Jacobin monastery Paris

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The Jacobin Convent on a bird's eye view of Paris around 1540 (Bonnardot tapestry)

The Jacobins Monastery Paris was a convent of the Dominicans in Paris. "Jacobin" was a common name in France for a religious of the preaching order . The religious community , confirmed in a bull by Pope Honorius in 1216 , had two important conventions with renowned schools in Paris and a novitiate . The monastery churches served the ancestors of three royal lines as well as high dignitaries of secular and spiritual power as burial places.

The Dominican Order in Paris

Origin and use of the term "Jacobin"

Various sources give different reasons for the circumstances why the Dominicans were called "Jacobins" in France, including that the name derives from the former Hospice Saint-Jacques and its small chapel dedicated to St. James , which were the first Dominican brothers related soon after their arrival, the most believable. This pilgrimage home was located on the former Gallo-Roman Cardo (today Rue Saint-Jacques ), the southern arterial road that formed the starting point for the northernmost of the French Way of St. James , on which pilgrimages to Galicia to the tomb have been taking place since the middle of the 11th century of St. James in Santiago de Compostela . These gained more and more importance in the 12th century. In the following years the Dominicans were called "Jacobins" all over France.

If it is said in other sources that the Jacobins were named after the street in which their monastery was located, this is not correct, as the street in the inner city was officially called Grand'rue du Petit Pont until the 12th century wore. However, it was later renamed Grand'rue Saint-Jacques des Prêcheurs and thus contained a reference to both the destination of the pilgrimage that began here (the tomb of the saint) and the presence of the order of preachers. So it is rather the other way around.

The third version, according to which the Coming St. Jacques-du-Haut-Pas is said to have been the eponymous factor, which was about 500 meters away in the extension of the same street, but outside the former city gates (today Rue Saint- Jacques). This is a confusion between the order of preachers and the spiritual knight and hospital order of San Giacomo di Altopascio, founded in Italy .

Origins and expansion of the order in Paris

The Dominican Order emerged from a small group formed around Dominic called Frères de la Prédication de Toulouse , which in 1207 consisted of about 30 to a maximum of 40 preachers and who had set themselves the goal of converting the Albigensians in Languedoc . After the community had been elevated to the order of preachers (by Honorius III ) in 1216 , Dominic decided - regardless of the small number of brothers in the order, which had only recently existed and was therefore not yet firmly established - on Pentecost in 1217 to join the Dominicans to send out all points of the compass, which initially met resistance, but was finally able to prevail. In the summer of the same year, two groups left for Paris on different routes .

Religious offices in Paris

Convent on Rue Saint-Jacques

history

Plan of the Jacobin monastery in today's road network
Plan of the Jacobin monastery according to Viollet-le-Duc

The first Dominicans who arrived in Paris in 1217 first settled in a house on the Ile de la Cité , where the new Gothic Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral was being built from 1163 onwards .

A year or two later, on the Rive Gauche , on the left bank of the Seine , they moved into the aforementioned Hospice de Saint-Jacques , built in 1209 on the initiative of Jean Barastre, to provide spiritual, material and medical assistance to the pilgrims of St. James to grant. The entrance was in today's Rue Saint Jacques (number 156, south of the Sorbonne ). A two-aisled church was built there.

Thanks to the support of Louis IX. , King from 1226 to 1270, the Jacobins were able to expand their monastery to various surrounding houses, so that they soon owned the entire area that was to the west of the Rue de la Harpe (today Boulevard Saint-Michel ), to the north of the Rue des Cordiers (Rue Cujas), bordered in the east by the Gand'rue du Petit Pont (Rue Saint-Jacques), and in the south only separated by a street from the city ​​wall, which was recently built on the initiative of Philipp-August (from 1195) has been. Two years after taking possession of the hospice, they built a dormitory and a nursing home on a site in front of the city gates of Saint-Jacques and Saint-Michel (today numbers 151 and 172 of Rue Saint-Jacques) . Despite the opposition of the parish priest of St. Benoît, the monastery cemetery was laid out there in 1220. When a ditch was dug beyond the old city wall in 1358, the extra-urban area had to be relinquished.

On the south wall of the monastery district, the schools called Ecoles Saint-Thomas were built , in which the brothers prepared themselves for preaching in controversial disputes. These were visited by the first great Aristotelian of the Middle Ages, Albertus Magnus (1200-1280), the important church teacher and scholastic Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and Master Eckhart (1260-1328). Alanus de Rupe , also known as Alain de la Roche, who later founded the first Rosary Brotherhood (1468), taught there around 1461 . The schools were closed in 1649. The office of organist was held from 1719 by Louis-Nicolas Clérambault (1676–1749), who passed it on to his sons César-François-Nicolas and Evrard-Dominique.

This monastery, known as the Grand Couvent des Jacobins after the founding of the branch monastery on Rue Saint-Honoré (1613) , was closed during the French Revolution in 1790. Its cloister temporarily served as a dance hall. Eventually, the entire facility, with the exception of the portal, which existed until 1866, was demolished. The rue Soufflot, rue Toullier and rue Victor Cousin were drawn through the parceled out site.

