Bernard de Girmont

Abbot Bernard de Girmont

Bernard de Girmont (born June 26, 1758 as Jean-François Le Bègue de Girmont in Mirecourt , † June 22, 1834 in Entrammes , Mayenne ) was a French Trappist , prior, abbot and founder of the monastery.

Life

Jean-François Le Bègue de Girmont, from Lorraine nobility, entered the Morimond monastery and took the religious name Bernard . He made solemn profession on September 8, 1779 and was ordained a priest on December 31, 1783. He was a novice master when the monastery was closed on February 13, 1790 by the French Revolution and he returned to his family. On October 25, 1798 he entered the Darfeld monastery in Rosendahl , Westphalia, founded by Augustin de Lestrange in exile in Germany, was dressed on October 27, 1798 and made a new profession on November 1, 1799. Girmont was guest master in Darfeld and looked after the donations (monastery members without vows).

When the Darfeld branch St. Liborius was founded in Driburg (today: Bad Driburg ) on December 9, 1799, he became its prior. His monastery had up to 60 monks and until 1802 an educational institute headed by François-Marie Van Langendonck . Prior Girmont, who traveled to Warsaw to collect donations, had to give up the monastery in 1803 and went to the now reopened mother monastery of La Valsainte Charterhouse .

In August 1809 he returned to the Darfeld monastery in Kleinburlo , which had meanwhile become an abbey, and was sent on a trip to collect donations by his abbot Eugène de Laprade . After the monastery was closed due to the abolition of the order by Napoleon in 1811, he left Darfeld together with Abbot Laprade and went into hiding. Only on August 20, 1814, he joined the abbot at one of King Louis XVIII. granted audience reappeared.

When the Port-du-Salut monastery was re-established on February 21, 1815, by a donation from the former Darfeld donate Jean-Baptiste Le Clerc de La Roussière, a close friend of Girmont, Girmont became its first prior Klosters in the rank of an abbey, Girmont was its first abbot from 1816 to 1830. In the controversy of the Cistercian reforms (reform after Rancé against the harsher Valsainter reform of Lestrange, which was never papally recognized), he returned to the Rancé reform in the wake of Laprade.

literature

• Immo Eberl, The Cistercians. History of a European Order , Ostfildern, Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2007.
• Josiane Ferrari-Clément, Fous de Dieu. Récit d'une odyssée trappiste 1793–1815 , Paris, Cerf, 1998.
• Marie de la Trinité Kervingant, Des moniales face à la Révolution française. Aux origines des Cisterciennes-Trappistines , Paris, Beauchesne, 1989.
• Wilhelm Knoll, 30 years of Trappist settlement in Darfeld 1795–1825. A contribution to the church history in the Coesfeld district , Bernardus-Verlag, Mainz 2012 (most important source of this contribution; pictures, p. 280, 282; directory of persons under D, add pages 126, 131, 141, 152, 155, 173, 187).
• Augustin-Hervé Laffay (* 1965), Dom Augustin de Lestrange et l'avenir du monachisme: 1754–1827, Paris, Cerf, 1998; Diss. Lyon 3, 1994 (passim).