Jean Petit (Abbot General)

Abbot Jean Petit

Jean Petit SOCist (* 1628 in Chalon-sur-Saône , † January 15, 1692 in Cîteaux ) was Abbot of the Cîteaux Monastery and Abbot General of the Cistercian Order .

life and work

At a young age, Petit entered the mother abbey of the Cistercian order, the Cîteaux monastery, only 50 km away from his birthplace. After professing he was sent to study at the Collège des Bernardins in Paris, where he obtained a doctorate in canon law . He was ordained a priest in 1653 and was subprior of the Abbey of Cîteaux for ten years under Abbot Claude Vaussin , then successively prior in the monasteries of La Bussière (40 km west of Cîteaux) and Bonport (Normandy). As procurator of the Norman province of the order, he excelled at the General Chapter in 1667. In 1670, he was elected Abbot General on June 20, who had died after a month in office (March 29 to May 6), who had succeeded Vaussin, with 69 of 73 votes. Confirmed by the king on July 15, 1670 and by the Pope on November 16, Petit was ordained abbot on December 21, and the king was sworn in on March 1, 1671.

Petit, who lived ascetic and had considerable rhetorical talent in Latin and French, made a name for himself in the legal status of strict observance in the order, which he was able to establish in a long struggle (1672–1686) to the satisfaction of all. If a hundred years later the reunification of the observances was within reach and was only prevented by the outbreak of the French Revolution, it is thanks to his preparatory work.

Works

• Factum pour dom Jean Petit, abbé de Cisteaux, chef et superieur géneral de l'ordre dudit Cisteaux, défendeur et intimé. Contre les abbez de Cadouin, de Foulcarmont, du Pin, de Priéres, et autres, demandeurs & appelants, comme d'abus, d'un bref de NSP le pape Clement X. Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, Paris 1673.
• (Preface) Calendarium Cisterciense seu martyrologium sacri ordinis Cisterciensis, Romanis rubricis accomdate. Paris 1689.

literature

• Immo Eberl : The Cistercians. History of a European Order . Thorbecke, Ostfildern, 2nd edition 2007, pp. 437–441.
• Louis Julius Lekai : Abbot Jean Petit of Citeaux and the strict observance . In: Analecta Cisterciensia 16, 1960, pp. 120-142.
• Jean-Loup Lemaitre (* 1945): "Le Martyrologe cistercien publié à Paris en 1689 par Jean Petit", in: Cîteaux (Commentarii cistercienses) 50, 1999, pp. 135-185.
• Eugène Manning : Jean Petit . In: Emile Brouette, Anselme Dimier and Eugène Manning (eds.): Dictionnaire des auteurs cisterciens . La Documentation Cistercienne, Vol. 16, Rochefort 1975-1979, 552-553.