Jordan of Saxony

Jordan of Saxony after a fresco by Fra Angelico in the monastery of San Marco (Florence)

Jordan of Saxony (also Iordanus de Saxonia, Jordanus Saxo, Gordanus, Giordanus, Jordanus de Alamania (Alamaia?), Jordanus Teutonicus [Theutonicus], nhd .: Jordan of Saxony ; * around 1185/1190 at Dassel ; † February 13, 1237 near Akkon off the Syrian coast) was the second master of the order of the Dominicans and is considered the only significant Catholic blessed in Lower Saxony . His Catholic feast day is February 13th .

Life

His place of birth is not recorded. According to the evidence gathered from historical research, its origin relates to the castle hill near Dassel , which belongs to the Ellenser Forest, opposite Hunnesrück Castle . Berthold I von Dassel, a son of Adolf I von Dassel , is recorded as a Dominican in Hildesheim . According to a manuscript from the 14th century, he was won by Jordan as a follower on the occasion of a visit to the castle hill. At that time, the area was sovereign in the county of Dassel and ecclesiastically in the archdeacon of Nörten . A note from Franciscus Lubecus also corresponds to this assignment.

His name means "the bold on earth" (Latin-Old High German). With Jordanus Nemorarius and Jordan von Osnabrück he had contemporaries of a similar name, so that there were occasional mix-ups in later centuries. The fact that the English chronicler Nicholas Trivet (Annales sex regum) wrote that Jordan of Saxony was an outstanding scientist who had written a book about weights and a book De lineis datis also played a role in the equation with Jordanus Nemorarius . But there are no other known works by Jordan von Sachsen on mathematics or mechanics.

After organizing and largely restructuring the Dominican Order in Paris, he went on a long journey to Jerusalem in 1237 to visit religious offices in the Holy Land . However, on the way back, his ship crashed into a rock near Acre off the Syrian coast. He was buried in Acre in the old Dominican Church (Predigerkirche), the location of which is still unknown and which was destroyed during the siege of Acre (1291) .

Act

After studying theology in Paris , he joined the Dominican order together with Heinrich von Köln in 1220 and took part in the general assembly in Bologna that same year . In 1221 the Lombard Province was transferred to him and in 1222 he became General of the Dominican Order and successor to St. Dominic in Paris.

He is considered to be the actual organizer of the order. His high education, which also made him an excellent speaker, earned him worldwide recognition and fame. He founded the Catholic teaching activity and thus the actual late medieval theology . He ensured that the monks were properly trained on a practical basis without too much zeal and without too much piety, which in his opinion could only harm. By founding over 300 conventions and numerous sermons in the university cities of Europe, he won many new followers of the order. Albertus Magnus was one of the most important of them. The obvious harmony between word, deed and lifestyle that Jordan radiated brought him cultic veneration during his lifetime.

Before joining the Dominican Order (1220), Jordanus Saxo made a contribution to the theory of the language system , which has been recognized in recent research as a milestone in the history of general linguistics . At the time of higher scholasticism , grammar (at that time in the sense of teaching language production and language perception) was essentially described from the perspective of the logic of language. During his teaching activity in Paris, Jordanus Saxo succeeded around 1219 in developing an independent, grammatical-theoretical new explanation approach. To this end, he wrote a Middle Latin commentary on a Priscian treatise. His linguistic interest was in the sentence-by-sentence, well-rounded utterance or speech that indicates, denotes or means something firmly outlined. In particular, he investigated the question of whether logic or grammar theory should be considered the earlier, more elementary discipline of trivium speech sciences. Jordanus Saxo came to the conclusion that grammar theory, i.e. H. linguistics related to language ( lingua franca ), which is more elementary, because its object of investigation, meaningfully coherent speech, developed earlier than that of the scholastic logic theory of language. Thus he made an important advance on the trivium concept of scholasticism. The approach was later developed by people like Thomas von Erfurt .

