Cölestin Gugger von Staudach

Cölestin Gugger von Staudach

Cölestin II. Gugger von Staudach (also Coelestin , born June 28, 1701 in Feldkirch as Michael Anton; † February 24, 1767 in St. Gallen ) was Prince Abbot of the St. Gallen Monastery from March 23, 1740 until his death . He is considered one of the most important abbots of the late period of the monastery. He was awarded the solution of various protracted conflicts between the abbey, including the diocese of Constance. The construction of the now world-famous collegiate church of St. Gallen was initiated and supervised by him, although he did not live to see its completion.

Career

Cölestin Gugger von Staudach was born in 1701 as the son of City Councilor Michael Anton Gugger von Staudach and Maria Oexlin. First he attended the Jesuit school in Feldkirch, but then switched to the convent school in St. Gallen in 1719. On October 16, 1721, he made his profession as a Benedictine , four years later he was ordained a priest. In 1726 he was also appointed professor of theology. On October 18, 1729, he traveled to Rome to study , from where he returned a good year later with a doctorate. In the following years he held various offices at the monastery. Finally he was elected abbot on March 23, 1740, and received the corresponding ordination on September 19 of the following year.

Father Bernhard Frank von Frankenberg , who ran as a competitor in the abbot election, later became abbot in the Disentis monastery . Cölestin had to support him several times with staff and money, because the financial situation in the Disentis Monastery was desolate for a long time.

Acting as a prince abbot

When he tried to receive his subjects' homage, he was refused it in Toggenburg . There were wild scenes. The Toggenburgers demanded that the new abbot continue the negotiations on team rights that had been granted to them by their predecessor Joseph von Rudolfi . With the mediation of the towns of Bern and (with little interest) Zurich, the abbot initially succeeded in duly receiving the homage from the Toggenburgers in 1743. The first negotiated solution about the rights of the subject area was not reached until 1755 - due to pressure from France. The final solution, however, was another four years to come.

In various other parishes, Abbot Cölestin Gugger knew how to resolve conflicts through negotiation with negotiating skills, for example when the uprising was rehearsed against the abbot government in Rorschach - with trumped-up accusations.

Another conflict that Cölestin was exposed to was that with the diocese of Constance . For historical reasons - the Abbey of St. Gallen was officially part of the diocese - this had the right to visit the St. Gallen parishes. The St. Gallers had been able to avoid it for a long time, but when an official of the diocese was formally expelled from the country, the barrel overflowed and Konstanz complained. In the following process, the first thing to do was to clarify which court was actually responsible for this conflict. St. Gallen appealed to Rome, Constance to the Reichshofrat in Mainz . The conflict in Rome was finally settled by exchanging land (in Konstanz) for rights (in St. Gallen). As a result, however, federal troops had to ensure order several times, as St. Gallen and Konstanz did not want to adhere to the new order and, for example, did not present a newly elected chaplain to the abbot, but to the bishop as before.

From today's perspective, however, the most important works of Cölestin were its representative buildings. In 1746 he began building the granary in Rorschach . On April 29, 1757, he laid the foundation stone for his most important work, the new construction of the St. Gallen monastery church. The construction itself lasted in two stages until 1767, but the interior work took significantly longer. It was not finally consecrated until 1867, long after the monastery was abolished. At the same time as the church, Cölestin had a new library built. The baroque hall of the St. Gallen Abbey Library is one of the most beautiful secular halls in the world. The monastery church and library accounted for 457,929  florins . Celestin was also a good businessman who knew how to make clever use of the abbey's sources of money. Despite the large expenses for his buildings, for litigation and for regalia , he was able to repay all debts that his predecessor had left him and to leave his successor 180,600 florins in cash and 57,695 florins in capital.

Historical description

Ildefons von Arx writes about Cölestin Gugger von Staudach:

«Prince Abbot Cölestin Gugger was generally respected and loved because he knew how to mix seriousness and kindness, strength and indulgence in a proper way. He ran the business with great care and advice, and precisely because the position in which public affairs were located was favorable to him, he succeeded almost all of them. Because of this he gained a great reputation among his contemporaries, and he was consulted from all over the world. His diaries, and the life and government resolutions recorded in the mental exercises employed, testify to a thorough piety, and make one admire how a prelate of so extensive a business circle could retain such a large gathering of the mind. Without appearing economically, he merely proposed with close supervision and avoidance of all unnecessary expenditure on average 34,000 florins every year, which enabled him to remove the pen from the debts with which it had been afflicted for four hundred years. to be freed, with 12,000 fl. Wartensee, with 29,912 fl. to buy Roggwil Castle, Hefenhofen, and Moos, to make foundations for 40,000 fl., 59,487 fl. on lawsuits, 12,000 f1. to use on the confirmation, benediction and fiefdom, for the sake of trade and for the benefit of the country with 37,050 florins in 1746 at Roschach am See after the crack of the Italians Bognato, and in St. Gallen with an expense of 457,929 florins to build the three hundred twelve foot long St. Gallen Minster, part of the monastery, the rifle house in St. Fiden, and to leave another 300,000 florins. "

- V. Arx III .: Stories of the Canton of St. Gallen. Pp. 566-614

Web links

Commons : Cölestin Gugger von Staudach  - Collection of Images

• Cölestin Gugger von Staudach on the website of the St. Gallen Abbey Archives.
• Cölestin Gugger von Staudach near Wilnet, excerpt from Johannes Duft : The St. Gallen Abbey .
• Werner Vogler: Cölestin Gugger von Staudach. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .

literature

• Ildefons von Arx : Stories of the Canton of St. Gallen. St. Gallen 1813, p. 566 ff. ( Full text in the Google book search).
• Werner Vogler: Cölestin Gugger von Staudach, 1740-1767 , in: Helvetia Sacra III / 1, Bern 1986, pp. 1342-1345.

predecessor	Office	successor
Joseph von Rudolfi	Abbot of St. Gallen 1740 - 1767	Beda Angehrn

predecessor	Office	successor
Aemilian Zeller	Librarian of St. Gallen 1733	Basil Balthasar