window in the Basilica of St-Nicolas (Saint-Nicolas-de-Port) , France

Seven years after the death of Abbot Injuriosus, St. Claudius was elected 12th abbot of the monastery in 681.

Claudius came from one of the oldest Roman families in Burgundy, the Claudia. He received his ordination as a priest and special support from Donatus von Besançon , who himself came from another ancient Gallo-Roman dynasty, the Whale Triches , and was possibly related to him. With the start of his abbate, he introduced the monastic rule of his patron, the Regula Donati , in which it combined elements from the orders of Benedict of Nursia , Columban and Caesarius of Arles , into the abbey of Saint-Oyend.

The abbey prospered under Claudius' rule; he had new churches built and acquired more reliquaries in order to sustainably establish the pilgrimages to the monastery of Saint-Oyend founded by Eugendus. This was made possible on the one hand by regular financial donations, which Claudius received at the intercession of Bathilde , the widow of the Merovingian king Clovis II. From the Franconian ruling house in Neustria and Burgundy , as well as the religious influence of the diocese of Besançon, to whose archbishop he was elected in 685 - Claudius remained but in personal union abbot of the Saint-Oyend monastery and was therefore able to promote this particularly extensively. Soon after his death in 699, a constant pilgrimage to the deceased's grave began, which made Claudius one of the most venerated saints in medieval France.

From the 8th century to the middle of the 11th century

In the 8th century, the abbey experienced an extraordinary increase in land ownership through rich donations from the Carolingian ruler Pippin the Younger and his son Charlemagne , whose exercise of power in Burgundy was mainly based on abbots such as St. Hippolytus of Saint-Oyend. These extremely generous donations by the Carolingians were due to the fact that Pippin's brother Karlmann entered the monastery of Saint-Oyend as a monk after he had, probably under duress, renounced his office as a Neustrian groom . The assigned lands in the dioceses of Langres , Mâcon and Châlon enabled the monastery chief to build priories on site and to enlarge the abbey again - the main building of the monastery was connected to the pilgrimage church of Saint-Pierre by a large cloister that is still preserved today .

The reputation of the Abbey of Saint-Oyend grew so much in the middle of the 9th century that Emperor Lothar I appointed Abbot Remigius as Archkaplan of the Frankish Empire. This title gave the Abbot of Saint-Oyend precedence over all bishops and archbishops of the empire and gave him the role of arbitrator in all ecclesiastical affairs. Since Remigius was very time-consuming due to this prominent office and spent most of the year in the Aachen imperial palace , he entrusted the management of his monastery to his prior named Manno. Under this the monastery experienced a further bloom as a refuge of learning, with a large number of educated monks who, provided with scholarships by Manno to the most important universities of the Franconian Empire, wrote down their knowledge in the scriptorium after their return. In 852 Lothar I confirmed to the monastery all the rights that his predecessors had vested in the abbey and granted the Saint-Oyend monastery the special privilege of imperial immediacy. Manno himself was so famous as one of the most learned clergymen of his time that Lothar's successor, Charles the Bald, appointed him head of the imperial palace school in 875.

The power struggle of the nobility for supremacy in the Kingdom of Hochburgund , which had formed after the end of the Carolingian reign, and the frequent raids by the Hungarians and Saracens that accompanied this turmoil hit the wealthy monastery of Saint-Oyend particularly hard. Since the Burgundian King Konrad III. the peacemaker could not stop the attacks, Abbot Bozo placed his monastery under the direct protection of Konrad's brother-in-law, the Roman-German Emperor Otto I, in 952. The religious independence of the monastic community remained untouched, but Otto I tied the highly respected abbey henceforth closely integrated into the feudal system of the Holy Roman Empire through the investiture of the abbots as an imperial monastery fief .

High and late Middle Ages

The monastery in the investiture dispute

In 1077 renounced Simon of Crépy his title as Count of Crepy , Amiens , Vexin and Bar-sur-Aube and entered the abbey of Saint-Oyend as a monk. Since he did not consider the monastic discipline there to be sufficient, he gathered some like-minded people among the monks around him and withdrew with these companions into the mountains and forests of the Jura in order to found a hermitage near the source of the Doubs , which the Abbiat of Saint-Oyend was subordinate and was later extended to the priory of Mouthe .

During the dispute between Emperor Heinrich IV and the Pope in the investiture dispute , the abbey found itself in a threatening situation - on the one hand, Saint-Oyend, as a monastery fief that was directly under the Empire, was committed to allegiance to the emperor as a feudal lord, and on the other hand, the Regula Benedicti demanded that the monastery face the Holy See in absolute obedience to all religious questions. During the first banishment of the emperor by Pope Gregory VII , which he could only solve when he went to Canossa , the monastery of Saint-Oyend remained loyal to the rich. The second excommunication of Heinrich by Paschal II , however, had the consequence that Abbot Humbert I refused allegiance to the Roman-German Emperor and asked the Pope in 1102 to place the Saint-Oyend monastery under the protection of the Apostolic See. Pope Paschal II responded to this request immediately, as this procedure gave him control of one of the most important traffic routes in the Holy Roman Empire, since the Kingdom of Burgundy had now formed the third part of the empire since 1033 based on an inheritance treaty. As a special gesture of gratitude, the Pope allowed the abbots of Saint-Oyend to wear a miter and ring, which at that time was usually reserved for the bishops. However, the complete supremacy of the Holy See over the abbey did not last - after the end of the investiture controversy, the secular feudal rule passed back to the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

The miracle of St. Claudius

The cathedral of Saint-Claude, formerly the monastery church of St. Peter

With the appointment of Ado II as abbot, the economic situation of the Saint-Oyend monastery deteriorated dramatically; Described by contemporary sources as scheming, vain and pompous, he was only able to finance his luxurious lifestyle through the massive sale of monastery goods. Despite the intercession of Peter von Tarentaise , Ado II was deposed as abbot of the monastery by Pope Anastasius IV in 1154 and replaced by the previous prior Aymo. In addition to papal benevolence, the new abbot also enjoyed the support of the emperor Friedrich Barbarossa , who confirmed all possessions and legal titles of the abbey in a document from 1184 and granted the monastery its own right to mint.