Jordan is regarded as the author of the order chronicle Libellus de principiis ordinis praedicatorum . In addition, 56 letters have survived, most of which he wrote to Diana Andalo in Paris .

Honors

On May 10, 1826 he was by Pope Leo XII. beatified.

He is also the patron saint of the engineering faculty of the Pontifical and Royal University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Manila and of the Dominican lay community in the Archdiocese of Freiburg .

literature

• Clm 14476, Folio 17 recte (column a), to Folio 61 recte (column a) of the Bavarian State Library in Munich, contains the Priscian Minor Commentary by Jordanus Saxo. Incipit: "Sermocinalis scientia, (cum) sit de sermone, diversificatur sicut et sermo"
• Nicolaus Heutger, Viola Heutger: Lower Saxon religious houses and monasteries: past and present . 2009, p. 285 f. ( Excerpt from Google Books )
• Milutin Michael Nickl: The Linguistic Turn of the Jordan of Saxony. In: Progress stages of language communication theory 1219, 1300/10, 1500, 1966/73. PAC correspondence no. 83 / new series no. 23 (special issue), Erlangen / Lauf 2009, pp. 9–71
• Reinhard Neumann: Jordanus von Padberg. Un: Westphalian magazine. Volume 146, 1996, pp. 215-221
• Hans-Jürgen von der Wense: Freidank von Akers (1229). In: The IIX stake . Mathes & Seitz, Munich 1994, p. 56, note 1
• Ernst Pulsfort:  Jordan (us) of Saxony. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 3, Bautz, Herzberg 1992, ISBN 3-88309-035-2 , Sp. 652-654.
• Klemens Honselmann:  Jordan of Saxony. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-428-00191-5 , p. 598 ( digitized version ).
• Angelus Walz: Beati Iordani de Saxonia Epistulae . (Monumenta ordinis fratrum praedicatorum historica, volume 23). 1951
• Martin Grabmann : The commentary of Blessed Jordanus of Saxony († 1237) on Priscianus minor. In: Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum. Volume X, 1940, pp. 1-19; Reprinted in: L. Ott (Ed.): Martin Grabmann. Medieval spiritual life. Volume III, Munich 1956, pp. 232-242
• Heribert Christian Scheeben: Contributions to the history of Jordan of Saxony . 1938
• Berthold Altaner: The letters of Jordan of Saxony, the second Dominican general . 1925
• Franz Stanonik :  Jordan of Saxony . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1881, pp. 502-504.
• Wolfram Hoyer OP, Jordan of Saxony. From the beginnings of the order of preachers (series: Dominican sources and testimonies , volume 3), Leipzig.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Nathalie Kruppa: The Counts of Dassel (1097-1337 / 38). 2002, p. 105 ( excerpt )
2. ^ Franziskus Lubecus, Reinhard Vogelsang: Göttinger Annalen: from the beginnings to the year 1588. 1994, p. 79 ( excerpt from Google Books )
3. ↑ Edward Grant: Article Jordan de Nemore. In: Dictionary of Scientific Biography
4. ↑ Achim Wesjohann, Mendikantische Gründungserzählungen im 13th and 14th centuries , 2012, p. 373
5. ↑ Jörg Oberste: The mendicant orders under construction. Contributions to processes of institutionalization in medieval religiosity. 1999, p. 81 ( excerpt from Google Books )
6. ↑ Milutin Michael Nickl: The Linguistic Turn of the Jordan of Saxony 1219. In: PAC correspondence. 83/2009 (new episode 23), pp. 9–71 online (PDF; 5.2 MB)

Web links

Commons : Jordan von Sachsen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Iordanus de Saxonia in the repertory "Historical Sources of the German Middle Ages"
• Blessed Jordan of Saxony in: Proprium of the Order of Preachers
• Jordan of Saxony in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints

predecessor	Office	successor
Dominic	Order general of the Dominicans 1222–1237	Raymond of Peñafort