Chief

Prior of the monastery were:

Funerals

In the monastery church, the north facade of which stood between Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue Touillier, roughly on what is now the median of the (now widened) Rue Cujas, there were the corpses, hearts or entrails of 22 kings, queens, princes and princesses of blood and blood among other things, the ancestors of the three royal houses Valois , Évreux and Bourbon were buried (see list of the Capetians ):

Grave figure of the Clementine of Hungary († 1328), Cathedral of Saint-Denis

The following were also buried there:

  • 1318: Jean de Meung , called Clopinel, poet, scholar and translator († at the age of 38)
  • 1355: Humbert II. (1312–1355), last count and Dauphin of Viennois
  • 1602: Jean Passerat , poet († at the age of 68)
  • 1623: Nicolas Coëffeteau, Dominican brother and scholar († at the age of 49)
  • 1724: Noël Alexandre, Dominican brother and scholar († at the age of 85)

Convent on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré

history

After Sebastien Michaelis , the Grand Inquisitor of the Order, the same early 17th century under the influence of the Jesuits had reformed, he was awarded in 1613 to approve the queen mother and regent Marie de Medici , on the Right Bank, in the Rue Saint-Honoré , a second To found a monastery. Thanks to generous donations, including from Henri de Gondi , Bishop of Paris, he was able to acquire a 10- acre property in the street mentioned , which is to the Hôtel de Vendôme (360/364 Rue Saint-Honoré) in the west and to the impasse de la Corderie (now Rue Gomboust) and bordered on the east by Rue de La Sourdière. Behind the main entrance (in the axis of today's Rue du Marché Saint-Honoré at number 328 Rue Saint Honoré), a spacious courtyard surrounded the monastery church, in whose roof the famous library with its 30,000 volumes was set up. Behind it were the monastery buildings, the cloister and a garden.

During the revolution, the monastery, which housed 60 brothers and 20 novices, was closed. The Société des Amis de la Constitution (Society of Friends of the Constitution), split off from the political "Club Breton" (Breton Club) in December 1789 , first used the chapter house, then the library, and finally, due to the increasing number of members, the entire nave as a meeting place and therefore soon became Called the Jacobin Club . Maximilien de Robespierre was the most important representative of the same. His arrest took place on the 9th Thermidor year II (July 27, 1794), and the execution was carried out just one day later. The meeting place was closed on the same day. The National Convention determined the site by a decree of May 17, 1795 (28th Floréal year II) for the construction of market halls, a decision the realization of which was only considered from 1806 and completed in 1810. Nothing remained of the monastery. The Rue du Marché-Saint-Honoré and the square of the same name are now at its location.

Funerals

The following people were buried in the monastery church:

Novitiate in rue du Bac

history

In 1631 four Dominicans who had just arrived from Rome bought a small house south of the Seine at the corner of Rue du Bac and des Chemin aux vaches (today Boulevard Saint-Germain ), in which they set up a novitiate a year later. In the following year, a provisional chapel and several houses were built, the renting of which was intended to finance the project, among other things. Further funds, donations and loans made available by the order enabled the construction of a stately main wing. From 1682 the architect Pierre Bullet (1639-1716) worked on the construction of a larger church (today St. Thomas d'Aquin ), which François Le Moyne provided with ceiling paintings (1723). The work dragged on and could finally be completed after 1765. In the meantime, in 1735, two wings had been placed in a rectangular shape on the main wing and connected by a third, so that the complex had assumed the shape of a square cloister . The floors above the galleries accommodated the monastery cells and the library. When the revolution broke out, there were 14,000 volumes and two globes by the famous Venetian cartographer Vincenzo Maria Coronelli , who resided in Paris between 1681 and 1683.

The novitiate housed 21 brothers when it was closed after the outbreak of the revolution (1790). From 1796 it served as an arms store and museum. This was enriched by the booty of the Napoleonic campaigns and when it was looted by the insurgents during the July Revolution on July 28, 1830, it was the most important "artillery museum" in Europe. When the uprising was over, the weapons were returned to the museum, whose collection in 1905 formed the basis for the establishment of the Musée de l'armée in the Invalides .

Apart from the furniture looted during the revolution, the complex has been almost completely preserved. The former monastery church is now the parish church of St. Thomas d'Aquin . The cloister, the monastery cells and the so-called “great hall”, in which the friars held their services during the construction of the church, are now used by the military authorities.

Funerals

The following were buried in the novitiate on Rue du Bac:

The tombs were taken over by the Musée des Monuments français in 1795 to save them from destruction.

swell

  • Jacques Hillairet: Dictionnaire des rues de Paris , Paris 1963, ISBN 2-7073-0092-6
  • Dictionnaire des Monuments de Paris , Ed. Hervas, Paris 2003

Web links

Commons : Jacobin Monastery, Paris  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ^ Nomenclature of Parisian street names
  2. ↑ Hillairet, Vol. 2, p. 440
  3. ↑ Rue SAINT-JACQUES ( Memento of July 17, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Excerpt from the nomenclature of Parisian street names (French)
  4. ^ Website of the Order of Preachers
  5. ↑ L'envoi des frères par saint Dominique ( Memento of February 24, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Part 5 of the story of St. Dominic on the Order's website (French). The source named there is the French translation (1987) by Anselm Hertz, Helmuth Nils Loose: Dominikus und die Dominikaner . Herder, Freiburg 1981, ISBN 3-451-18388-9 .
  6. ↑ Hillairet, Volume 2, page 440
  7. ↑ according to Wikipedia but * around 1240, † 1305 at the latest