Eglolf Blarer

Eglolf Blarer (* in Konstanz ; † May 20, 1442 ) was abbot of the St. Gallen monastery from 1426 to 1442 .

Life

Eglolf was a scion of the important bourgeois merchant family of the Blarer, who originally lived in St. Gallen , but had been based in Constance for a generation . He was a monk in the monastery of St. Blasien , where he held the offices of large cellar and prior . Pope Martin V . appointed him abbot of St. Gallen at the end of 1426 or beginning of 1427. On January 25, 1427 he appears in office for the first time.

«In 1436 he received from the Basel Council the privilege of being ordained by any bishop or abbot if the Ordinary should refuse the ordination, as well as being able to determine the vicars for parishes of the city himself, who were legally subordinate to the abbot and the convent . "

Emperor Sigmund confirmed the regalia including the fiefs and rights on November 28, 1430, as did his successor, Albrecht II, on July 3, 1439.

Act

The financial distress of the monastery led the abbot to ask the papal chamber to defer payment of the fees. The "Appenzeller Tangles", which consisted of a dispute that began in the reign of Abbot Kuno von Stoffeln and culminated in a sad climax with the Appenzell War and had not been resolved for over two decades, was also able to unravel under Blarer. A defeat by Count Friedrich VII of Toggenburg in 1428 made the Appenzeller ready for negotiations. On July 26, 1429, a peace was made between the Bishop of Constance, the St. Jörgen Bund and the Abbot of St. Gallen on the one hand and the Appenzell people on the other, which was almost exactly the ruling of the seven towns in 1421 under Abbot Heinrich von Mansdorf .

Under Abbot Eglolf, both the Appenzeller turmoil and the Old Zurich War came to an end, whereupon the Abbot and Schwyz entered into a land right for 20 years on May 18, 1437. In this the political reorientation of the abbey towards the Swiss Confederation manifested itself for the first time.

On March 16, 1427 and September 28, 1429 Abbot Eglolf reaffirmed the rights and freedoms of the cities of Wil and St. Gallen.

His efforts are also said to have focused on the internal structure of the monastery. To this end, he called monks from the Hersfeld Abbey who belonged to the Bursfeld Congregation. He abolished the monks' own property according to the Benedictine Rule , abolished the beneficiary organizations of the monastery offices and reintroduced life together.

He is said to have repaired the convent buildings that had suffered from the fire of 1418, started building a new choir in 1439, although it could no longer be completed, and set up the convent school.

He removed the reformed monks from Hersfeld in 1440, as they also sought to oblige the abbot to their strict order with the help of a visit to the Basel Council. Instead, he appointed those from the Kastl monastery .

literature

• Anton Gössi: Short biographies of the abbots. In: Johannes Duft, Anton Gössi, Werner Vogler (eds.): The St. Gallen Abbey. St. Gallen 1986, ISBN 3-906616-15-0 , pp. 146-147.

Web links

• Magdalen Bless: Blarer, Eglolf (from Girsberg). In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .

predecessor	Office	successor
Heinrich von Mansdorf	Abbot of St. Gallen 1426–1442	Kaspar von Breitenlandenberg