Bernhard Link

Bernhard Link (born August 13, 1606 in Breslau ; † November 19, 1671 in Zwettl Abbey ) was a German Cistercian , abbot and historian who worked in Austria.

life and work

Johann Bernhard Link (competing spelling: Linck ), nephew of Abbot Johann VII. Seyfried (1612–1625) of Zwettl Abbey , was brought to the monastery by his uncle at the age of seven, grew up there and officially entered in 1630. He took the religious name Malachias . In the monastery he was treasurer and administrator, then from 1646 until his death abbot. As such he took his baptismal name again and is therefore also known as Johann VIII Bernhard.

Link directed the monastery after a period of devastation and decline (caused by the Thirty Years' War ) and devoted all of his energy to internal and external rebuilding. He set special accents (following the example of his uncle) in the spiritual and scientific areas. He founded a philosophical school in the monastery and left behind the (posthumously printed) manuscript of an extensive work of annals of great historical importance for the Zwettl monastery, the mother monastery of Heiligenkreuz monastery and for the empire as a whole. The devotion to Mary he cultivated in the succession of his namesake Bernhard von Clairvaux led to the new building of the Maria Rafing pilgrimage church (today the Rafingsberg church ruin in Rafingsberg near Windigsteig , where the once flourishing pilgrimage , which was then canceled by Emperor Joseph II , is currently reviving thanks to a new chapel) .

Abbot Johannes Bernhard's tombstone reads: “Castitate, Amore, Ore, Re: Joannes. Religione: Bernardus “(In chastity, love, prayer and in the matter a John. In religion a Bernhard).

Works

• Annales Austrio-Clara-Vallenses seu Fundationis monasterii Claræ-Vallis Austriæ vulgò Zwetl, ordinis cisterciensis initium et progressus. Ubi compendioso schemate per modum historiæ universalis fideliter refertur, quidquid from the year MLXXXIII. usque ad annum MDCXLV. ex archivio, & chronicis Mss. Zwetlensibus, aliorúmque scriptorum authoritate erui poterat, non solùm quod præfatum fundationem, sed & fundatorum progeniem, multorúmque nobilium genealogium, nec non de anno in annum notabiliores, præsertim in Austria, res gestas. concern, Vienna, University, 1723–1725 (edited by Abbot Melchior von Zaunack , dedicated to Joseph Dominikus von Lamberg ).
  • 1. 1083–1400 (830 pages, contains, inter alia, a catalog of the authors cited), digitized
  • 2. 1400–1645 (640 pages, includes a nomenclature of foreign words), digitized version

literature

• Franz Krones , “Link, Bernhard” in: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 18 (1883), pp. 713–714 (see online version, below).
• Marian Fidler (1736–1802), history of the entire Austrian monastic and secular clergy of both sexes . Vol. 4.9. The kk capital and residence city of Vienna, together with dipl. Beylagen und dem Supplemente, pp. 19–109: History of the Lower Austrian monastery Zwettl (sorted by abbot, here: pp. 84–96).
• Stephan Rössler, Zwettl Abbey in Lower Austria, in: Ein Cisterzienserbuch , ed. by Sebastian Brunner , Würzburg 1881, pp. 542–603 (here: 588–589)

Web links

• ADB entry via link from Franz Krones
• Description with picture of the ruins of the church Seven Pains Mariae in Rafingsberg
• Report on the construction of a chapel in Rafingsberg and attempts to revive the pilgrimage

predecessor	Office	successor
Georg II Nivard Koweindl	Abbot of Zwettl Monastery 1646–1671	Kaspar Bernhard