Landelin from Crespin

Landelin von Crespin , also Lando , Landolin , Landolinus and von Lobbes (* 6th century or 7th century; † June 15, 686 ), was the founder of the monastery and abbot in Hainaut . He is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church ; his feast day is June 15th.

Life dates

The information on the year of his birth and his death, which can be found in various life reports, is contradictory and in some cases deviates considerably from one another, and the dates of the monasteries he founded are difficult to reconcile with those published about his eventful youth. This is partly due to a lack of written evidence from the time, partly also due to the subsequent creation of legends that surrounded his life. His birth is variously placed in the years 605, 613, 625, 635 and 637; If one calculates back from the dates of the founding of monasteries, which fall between 650 and 670, then the period in the first two decades of the 7th century appears rather plausible. He probably died in 686, but 685 and even 707 are also mentioned.

youth

Landelin was born in Vaux near Bapaume (today in the Pas-de-Calais department ) as a scion of a Frankish noble family, the Lords of Vaulx. His parents planned for him, as a later son, a career in the church. Already at the age of seven he came into the care of Bishop Autbert of Cambrai , who had baptized him and was now to prepare him for the priesthood. Shortly before his consecration, however, following the whispers of dubious relatives, he ran away and joined a band of robbers, whose leader he soon became under the name "Maurosus" and stayed for five years.

It was only after one of his closest companions was killed in a night robbery that he was converted. In a dream he is said to have seen how evil spirits led his friend's soul to hell, while an angel exhorted Landelin to repentance and repentance . Thereupon he left his cronies and returned ruefully to his tutor Autbert. This took him in again and subjected him to a rigorous penal regiment. Soon after, Landelin became a monk . He made three pilgrimages to Rome and was ordained a deacon after the first and a priest after the second .

Foundations of monasteries

Lobbes

After returning from the third trip to Rome, during which his two companions Adelin (Adelinus, Adelenus) and Domitian (Domitianus, Domitien, Deumianus) had accompanied him, the three of them received permission from Bishop Autbert to move to Hainaut to pray and atone in solitude. Landelin chose a desolate spot on the Sambre , which, after the Laubach (Laubac, Laubacus) stream flowing there, is said to have had the name "Labieni Castra" in the past, and which is now called "Laubacum" (Laubium, Laubiae, Lobias, Lobbes ) and is now is a village in Belgium . There, however, more and more students flocked to him, including many of his former gang members, so that at 650 he was finally forced to first establish a permanent community and then a monastery according to the rules of St. Benedict , which he shared with lands that his Family received from the Frankish kings. The complex grew rapidly and in 654 the Lobbes Abbey was formally consecrated. Since Landelin considered himself unworthy to be an abbot and preferred to live in solitude, he appointed one of his first students, Ursmar (Ursmer, Ursmarus), who was later canonized , as abbot; he completed the convent building that had begun , built the monastery church and the Notre Dame church, and devoted himself to missionary work in what is now Belgium.

Aulne

Landelin stayed in Lobbes until 654. Then he moved to the hamlet of Aulne (Aune, Alna), today part of the municipality of Thuin in the province of Hainaut in Belgium, a few kilometers from Lobbes, and founded a second Benedictine monastery there in 656 on the Sambre, the Aulne Abbey , which he also furnished with property given by the Frankish kings.

Waslere (Wallers)

A year later, in 657, he founded a third monastery, the Abbey Waslere , a few kilometers south of Aulne, in Wallers-en-Fagne , which he gave to the apostles Peter , on property that his family had received from King Dagobert I and dedicated it to Paul and subordinate his pupil to Dodo as abbot.

Crespin

Driven by the desire for solitude, he soon moved with Adelin and Domitian to the Amblise forest in Hainaut between Valenciennes and Mons , where he built a wooden cell on the banks of the groves that flows into the Scheldt near Condé-sur-l'Escaut . When the owner of the forest tried to rob them of their clothes as the price for the unauthorized sawing of branches, he was paralyzed; Landelin only healed him after his clothes had been surrendered. After his prayer, at the point where Landelin struck his staff on the ground, a strong spring is said to have emerged whose rippling waves ("crispantibus undis") prompted him to name the place "Crispinium" (Crespin). The call of the three hermits and the stories of Landelin's miraculous deeds increasingly attracted new students, so that Landelin had a chapel built, which then became the nucleus of the Benedictine monastery of Crespin , which was probably consecrated around 670 and dedicated to the apostle Peter . Landelin became his first abbot, but he built his own little hermitage nearby, where he usually stayed to pray in seclusion. His two faithful Adelin and Domitian also moved to remote huts.

Landelin died in Crespin, probably on June 15, 686, and was buried in the local monastery church.

Relics

The relics Landelins were worshiped in the monastery church of Crespin. In the 9th century, however, the monastery was increasingly in danger of being plundered or even destroyed by Vikings on their raids. To counter this danger, Landelin's relics were probably transferred to Boke near Paderborn in 836 . From there they came to the Flechtdorf monastery near Korbach in 1104 . When the Flechtdorf monastery was dissolved, they were first taken to the Odacker monastery near Warstein in Westphalia. His head came to Osnabrück in 1648.

literature

Hans D. Tönsmeyer: The holy Landelin of Crespin, 836-1986. Festschrift to celebrate the 1150th anniversary of the transfer of his relics to Boke. Paperback, 1986. ISBN 3980031357 ( ISBN 978-3980031356 ).

Web links

Commons : Landelin by Crespin - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

↑ According to tradition, his family descended from the legendary Merovingian king Merowech .
↑ Augustin Calmet: Dictionnaire des Abbayes et Monastères, édition Aux ateliers catholiques, 1896, p. 230. Other sources name founding dates that vary from 640 to 691.
↑ In fact, the abbey was destroyed by the Vikings in 870, but was soon rebuilt.
^ Johann Evangelist Stadler et al. (Ed.): Complete lexicon of saints . Vol. 3, Augsburg 1869, pp. 668-669. ( Digitized version )

personal data
SURNAME	Landelin from Crespin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Landelin of Lobbes; Landolinus; Lando; Landolin; Landelinus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Monastery founder, abbot and saint
DATE OF BIRTH	6th century or 7th century
PLACE OF BIRTH	Bapaume
DATE OF DEATH	June 15, 686
Place of death	Crespin

[1] According to tradition, his family descended from the legendary Merovingian king Merowech .

[2] Augustin Calmet: Dictionnaire des Abbayes et Monastères, édition Aux ateliers catholiques, 1896, p. 230. Other sources name founding dates that vary from 640 to 691.

[3] In fact, the abbey was destroyed by the Vikings in 870, but was soon rebuilt.

[4] Johann Evangelist Stadler et al. (Ed.): Complete lexicon of saints . Vol. 3, Augsburg 1869, pp. 668-669. ( Digitized version )