Benoit d'Alignan

Benoît d'Alignan (French name; Occitan Beneset d'Alinhan , Latin Benedictus de Alignano , German Benedikt von Alignan ; † January 11, 1268 ) was Bishop of Marseille in the 13th century .

Life

Benoît was a Benedictine monk and had been Abbot of Lagrasse since 1224 . Due to his mediation, the cities of Béziers and Carcassonne surrendered without a fight to King Louis VIII of France during the Albigensian Crusade in 1226 . In 1228 he traveled to Rome and in 1229 was elected Bishop of Marseille. During his tenure he supported the settlement of Cistercians , Augustinians , Carmelites , Poor Clares and the Beguines of the Douceline of Digne in and around Marseille.

In 1239 he joined the barons' crusade under the leadership of Theobald von Champagne . With the donations he brought with him, he made it possible to finance the reconstruction of Safed Castle , which had passed into the possession of the Knights Templar in 1240 following an alliance between the Christians and the Muslim ruler of Damascus, al-Salih Ismail . The alliance also allowed him to carry out a pilgrimage to the church of St. Mary of Saidnaya , which is located near Damascus . In spring 1241 he returned to his homeland.

On June 24, 1260, Pope Alexander IV addressed the bull Audiat orbis to Benoît , in which he was invited to return to the Holy Land , where he took measures from the Christian barons as part of the “crusade against the Tatars” proclaimed by the Pope in preparation for a defensive battle against the Mongols . The Mongols had invaded Mesopotamia in 1258 and invaded Syria in 1260 . However, they were repulsed behind the Euphrates by the Egyptian Mameluks after the battle of ʿAin Jālūt in September 1260 . During his second stay in Outremer, he had again visited the Templars at Safed. On this occasion, the text De constructione castri Saphet was dedicated to him, a documentation of the reconstruction work on the castle, which gives an insightful insight into the castle construction of the Crusader period. Safed was conquered by the Mameluks in 1266.

Benoît returned to Marseille in 1262. In 1267 he gave up his church office to retire to a monastery. The following year he died and was buried in the Franciscan church, where later, among others, Douceline von Digne, her brother Hugo von Digne and Saint Louis of Toulouse received their graves.

A copy of a letter from June 1250, addressed to Pope Innocent IV , has come down to us from Matthew Paris . In it he described the defeat of the crusaders of the sixth crusade under King Louis IX. of France at the Battle of al-Mansura (February 1250). Benoît had not personally participated in this crusade; he obtained his information from a letter addressed to him from the Order Master of the Hospitallers of Marseilles.

literature

• Martin Grabmann : The Franciscan Bishop Benedictus de Alignano and his Summa zum Caput 'Firmiter' of the fourth Lateran Council. In: Church history studies presented to Father Michael Bihl as an honorary gift. Kolmar 1941, pp. 50-64.
• Robert BC Huygens: Un nouveau texte du traite “Du constructione castri Saphet”. In: Studi Medievali , 3rd series, 6 (1965).
• Robert BC Huygens: De constructione castri Saphed. Construction et fonctions d'un château fort franc en Terre Sainte. Amsterdam - New York 1981.
• Hugh Kennedy: Crusader castles. Cambridge University Press, 2001 (with translation of De constructione castri Saphet into English).
• Denys Pringle: Reconstructing the Castle of Safad. In: Palestine Exploration Quarterly 16 (1985).
• Max Segonne: Moine, prélat, croisé, Benoît d'Alignan, abbé de La Grasse, Seigneur-Évêque de Marseille. Marseille 1960.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Matthew Paris: Chronica Majora Liber Additamentorum. Edited by Henry R. Luard in: Rolls Series (RS) 57.6 (1882), pp. 168-169

predecessor	Office	successor
Pierre de Montlaur	Bishop of Marseille 1229–1267	Raimond de Nîmes