Laurentia McLachlan

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Laurentia McLachlan OSB (born January 11, 1866 in Coatbridge as Margaret McLachlan , † August 23, 1953 in Stanbrook Abbey) was a Scottish Benedictine and abbess of Stanbrook Monastery (near Worcester , England ). She became known through her church music studies and correspondence with various British personalities.

Life

Margaret McLachlan was the youngest of the seven children of the accountant Henry McLachlan and his wife Mary, nee McAleese.

From 1881 Margaret McLachlan, following the example of her older sister, attended the convent school in Stanbrook. A visit to Solesmes in 1883 was the decisive factor in her decision to become a Benedictine. In February 1884 she entered the Stanbrook Monastery. On September 6, 1884, she made her vows as a nun and chose the religious name Laurentia.

Laurentia led a monstrous ascetic life according to the Regula Benedicti and was entrusted with many tasks in her monastery community. She worked as an organist and cantor, initiated major and minor reforms in the religious life of the nuns and carried out historical studies of church music on a scientific level. Together with Father Laurence Shepherd OSB, monk of Ampleforth, and others, she made a significant contribution to reintroducing Gregorian chant to England. Her introduction to Gregorian chant, published in 1905, was groundbreaking: Grammar of Plainsong . The book was published by four publishers and was soon translated into German, French and Italian.

Laurentia also made a name for itself by indexing medieval manuscripts. She assisted the medievalist André Wilmart OSB in researching the manuscripts in the cathedral library in Worcester, during which she sermons of St. Augustine identified. She also strengthened friendships in the seclusion of dialogues, which she called the “apostolate of the consulting room”.

In November 1931 Laurentia was elected abbess of her convent . In 1934 Pope Pius XI awarded her . the Bene Merenti Papal Merit Medal for her services to church music . For 46 years she maintained a pen friendship with Sydney Cockerell and - through him - with the writer Bernard Shaw , whom she first met in 1924. One topic that Shaw kept coming back to in his letters to the nun was the power of prayer . In the work, Freedom Beyond the Grid , Shaw processed his experiences of exchanging ideas with Laurentia through letters (Shaw wrote to her until he was the last year of his life) and through conversations .

Afterlife

The pen friendship of the three people (Laurentia, Cockerell, Shaw) inspired Laurentia's fellow sister, the writer Felicitas Corrigan , to write her book The Nun, the Infidel, and the Superman (German for example: The Nun, the Infidel and the Superhuman ), which was published in 1986 appeared and was processed by Hugh Whitemore to the play The Best of Friends . The piece premiered in the 1988 season and returned to the stage in 2006.

Fonts

  • A grammar of plainsong in two parts . Stanbrook Abbey Press, Worcester / Burns & Oates, London / The art & book Co., London / Benziger Brothers, New York, 1905.

literature

  • Benedictines of Stanbrook: In a great tradition. Tribute to Dame Laurentia McLachlan, Abbess of Stanbrook . Murray, London 1956.
    • German edition under the title: Freedom beyond the grid. The Abbess Laurentia and George Bernard Shaw . Translated and edited by Jakob Laubach. Claassen, Hamburg 1958.
  • Margaret Truran: "Nun of a closed monastery, but not a closed mind". Laurentia McLachlan OSB (1866–1953) from Stanbrook Abbey . In: Erbe und Einsatz, Vol. 94 (2018), pp. 275–292.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Laurentia Johns: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/38675 In: The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , Oxford University Press, 2004
  2. ↑ Margaret Truran: "Nun of a closed monastery, but not a closed mind". Laurentia McLachlan OSB (1866–1953) from Stanbrook Abbey . In: Erbe und Einsatz, Vol. 94 (2018), pp. 275–292, here pp. 276–278.
  3. ↑ Margaret Truran: "Nun of a closed monastery, but not a closed mind". Laurentia McLachlan OSB (1866–1953) from Stanbrook Abbey . In: Erbe und Einsatz, Vol. 94 (2018), pp. 275–292, here p. 278.
  4. ↑ Margaret Truran: "Nun of a closed monastery, but not a closed mind". Laurentia McLachlan OSB (1866–1953) from Stanbrook Abbey . In: Erbe und Einsatz, Vol. 94 (2018), pp. 275–292, here p. 278 and p. 290.
  5. ↑ Margaret Truran: "Nun of a closed monastery, but not a closed mind". Laurentia McLachlan OSB (1866–1953) from Stanbrook Abbey . In: Erbe und Einsatz, Vol. 94 (2018), pp. 275–292, here p. 281.
  6. ↑ Margaret Truran: "Nun of a closed monastery, but not a closed mind". Laurentia McLachlan OSB (1866–1953) from Stanbrook Abbey . In: Erbe und Einsatz, Vol. 94 (2018), pp. 275–292, here pp. 281–282.
  7. ↑ Margaret Truran: "Nun of a closed monastery, but not a closed mind". Laurentia McLachlan OSB (1866–1953) from Stanbrook Abbey . In: Erbe und Einsatz, Vol. 94 (2018), pp. 275–292, here p. 284.
  8. ↑ a b Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 327.
  9. ↑ Margaret Truran: "Nun of a closed monastery, but not a closed mind". Laurentia McLachlan OSB (1866–1953) from Stanbrook Abbey . In: Erbe und Einsatz, Vol. 94 (2018), pp. 275–292, here p. 275.
  10. ↑ Margaret Truran: "Nun of a closed monastery, but not a closed mind". Laurentia McLachlan OSB (1866–1953) from Stanbrook Abbey . In: Erbe und Einsatz, Vol. 94 (2018), pp. 275–292, here p. 288.
  11. ↑ Margaret Truran: "Nun of a closed monastery, but not a closed mind". Laurentia McLachlan OSB (1866–1953) from Stanbrook Abbey . In: Erbe und Einsatz, Vol. 94 (2018), pp. 275–292, here p. 291.
  12. ↑ According to the Benedictine attitude of humility , the author's information on the title page reads "by the Benedictines of Stanbrook". It was well known, however, that Laurentia McLachlan was the author.
personal data
SURNAME McLachlan, Laurentia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sister Laurentia OSB (religious name); McLachlan, Margaret (christened name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish nun, abbess
DATE OF BIRTH January 11, 1866
PLACE OF BIRTH Coatbridge
DATE OF DEATH 23rd August 1953
Place of death Stanbrook Abbey