Laurentius Scipio

Laurentius Scipio SOCist (Latin: scipio = rod, actually Laurenz Knittel, born November 11, 1611 in Oberlangenau / Grafschaft Glatz ; † September 26, 1691 in Ossegg / Bohemia ) was an abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Ossegg in Northern Bohemia.

Life

After the abbot and vicar general of the Bohemian order province Johannes Greifenfels had died on March 8, 1650, the convent in Königsaal elected the Ossegg profess Laurenz Knittel, called Scipio, on March 18, 1650 as abbot of Ossegg. Three days later it was introduced to Ossegg by the Hohenfurt abbot Georg Wendschug. Scipio was the abbot of the monastery for 41 years. During this time he laid the foundation stone for the Baroque transformation of the monastery under his successor Benedikt Litwerig from a dilapidated monastery and with the help of a few confreres .

Abbot Scipio probably spent the last years of his life in illness. According to Macek, he suffered a stroke as early as 1673 . There is no evidence of this in his diary. It wasn't until 1682 that his records ended for no apparent reason. The last entry in his diary is from February 2, 1682 and does not contain any information about the reason for the termination. Laurentius Scipio died on September 26th, 1691. His successor Benedikt Litwerig was in no way inferior to Scipio when it came to thirst for action. Under his Abbatiat, the monastery was largely given its present form.

Quote

The Ossegg monk Dominik Schiel wrote in 1920 about the condition of the Ossegg monastery around 1650:

“... because what did the new abbot [Laurentius Scipio] find? Bare walls, a few living rooms under ruins, the furnishings burned, the church utensils kidnapped, the goods pledged, a church of which only the surrounding walls stood and, on top of all that, no more than three confreres who entrusted themselves to his leadership. "

- Dominik Schiel: A Cistercian Abbot as a Social Politician, p. 17.

literature

• Mario Feuerbach: The Cistercian monastery Ossegg. Building history and design from its foundation in 1196 to 1691 . Aachen 2009. ISBN 3-8107-9306-X ; ISBN 978-3-8107-9306-5 .
• Mario Feuerbach: The Osek Monastery, the pilgrimage site of Mariánské Radčice and the Cistercians. Klášter Osek, Poutní Místo Mariánské Radčice a Cisterciáci, Litvínov 2012. ISBN 978-80-7382-151-7 .
• Dominik Schiel: A Cistercian Abbot as a Social Politician , in: Communications from the Association for the History of Germans in Böhmen 58 (1920), pp. 15–38.
• Laurentius Scipio in Biographia Cisterciensis (Cistercian Biography)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dominik Schiel: A Cistercian Abbot as a Social Politician, in: Communications from the Association for the History of Germans in Böhmen 58 (1920), p. 17.