Bernhard of Tiron

Bernhard von Tiron or Bernard d'Abbeville (* around 1046 in Abbeville , † April 25, 1116 in Thiron near Chartres ) was abbot in Poitiers , hermit and founder of a monastery. His feast day is April 14th. He is the patron saint of prisoners and turners .

Life

According to his vita , he was born near Abbeville around 1046 as a child of penniless but devout parents. Around 1066 Bernhard became a monk in Saint-Cyprien near Poitiers . There he was distinguished by his strict piety, so that he was prior of St-Savin-sur-Gartempe in 1076 . In 1096 he retired as a hermit in the woods near Craon and later on the Chaussey Islands off Granville in Normandy . In 1100 he returned to Saint-Cyprien and was elected abbot there because his predecessor, Abbot Renaud, had died. There, however, he was unable to implement the reforms he wanted. From about 1104 - probably with the permission of Pope Paschal II - he was again on the road as an itinerant preacher and hermit, in order to come close to his ideal of a strict, handcraft-based way of life based on the model of the Egyptian monks in the tradition of Antonius . For example, he went on an apostolic journey with Robert von Arbrissel . When the Pope offered him the cardinal dignity, he refused.

former Abbey of Thiron

In 1109 he received a piece of land from the Count of Perche and Mortagne, Rotrou III, near Thiron . , donated and founded a Benedictine congregation with the monastery Ste-Trinité, which soon experienced a great boom and achieved fame. The Congregation of the same name became the parent company of 23 abbeys and 80 priories , but fell in the 15th, but no later than the 16th century in a spiritual and financial crisis and have been abandoned by the monks in the 17th century or the Maurinerkongregation joined.

The life of Bernhard von Tirons was passed down by his chancellor Gaufredus Grossus in the Vita beati Bernardi , which was written around 1147.

presentation

There are no known medieval depictions of Bernhard von Thiron. Some modern sculptures and glass paintings show him with an abbot's staff or a model of a church in his hands.

literature

swell

• Vita beati Bernardi Fundatoris Congregationis de Tironio in Gallia auctore Gaufredo Grosso. In: Jacques Paul Migne : Patrologia Latina 172. 1362-1446D, Paris. 1854
• Vita beati Bernardi Tironiensis auctore Gaufredo Grosso. In: AS II. 220 ff.

Secondary literature

• DHGE VIII, 754f.
• LThK II, 249.
• DSp I, 1510
• EC II, 1440f.
• Jacques de Bascher: La 'Vita' de saint Bernard d'Abbeville, abbé de Saint-Cyprien de Poitiers et de Tiron. RMab , 59, pp. 411-450 (1979).
• Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz :  BERNHARD of Tiron. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 1, Bautz, Hamm 1975. 2nd, unchanged edition Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-013-1 , Sp. 536.
• Bernard Beck: Saint Bernard de Tiron, l'ermite, le moine et le monde. Cormelles-le-Royal 1998.
• Ruth Harwood Cline: The congregation of Tiron in the twelfth century: Foundation and expansion. Georgetown University, 2000.
• Stephanus Hilpisch : History of Benedictine monasticism in its basic features. Herder & Co., Freiburg im Breisgau 1929, p. 201.
• Thomas Reiser: Double dissonance and perpetuated humility. The genre discussion on the legend of the saints reflected in the "Vita Beati Bernardi" by Gaufredus Grossus. In: MlJb 42. 2007, pp. 79-95.
• Thomas Reiser: Representation, evaluation and function of loneliness. Bernard of Tiron, the first hermits, Eucherius of Lyon. In: MlJb 44. 2009, pp. 273-302.
• Kathleen Thompson: The other Saint Bernard. The troubled and varied career of B. of Abbeville, Abbot of Tiron. In: JEH 60. 2009, pp. 657-672.
• Johannes von Walter: The first traveling preacher of France. Leipzig 1906, p. 1f.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Geoffrey Grossus: The Life of Blessed Bernard of Tiron. Translated with an introduction and notes by Ruth Harwood Cline. Washington, DC 2009, p. Xii.