Couvent des Cordeliers (Paris)

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The Couvent des Cordeliers or Couvent des frères mineurs (Monastery of the Minor Brothers) was a monastery founded in Paris in 1230 , whose Roman Catholic religious community ( ordo fratrum minorum ) was based on the order rule written by Francis of Assisi . (for the rule of the order see: Franciscan Orders )

The brothers of this mendicant order , clad in coarse gray cloth, were called the Cordeliers , after the cord with which they tied their wide robes , from which the name of the monastery was derived, which was located on the site of today's École de Médecine in the 6th century . Arrondissement was located. They were also known as frères gris or gray brothers based on the color of their robes .

The preserved Gothic refectory of the monastery from the 14th century has been classified as a Monument historique since 1975 .

The Gothic refectory
Francisco de Herrera the Elder:
Saint Bonaventure joins the Order of Friars Minor (1628)

location

The monastery was built outside the city ​​wall built by King Philip Augustus in 1195 on a plot of land belonging to the Saint-Germain-des-Prés Abbey in the fields outside the city , which Abbot Eudes had given to the Minor Brothers. It was bordered in the west by a path leading south (today rue Monsieur le Prince) and in the north-west by the forecourt of the monastery church. A street later led through this, which after the reform of the order (1502) was named rue de l'Observance (today rue Antoine Dubois). The northeastern border was formed by a former dirt road, the later rue des Cordeliers (today rue de l'École de Médecine), where the monastery entrance was. This street connected the city gate Porte Saint-Germain (today N ° 87 Boulevard Saint-Germain ) with the rue de la Harpe (today Boulevard Saint-Michel ), up to which the monastery district extended.

building

Partial view of the monastery complex in 1793
The monastery cloister in 1793

Only the late Gothic building from the end of the 15th century remains of the monastery, which housed the dining room on the ground floor and the monks' dormitory above. Apart from the monastery churches preserved elsewhere, it is one of the rare examples of medieval monastery architecture in Paris. The building has housed the Musée Dupuytren, dedicated to anatomy, since 1835 .

The original cloister existed until 1877. On the occasion of the construction of a hospital, it was dismantled in view of its poor condition and erected again true to the original using the old substance.

According to the monastery plan from 1774, the mighty three-aisled, sixteen-bay, south-east facing monastery church rose between the cloister and the rue des Cordeliers, behind the apse of which the refectory extended. A little further to the east was the school of theology, which was connected to at least two houses with their gables facing the rue de la Harpe, which were also accessible from there. In 1620, one of these houses housed the royal library , which Henry IV had moved to the great hall of the cloister in 1604 . On the rue de la Harpe, the monastery district bordered the church of Saint-Côme-et-Saint-Damien in the north and the Collège de Justice in the south . The rest of the southern area was taken up by the extensive monastery garden with the infirmarium.

history

The first Friars Minor of St. Francis settled in Saint-Denis in the north of Paris between 1217 and 1219 , from where they moved to the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève . A few years earlier, the Dominicans had founded the so-called Jacobin monastery on the Poterne Saint-Jacques . While the Dominicans were settled within the city wall of Philippe Auguste, the gray brothers planned from 1223 to build a house on an area beyond the Poterne in Vauvert that collapsed before it was completed. Thereupon Abbot Eudes of Saint-Germain-des-Prés left the property described above further west.

Presumably in 1236 Alexander von Hales entered the Couvent des Cordeliers, moved his theological chair to the monastery cloister and founded the older Franciscan school there. He was followed by Bonaventure of Bagnoregio . Not least because of its teachers, the monastery achieved a high reputation and generous patronage. For example, Johanna von Evreux , the wife of King Charles IV , donated a chapel and an infirmary to the brothers in 1341 and left Charles V , who, in the absence of his father as a Dauphin, had convened the Estates General in the great hall of the cloister in 1356 and 1357 to erect several buildings for them. Even Anne of Brittany supported the monastery. In the 17th century, Louis XIV moved the seat and conference venue of the Ordre de Saint-Michel from the Sainte-Chapelle in Vincennes to the Couvent des Cordeliers.

After the outbreak of the revolution , the monastery was closed in 1790. His church and part of the monastery buildings then temporarily served as a meeting place for the club founded by Camille Desmoulins , which was therefore called the Club des Cordeliers . From 1795 the monastery complex housed a hospital before it was demolished in the 1st Empire in 1802 except for the cloister , the refectory and the dormitory in order to help build the practical school of the medical faculty (École Pratique de la Faculté de Médecine) and a new hospital To create space for 140 beds, which was looked after by the Brothers of Mercy , who already ran the nearby Hôpital de la Charité . Both buildings were completely renovated between 1877 and 1900.

Today the Franciscans in Paris are united in the Communion of the Couvent Saint-François de Paris in rue Marie Rose (N ° 7) in the 14th arrondissement , where about twenty brothers live.

Friars and teachers

People buried in the monastery

Tomb of Karl von Evreux († 1336)

See also

literature

  • Laure Beaumont-Maillet: "Le Grand Couvent des Cordeliers de Paris. Etude historique et archéologique du XIIIe siècle à nos jours", Paris 1975
  • Catherine Brut and Sébastien Poignant: "Le réfectoire du couvent des Cordeliers" in "Bulletin de la Société de l'histoire de Paris et de l'Île-de-France", 130e année, pp. 119-286
  • Jacques Hillairet: Dictionnaire Historique des Rues de Paris , Les Editions de Minuit, Paris 1963, ISBN 2-7073-0092-6
  • Théophile Lavallée: Histoire de Paris depuis le temps des Gaulois jusqu'à nos jours. (1814–1848), Volume 2, Edition 1857, Paris, Edition Michel Levy Frères ( online )

Web links

Commons : Couvent des Cordeliers  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Réfectoire in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
  2. ↑ See Jacques Hillairet: "Dictionnaire Historique des rues de Paris"
  3. ↑ According to the official nomenclature of the streets of Paris, this street was called chemin de dessus les fossés (1419); chemin allant à la Porte Saint-Michel (1510), rue des Fossés Saint-Germain (1559–1582), later rue des Fossés Monsieur le Prince and rue de la Liberté (1793)
  4. ↑ See Hillairet, op. Cit. P. 460
  5. ↑ The house on rue de la Harpe appears under the name Bibliothèque du Roi in the plans of Gomboust (1652) and Jouvin de Rochefort (1672). A first royal library founded by Charles V in the Louvre was lost in the Hundred Years War. Louis XI., Charles VIII. And Louis XII. built the second royal library, housed by Francis I in Fontainebleau , which Henry IV brought back to Paris during the Huguenot Wars in 1595 and stored in the Couvent des Cordeliers in 1604. Colbert, Louis XIV's minister, placed her in rue Vivienne before she finally moved to the neighboring city palace in rue Richelieu in 1721, which had been built for Cardinal Mazarin at the time. It is still there today (see BnF )
  6. ↑ See Alfred Fierro: "Histoire et Dictionnaire de Paris", Paris, 1996, Robert Laffont, ISBN 2-221-07862-4 , p. 345
  7. ↑ See Lavallée: "Histoire de Paris depuis le temps des Gaulois jusqu'à nos jours" p. 341
  8. ↑ According to other sources, the heart with the entrails is said to have been buried in Maubuisson.
  9. ↑ See Lavallée, op.cit., P. 341
  10. ↑ See Lavallée, op.cit., P. 341

Coordinates: 48 ° 51 '2 "  N , 2 ° 20' 28.7"  E