Cologne Franciscan Province
The Cologne Franciscan Province of the Three Kings ( Colonia ) was a religious province of the Franciscans . It was first founded in 1239 and, with an interruption due to secularization, existed until 2010 when it merged with the three other German provinces to form the German Franciscan Province . Before the merger, it extended over the western Ruhr area, the Rhineland, the Eifel, the Hunsrück and the Saarland to the Palatinate and thus roughly over the area of the former Prussian Rhine province .
history
Founding and development up to the 18th century
The Colonia looked back on a long, almost 800-year history: In 1209 Francis of Assisi founded his community, which was founded in 1210 by Pope Innocent III. has been confirmed. The first Franciscans came to Cologne as early as 1222, which then became the center of what was originally the only German province of Teutonia . Because the Franciscan movement also developed with astonishing speed in Germany, Teutonia was divided into a Rhenish ( Provincia Rheni ) and a Saxon province ( Provincia Saxonia ) as early as 1230 . Another rewrite of the German provinces resulted in the division of the Rhenish into Provincia Argentina (Upper German Province, Strasbourg) and Provincia Colonia (Low German Province) at the General Chapter of the Order in Rome in 1239 .
The general chapter of 1260 determined the division of the Colonia into seven custodians : Cologne, Trier, Hesse, Westphalia, Holland, Deventer and Brabant. In 1282 the province already had 80 monasteries, making it the second largest province of the entire order after the Aquitaine.
Around the middle of the 14th century, the province of Colonia, like its neighboring province of Saxonia , suffered severely from the outbreak of the plague . According to estimates, two thirds of the brothers could have fallen victim to the disease, in some convents only a few remained alive. The Franciscans looked after the sick in this emergency at risk of their own lives and stood by the dying.
Starting in Italy, an observant reform movement developed in the order from the 14th century , which pursued a strict interpretation of the rules of the order , especially the vow of poverty. The movement came to Germany via France. In its 1414 Constitution Supplicationibus, the Council of Constance allowed the Brothers of Strict Observance ( stricta observantia regularis ) to settle in all of the Order's provinces. A new monastery was founded in Gouda in 1439 as the first observant settlement in Colonia .
In 1519 the province formed three custodies at its provincial chapter in Middelburg: a Dutch, a Brabant and a Rhenish custody. The monasteries of Colonia , like those of Saxonia and Thuringia in the 17th century, all joined the recollects within the Observance movement , so that there was no split in the province on this issue.
19th - 21st century
At the end of the 18th century, before secularization , the Cologne province had around a thousand brothers in 38 monasteries. The French occupation government abolished the province's monasteries on the left bank of the Rhine in 1802, while those on the right bank of the Rhine fell victim to a decree of the Bavarian-Palatinate-Berg government in 1804 . The province was abolished under civil law, but it continued to exist under canon law. The convent in Hardenberg-Neviges actually remained and joined the association of the province of Saxonia , five of which continued to exist. In several places it was possible the Saxon province of the order in the second half of the 19th century, convents wiederzugründen after the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV. The Franciscans on 27 November 1843, the reception of novices - initially with respective individual approval - and the choice of a Provincials had allowed again. From 1854 to 1852 Saxonia was called the "Rhenish-Westphalian Province of the Holy Cross".
At the turn of the 20th century, efforts arose to re-establish the old Cologne province, especially among the brothers of Rhineland descent. The general visitator of Saxonia , P. Chrysostomus Luft, recommended the separation of the Rhenish monasteries from Saxonia in the final report of his visit in 1900 . These were Düsseldorf, Remagen, Aachen, Mönchengladbach, Bonn-Kreuzberg, Cologne, Marienthal and Ehrenstein, Essen was added in 1903, St. Thomas in 1909 and Euskirchen in 1916. The General Minister of the Franciscan Order, Fr. Aloysius Lauer , supported these tendencies because he hoped that the preponderance of the Italian provinces could be reduced by the creation of new provinces outside Italy; he asked the provincial chapter of Saxonia to deal with the question, and instructed the provincial definitor of Saxonia , the Rhinelander Odorikus Ries, to carry out the appropriate preparations. However, the provincial chapter and the Definitory processed the matter hesitantly, and there were several undecided votes. The discussion among the brothers was sometimes so violent that General Minister Dionysius Schuler , successor to Aloysius Lauer, who died in 1901, intervened in 1903 and rejected the re-establishment of the Colonia and forbade further discussion. Even with the outbreak of the First World War , there was initially no further development.
On April 17, 1929, the Cologne Franciscan Province was revived by separating the Saxon Province convents in the Rhineland (in the dioceses of Cologne and Trier ) after there had been "tensions" between the Westphalian and Rhenish parts of Saxonia had given. Regardless of its name Colonia , the seat of the provincial administration (Provincialate) was in Düsseldorf , after the Saxonia moved its Provincialate from there to the Werl Monastery after the separation . The novitiate was located after the separation in the monastery in Aachen .
The province's patrons were the Three Kings , whose bones - according to tradition - are venerated in Cologne Cathedral .
