Benedictine Confederation

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Coat of arms of the Benedictine order

The Benedictine Confederation (Latin: Confoederatio Benedictina ) has been the international union of the monastery associations of the Benedictine order since 1893 and is organized on a federal basis.

Composition and management

Its members are 19 independent Benedictine congregations with a total of 7147 monks (as of 2015). Furthermore, Benedictine federations, congregations and monasteries are consociated with a total of 13,725 women religious (status 2014). The monastic congregations of the monks are each headed by an archabbot , abbot praeses , abbot general or prior general. Together they form the "Benedictine Confederation". Its chief and supreme representative is the Abbot Primate , who has his seat in the Primate Abbey of Sant'Anselmo in Rome, which also houses the Benedictine University of the same name . The current Abbot Primate (elected on September 10, 2016) is Gregory Polan , previously Abbot (1996-2016) of the Abbey Conception , Swiss-American Congregation.

history

Pope Leo XIII. (1878–1903) determined with the Breve Summum semper of July 12, 1893 that all congregations of the black Benedictines were to be merged into a confederation . For the leadership of the confederation he created the office of abbot primate , who should also be abbot of the collegiate monastery Sant'Anselmo on the Aventine . The pontiff appointed the abbot of Maredsous, Hildebrand de Hemptinne from the Beuron congregation, to be the first abbot primate . This and his successors did not receive the power of a superior general over the order, i. H. cannot dispose of the monasteries and independent religious congregations, but are more or less "primates inter pares" of the Benedictines. With a law specially created for the Benedictine Confederation, the "Lex propria benedictina", the confederation of Pope Pius XII. (1939–1958) regulated in 1952. This created clear regulations on the relationship between the religious confederation and the Roman Curia and the related individual law. The law was revised in 1985 and again in 2008 and approved by the present Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life . During the 20th century, Benenedictine branch orders not belonging to the black Benedictines, such as B. the Olivetans of the Confederation. The Benedictine abbots elect the abbot primate at their four-year conference of abbots, initially for eight years and then, if necessary, for a further four-year term of office.

List of the Benedictine congregations organized in the Confederation

  1. Camaldolese (1010)
  2. Vallombrosaner (1036)
  3. New Year's Eve (1231)
  4. Olivetan (1319)
  5. English Benedictine Congregation (1336)
  6. Congregation of Cassinese (1408)
  7. Hungarian Benedictine Congregation (1514)
  8. Swiss Benedictine Congregation (1602)
  9. Austrian Benedictine Congregation (1625)
  10. Bavarian Benedictine Congregation (1684)
  11. Brazilian Congregation (1827)
  12. Congregation of Solesmes (1837)
  13. American-Cassinese Benedictine Congregation (1855)
  14. Congregation of Subiaco and Montecassino (1872)
  15. Beuron Benedictine Congregation (1873)
  16. Swiss-American Congregation (1881)
  17. Benedictine Congregation of St. Ottilien (1884)
  18. Congregation for the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (1920)
  19. Benedictine Congregation Cono Sur (1976)

Monasteries "extra Congregationes" ( Le Bouveret , Chevetogne , Tyburn Monasteries )

The Dutch Congregation dissolved in 2005, and the remaining monasteries joined the Congregation of Subiaco and the Congregation of the Annunciation. The Cassinese Congregation merged in 2013 with the Sublazese Congregation, which had been separated from it in 1872; the reunited Congregation now bears the name Sub-Lazenso-Cassinese Congregation.

Literature and Sources

  • Confoederatio Benedictina . Fontes (in textu originali et in versione Germanica) ad historiam et ius vigens Confoederationis Benedictinae, edidit Suso Mayer OSB .., Typis Sancti Martini de Beuron MCMLVII / The Benedictine Confederation . Sources (in the original text and in German translation) on the history and current law of the Benedictine Confederation, ed. by Suso Mayer OSB .., Beuroner Kunstverlag, Beuron 1957.
  • Gerard Oesterle: The papal law for the Benedictine Confederation . In: Benedictine Monthly , Vol. 28 (1952), pp. 353–363.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Catalogus Monasteriorum OSB Monachorum, 2015
  2. ↑ Catalogus Monasteriorum OSB Sororum et Monialium, 2014
  3. ↑ Gregory Polan new abbot primate of the Benedictines on kathpress , accessed on September 10, 2016
  4. ↑ Jeremias Schröder : Nobody is an island. Monasteries between autonomy and networking . In: Erbe und Einsatz , vol. 95 (2019), pp. 32–44, here p. 41.
  5. ↑ a b Art. Benedictine Confederation in the Monastery and Order Lexicon of the Orden online portal , accessed on September 12, 2016.