Audomar

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Audomar and King Dagobert I. Representation in a vita from the 11th century (Saint-Omer, Bibliothèque municipale , Ms 698)

Audomar , Latin Audomarus , also Otmarus ; French Omer ; ndl. Odemaar , also Omaar ; German also Otmar von Thérouanne (* around 600 ; † November 1 , maybe 670 ), was the first bishop of Tarvanna (also Teruana, today Thérouanne ) in the Frankish Empire and was venerated as a saint after his death . He belonged to a circle of Frankish bishops who supported the Irish - Scottish pagan mission on the north-west European mainland in the 7th century . In his newly created Sprengel he promoted the mission of the previously little Christianized northern Franconian area, especially by promoting the founding of monasteries and actively involving the local Franconian leadership elite in the missionary work.

Live and act

Audomar with grapes and book, sculpture at St. Audomar in Frechen by Olaf Höhnen

Origin and career

The place of birth Audomars, mentioned in the Chronicon Bertinianum of Iperius († 1383), is today certainly identified with Orval near Coutances in what is now the department of Manche in Normandy . His father was probably called Friulphus. According to legend, he entered the monastery with his son. According to Butler , the mother's name was Domitilla. The frequently encountered news that the family came from what was then Burgundy and lived on Lake Constance is based on the confusion of Coutances with Constance , since the place names are identical in Latin ( Constantia ).

Audomar entered under the abbot Eustasius (officiated 615-629) in the Luxovium (Luxeuil) monastery founded by the Irish monk Columbanus , which was one of the leading missionary monasteries of that time. Together with Chagnoaldus of Laon († approx. 633), Ragnacharius of Basel and Acharius of Noyon and Tournai, he belongs to the ranks of important Franconian bishops who received their training in this monastery and who adopted the methods and ideas of the Irish Scottish missionaries in the Frankish Empire and further developed.

Mission Bishop

The Austrasian king Dagobert I was made aware of Audomar by Bishop Acharius and appointed him Bishop of Tarvanna , the Roman Colonia Morinorum , which was then again predominantly pagan ( pagus Morinorum ). The area in the Romanesque-Franconian mixed zone of Northern Gaul, however, belonged to the core and home country of the Franconian Eastern Empire, whose (re-) Christianization was part of King Dagobert's religious-political agenda. Audomar arrived here shortly before 639. As a bishop he developed an active missionary activity and gathered students, new converts, missionaries and influential people around him, with whose help he spread the Christian faith . To this end, he called among other things missionaries from his homeland, the area of ​​today's Normandy in what was then Neustria , who were probably also monks trained in Luxovium. Probably before 649 he called the monks Mummolenus , Bertinus and Ebertramnus (Bertram) into the country and commissioned them with the mission in the marshland on the Aa north of the episcopal city in later Flanders.

Founding of a monastery

A feature of Audomars missionary work was that he was able to win local members of the Gallo-Franconian leadership class, from which he himself and many of his helpers probably also came, and got them to actively participate in the founding of churches and monasteries. So he had the rich, newly converted landlord Adroald donate the hill Sithiu on the bank of the Aa as a suitable building site for the construction of a monastery, the later Saint-Bertin Abbey , which developed into Audomar's most important foundation. Saint Mummolenus, who initially directed the project and is associated with the founding of Saint-Momelin , was named Bishop of Noyon in the 660s to succeed Saint Eligius . Bertinus (615–698), who apparently came from the same place as Audomar and was also venerated as a saint in 745, was the first abbot to take over the monastery and managed it successfully. The way of life of the monks was probably determined by a Benedictine - Colomban mixed rule, which combined Irish Scottish and Roman elements.

The older Vita S. Austrebertae also names Audomar as the founder of Pavilly Abbey , while the later Vita of Angilram († 1045) describes Philibert as the founder of this monastery.

Followers and employees

Audomars students and followers also included women, including perhaps Angadrisma (615–695). Similar to Austreberta (630-704) she founded a women's monastery near Beauvais ( Oroër-des-Vierges ) after her baptism , where she died in the reputation of holiness and was then honored by a monastery patronage in her possible home village Renty , 10 km from Tarvanna . The local castle and land owner Wambert, perhaps a relative of Angadrismas, promoted the priest Bertulf, his land manager, who later rose to be the local saint of the village and also belonged to Audomar's newly converted group of students. Also Bishop Lantbert of Lyon , who was a dignitary at the court of the Frankish King Chlothar III. had been, taught in Tarvanna and thus contributed to the attractiveness of Audomar's student and catechumen circle for the local upper class.

