Create fork

Gabel (lat. Gobelinus) Schaffen OSB (* 1582 in Warburg ; † 10 May 1650 in Abdinghof Abbey ) was abbot of Grafschaft Abbey from 1612 to 1633 . He contributed significantly to the economic recovery of the community, but also to the spiritual return to the foundations of the Benedictine order .

Life

Work was Cellarius , d. H. Administrator, at Abdinghof Abbey before he was elected abbot by the Grafschaft Abbey. The reason for this was his excellent reputation as an economic administrator. Behind the election was the county’s economic crisis, which has been worsening for centuries. The brothers hoped that the unusual choice of a foreigner would enable him to restore the community. The new abbot achieved this through several measures. First he took out new loans. These served to redeem the farms that belonged to the monastery and had long been pledged. The resulting income was used to repay the monastery debts. By creating landmarks , Schaffen ensured that the monastery’s financial claims were set down in writing. In the middle of the Thirty Years War , the abbot managed to financially rehabilitate the monastery. The upswing was evident in the expansion of the monastery library. At the time of creation 271 new books were purchased.

But he was not only a financial expert, but also brought about a spiritual return to the Regula Benedicti in the monastery . The resistance to this was so strong that some monks carried out an ultimately unsuccessful poison attack on the abbot. Serious disputes between the monastery and the town of Schmallenberg over pastoral care also took place during Schaff's tenure .

Schaffen also had a dispute with Friedrich von Fürstenberg , who refused to take the oath as a Grafschafter lieutenant.

Beyond his work in Grafschaft, the educated work kept an eye on the events of the time and laid down his point of view in what he called a martyrology. This is now in Paderborn .

From Grafschaft, Schaffel returned to Abdinghof as abbot in 1632. There his authoritarian behavior met with a united opposition from the monks. He spent the last years of his life in disappointment.

literature

• Manfred Wolf: History of the monastery Grafschaft . In: Schmallenberger Sauerland Almanach 1990, pp. 144f.
• Wilhelm Kuhne: Gabel Schaffen, abbot in Grafschaft 1612–1632, savior of the Grafschaft abbey led to the 925 anniversary. In: Sauerland 4/1997, p. 131ff digital version (PDF; 6.1 MB)
• J. Bernard Greve: History of the Abdinghof Benedictine Abbey in Paderborn. Paderborn 1894, pp. 148–158 ( digitized version )
• Josef Rohrbach: Abbot Gabelus work of Abdinghof and his notes in the martyrology written by him . In: Westfälische Zeitschrift Vol. 110/1960, pp. 271–284 PDF file

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Friedrich Albert Groeteken : History of the ancient parish Wormbach , p. 69, from the book series History of the Parishes of the Deanery Wormbach in the Meschede district, Volume II, Part I , Rheinische Verlagsanstalt and Buchdruckerei, Bad Godesberg, 1939 and Seibertz, Family History , P. 172 ff.

predecessor	Office	successor
Gottschalk from Dael	Abbot of Kloster Grafschaft 1612–1633	Johannes Worth