In order to revive the dwindling stream of pilgrims to the pilgrimage church of Saint-Pierre and to increase the convent's declining income, Aymo had the tomb of the twelfth abbot Claudius opened and the body of the saint was exhumed . The body of the deceased was found in perfect condition and when, on the day of the solemn reburial of the body, a child died in the crowd of believers, but was brought back to life by touching the wooden shrine of the saint, the contemporary sources reported of the "miracle of Saint-Oyend-de-Joux" , which made the flow of pilgrims grow steadily. In honor of St. Claudius, the monastery was renamed again and from that point on it was officially called the Abbey of Saint-Claude .

At the end of the 12th century the monastery was again one of the wealthiest abbeys in Burgundy - it had thirty-four priories, 108 churches and 27 chapels.

From the 13th century to the end of the 15th century

In the armed conflicts for power in the Burgundian part of the empire between the Roman-German King Rudolf I on the one hand and Count Rainald von Montbéliard and Philip I of Savoy on the other, the abbey sided with the Habsburgs . Rudolf then appointed his partisan Johann I von Chalon-Arlay to be the first monastery vogt and tied the monastery closely in the fight against the French expansion policy in Burgundy. In 1299 , after Rudolf's death, Abbot Etienne of Saint-Cergues had the monastery fortified and surrounded by a wall and towers; two years later he secured the assistance of Count Amadeus V of Savoy through a treaty .

With the outbreak of the Western Schism , the monastery supported the antipope Clement VII , who resided in Avignon , who in return appointed Abbot Guillaume de La Baume as bishop of the diocese of Sion and with a papal bull of April 4, 1384, the expansion of the pilgrimage church of Saint-Pierre into one Cathedral decreed.

In the course of the following century, adherence to the Benedictine rules increasingly suffered from the abbey's growing wealth. Especially during the Abbiates of Guy d'Usier ( 1438 to 1441 ), the debauchery of the monks reached such proportions that Pope Nicholas V was compelled to send apostolic visitors to the monastery of Saint-Claude, on behalf of the Pope Abbot relieved of office and restored the Benedictine way of life; the number of convent members was strictly regulated to 36, compliance with the requirement of secrecy was monitored and, with a few exceptions, the monks' exit was completely prevented.

In 1482 , the French King Louis XI. another pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Claudius in Saint-Claude, after having visited the abbey as a Dauphin in 1456 during a pilgrimage; In 1499 the French Queen Anne de Bretagne followed suit.

From the early modern era to the dissolution

Interior of the Saint-Claude Cathedral

A devastating fire in 1512 destroyed a large part of the old monastery buildings and also severely affected the cathedral.

In the 17th century , during the Thirty Years' War , the Free County of Burgundy was occupied by the troops of the French king. Before Otto Wilhelm von Nassau-Siegen was able to besiege the abbey and the city of Saint-Claude with Weimar mercenaries on the orders of the Commander-in-Chief, Duke Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar , the defense troops stationed in the monastery withdrew without a fight and evacuated the monks of the abbey to the Hinterland of the Jura. While the duke's soldiers left the abandoned monastery untouched, the abbey was heavily plundered by the advancing French auxiliary contingent under Philippe de La Mothe-Houdancourt , despite episcopal protests, and the associated lands plundered.

After the end of the Thirty Years' War, the following armed conflicts during the War of Devolution passed the monastery relatively without a trace and, together with Franche-Comté, Saint-Claude came to France with the Peace of Nijmegen in 1678 .

Under the abbiat of Louis de Bourbon-Condé , the monastery was converted into a secular canon in 1742 . The remaining 20 monks kept their rights and privileges as monastery pledges, four of them formed the leadership of the abbey with provost , cantor , chancellor and treasurer . Since the plans of the noble abbot encountered bitter resistance from the Archbishop of Lyon , who was responsible for the monastery under canon law , François-Paul de Neufville de Villeroy, the abbot, thanks to his excellent political connections, managed to separate the monastery from the Archdiocese of Lyon thanks to his excellent political connections with Pope Benedict XIV and the subsequent dissolution and transformation of the abbey into the new diocese of Saint-Claude .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Pierre Lacroix, Andrée Renon: Saint-Claude. In: Andre Vauchez (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. James Clarke, Cambridge 2001, ISBN 0-227-67931-8 .

literature

  • M. Ferroul-Montgaillard: Histoire de l'abbaye de St-Claude: depuis sa fondation jusqu'à son érection en évêché. Volume 1 (de l'origine jusqu'à 1186). Édition F. Gauthier, Lons-les-Saunier 1834.
  • M. Ferroul-Montgaillard: Histoire de l'abbaye de St-Claude: depuis sa fondation jusqu'à son érection en évêché. Volume 2 (de 1186 à 1742). Édition F. Gauthier, Lons-les-Saunier 1855.
  • Reinhold Kaiser: The Burgundy. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-17-016205-5 , pp. 168-170.


Coordinates: 46 ° 23 '11 "  N , 5 ° 51' 59"  E