Audomar stood out because it gave its employees and patrons extensive freedom. Already blind, he signed a document in 663 with which he withdrew the property of the Sithiu monastery from the bishop's disposal and freed the monks from their disciplinary sovereignty as bishops. He was also involved in two other documents from the years 664 and 667. In 691 King Clovis III confirmed . the monastery for its part also has immunity.

Death and afterlife

Audomar died on November 1st, the years between 667 and 670, in the Sithiu monastery which he founded. According to his own wishes, he was buried on site in the Frauenkirche he founded, later the cathedral of Saint-Omer . In the later Middle Ages there were protracted disputes between the cathedral chapter of the Frauenkirche and the abbey about the whereabouts and inventory of the relics , which were visited four times. Today there is only a cenotaph in the church after the shrine with the bones and its contents were brought to Paris and melted down there during the French Revolution .

Abbot Bertinus named the monastery after the founding bishop Audomar, who was soon venerated as a saint. His festival, which had been recorded in all martyrdom calendars since the Carolingian era , was moved from the day of his death to September 9th soon after 800. His vita was written at the beginning of the 9th century and tells of numerous miracles . A settlement developed around the monastery, which was also named after Audomar and is still called Saint-Omer today . The abbey, on the other hand, became an important center for Anglo-Saxon book illumination in the 8th century and has been named Saint-Bertin after its first abbot since around 1100 . In the 12th century it was incorporated into the Cluniac reform .

In Germany, the Roman Catholic Church of St. Audomar in Frechen in the Rhineland is dedicated to the saint.

iconography

Audomar is depicted in episcopal robes with the attributes of grapes , staff and books.

literature

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Excerpt from the karol. Annales Mettenses (830–930): … et in monasterium sancti Otmari, quod dicitur Sidiu,…
  2. ^ NN: Otmar v. Thérouanne . In: Walter Kasper (Ed.): Lexicon for Theology and Church . 3. Edition. tape 7 . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1998, Sp. 1217 . ; to distinguish it from Otmar von St. Gallen .
  3. ^ Ernst Steindorff :  Balduin V. In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, p. 9.
    More precisely: Francis Palgrave (author), Inglis Palgrave (ed.): The History of Normandy and of England. Volume IV. Cambridge 1921, pp. Xxi .
  4. ^ "Goldenthal near Konstanz" (Iperius 449 c), cf. Heinrich Hagenmeyer : The letters of the crusade from the years 1088–1100. A collection of sources on the history of the first crusade. Innsbruck 1901 (reprint, Georg Olms Verlag , Darmstadt undated, ISBN 3-487-04732-2 ), p. 253, note 30.
  5. ↑ Marc van Uytfanghe: Audomarus. In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages. Volume 1, Munich 1980, column 1197.
  6. ^ Alban Butler: St. Omer, BC In: ders .: The Lives of the Saints.
  7. ↑ For many (mostly based on Butler): Michael Kresin: Orthodoxe Heiligenleben. Munich 2003, p. 26.
  8. ↑ Berend Wispelwey (arr.): Biographical Index of the Middle Ages. K. G. Saur, Munich 2008, p. 215.
  9. ^ Saint Angadrisma of Beauvais in the American online lexicon CatholicSaintsInfo , accessed on June 16, 2017.
  10. ↑ Three vites documented in: Karine Ugé: Creating the Monastic Past in Medieval Flanders. York Medieval Press, York 2005, ISBN 1-903153-16-6 , p. 176.
  11. ↑ Audomar - September 9th . Entry in the Heiligenlexikon heilige.de of the Bonifatiuswerk , accessed on September 9, 2017.

Web links

Commons : Audomar  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Audomar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Audomarus; Otmarus; Odemaar; Saint Omer; Sint Omaar; Otmar of Thérouanne
BRIEF DESCRIPTION bishop
DATE OF BIRTH around 600
DATE OF DEATH uncertain: 670