On July 1, 2010, the Cologne Franciscan Province merged with the three other German provinces to form the German Franciscan Province of Saint Elisabeth, based in Munich .
Settlements of the rebuilt province
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Well-known members of the province
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Provincial Minister of the Rebuilt Province
- 1929-1938 P. Suitbert Boemer; † October 16, 1938
- 1938-1941 P. Servatius Schittly
- 1941-1947 P. Cantius Stenz; † 1952
- 1947-1953 P. Antonellus Engemann
- 1953–1962 P. Edmund Kurten
- 1962–1974 P. Michael Nordhausen ; † June 17, 2003
- 1974–1980 P. Landolf Wißkirchen; † October 9, 2002
- 1980–1989 P. Herbert Schneider
- 1989–1990 P. Alexander Gerken
- 1990-1997 P. Peter Schorr
- 1997-2004 P. Klaus-Josef Färber; † April 6, 2015
- 2004–2010 Fr Franz-Leo Barden
Magazines
- Science and wisdom . (1934–1994)
- Science and wisdom. Franciscan Studies in Theology, Philosophy and History. (since 1994, published jointly by the Cologne and Saxon Franciscan provinces)
literature
- Konrad Eubel OFMConv: History of the Cologne Minorite Order Province. J. & W. Boisserée, Cologne 1906 (publications of the historical association for the Lower Rhine, vol. 199)
- Patricius Schlager OFM: Contributions to the history of the Cologne Franciscan Order Province in the Middle Ages. Bachem-Verlag, Cologne 1904.
- Patricius Schlager OFM: History of the Cologne Franciscan Order Province during the Reformation Age. Manz-Verlag, Regensburg 1909.
- Herbert Schneider OFM : The Franciscans in the German-speaking area. Life u. Aims. Werl / Westphalia: Dietrich-Coelde-Verlag, 1985.
Web links
Individual evidence
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↑ Willibald Kullmann: The Saxon Franciscan Province, a tabular guide to its history. Düsseldorf 1927, 9.14-20.
Dieter Berg (Ed.): Traces of Franciscan History. Werl 1999, p. 37. - ^ Dieter Berg: The Franciscans in Westphalia. In: ders .: Poverty and History. Studies on the history of the mendicant orders in the High and Late Middle Ages. (= Saxonia Franciscana Volume 11.) Butzon & Bercker, Kevelaer 2001, ISBN 3-7666-2074-6 , pp. 307-334, here p. 320.
- ^ Dieter Berg: The Franciscans in Westphalia. In: ders .: Poverty and History. Studies on the history of the mendicant orders in the High and Late Middle Ages. (= Saxonia Franciscana Volume 11.) Butzon & Bercker, Kevelaer 2001, ISBN 3-7666-2074-6 , pp. 307-334, here p. 321.
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↑ Dieter Berg (Ed.): Traces of Franciscan History. Werl 1999, p. 19.57.251.
Bernd Schmies: Structure and organization of the Saxon Franciscan Province and its Custody of Thuringia from the beginning to the Reformation. In: Thomas T. Müller, Bernd Schmies, Christian Loefke (Eds.): For God and the World. Franciscans in Thuringia. Text and catalog volume for the exhibition in the Mühlhausen museums from March 29 to October 31, 2008. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn / Munich / Vienna / Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-506-76514-7 , pp. 38–49, here P. 41. - ^ Karl Suso Frank : Recollects . In: Walter Kasper (Ed.): Lexicon for Theology and Church . 3. Edition. tape 8 . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1999, Sp. 1025 f .
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^ Willibald Kullmann: Anton Joseph Binterims parish bankruptcy. A contribution to the history of the study system of the Cologne Franciscan Province in the Enlightenment period. In: Franziskanische Studien 27 (1940), pp. 1–21, here p. 3 note 6;
oN (Willibald Kullmann): Our dead, Part I. Düsseldorf 1941 (Book of the Dead of the Cologne Franciscan Province), pp. XVII-XX. - ↑ Dieter Berg (Ed.): Traces of Franciscan History. Werl 1999, p. 443.447.
- ↑ Dieter Berg (Ed.): Traces of Franciscan History. Chronological outline of the history of the Saxon Franciscan provinces from their beginnings to the present. Werl 1999, pp. 527, 535.
- ↑ Hans-Georg Aschoff : From the Kulturkampf to the First World War. In: Joachim Schmiedl (Ed.): From Kulturkampf to the beginning of the 21st century. Paderborn 2010, pp. 23–287, here pp. 110ff.
- ↑ dombibliothek-koeln.de, There was never a lack of initiatives and ideas (75 years Colonia) ( Memento from September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), article in: Church newspaper for the Archdiocese of Cologne from September 24, 2004 , accessed on May 6 2015.
- ↑ Dieter Berg (Ed.): Traces of Franciscan History. Werl 1999, p. 555.
- ↑ Our dead. Part II. (Special issue from Rhenania Franciscana ) Düsseldorf 1941, p. 140.