Marc-Antoine Berdolet

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Bishop Marc-Antoine Berdolet, painting by Aegidius Johann Peter Joseph Scheuren
Memorial plaque to Berdolet in the choir hall of Aachen Cathedral

Marc-Antoine Berdolet (born September 13, 1740 in Rougemont-le-Château , † August 13, 1809 in Aachen ) was a Catholic priest and bishop of Aachen .

Live and act

The bishop was born on September 13, 1740, the son of the teacher George Berdolet and his wife Marie Jeanne nee. Gatois was born near Belfort in France . He attended high school in Pruntrut and then entered the seminary at Besançon , where he was ordained a priest on April 9, 1767 . After a short period as vicar in Delle , he received the pastor's post in Phaffans , from where he later worked as dean for Upper Alsace . Influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment and Gallicanism , he was one of the first priests to take the oath on the civil constitution of the clergy . But his incontestable faith and pastoral zeal made him suspect, so that he was imprisoned during the Jacobin reign of terror during the French Revolution. Only the fall of Robespierre freed him from this situation, but the constitutional church had meanwhile largely lost the support of the state.

A national council should re-regulate the situation of the Church and so Berdolet was after the measures provided for in the Civil Constitution method of Bishops elected and in the August 15, 1796 Dominican church Colmar for constitutional bishop of the departments of Haut-Rhin ordained . The bishop took his seat in Sulz , but he and all other bishops had to resign in 1801, as provided for in the 1801 Concordat .

At the intercession of Napoleon's wife , Joséphine , whom he met on one of her visits during his imprisonment and on whom he had made a strong impression, he became a zealous pastor, loyal to the state bishop, who mastered the German language as well as the French , for the first time in 1802 Bishop of the newly founded diocese of Aachen appointed. As the bishop's chair Occupation in neuzugeschnittenen Roman Catholic Diocese of Mainz by Joseph Ludwig Colmar and the bishopric transfer to Charles Mannay in the redesigned diocese of Trier , this was part of the comprehensive strategically aligned, left-bank church policy of Napoleon.

Berdolet had never disappointed the hopes placed in him. The personal admirer of Napoleon strove to have a positive influence on his diocesans towards the French state and created orderly relationships in a new diocese from nothing. The bishop, who personally led a simple, undemanding and pious life, who was Irish- minded and concerned about balance, managed an enormous workload despite his poor health and won the love of the population. He traveled extensively in his large diocese.

While driving home from Koblenz in 1808, Berdolet suffered a hemorrhage in the Cologne seminary . The following year on August 8th, the bishop was struck by severe shortness of breath and attacks of suffocation in his residence. On the morning of August 13, 1809, he confessed and attended Holy Mass in his chapel; after lunch he passed out and died around 7 p.m. Marc Antoine Berdolet was buried in the Aachen Ostfriedhof on Adalbertsteinweg. After Berdolet's death, his heart was walled up in the choir hall of Aachen Cathedral. A black marble slab in the choir reminds of the place.

A portrait of him, painted in 1807 by Aegidius Johann Peter Joseph Scheuren , is in the Aachen Cathedral Treasury .

literature

  • Friedrich Haagen :  Berdolet, Marcus Anton . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, p. 355.
  • Klaus Friedrich: Marc Antoine Berdolet (1740–1809), Bishop of Colmar, 1st Bishop of Aachen. His life and work with special consideration of his pastoral ideas. Kühlen, Mönchengladbach 1973. At the same time: Bonn, Univ., Kath.-Theol. Fac., Diss., ISBN 3-87448-075-5 ( Publications of the Episcopal Diocesan Archive Aachen. Volume 32).
  • Alfred Minke: From a schismatic to the first bishop of Aachen. Marc Antoine Berdolet and the Church of France between 1789 and 1802. In: History in the Diocese of Aachen. Volume 7, 2003, ISSN  1616-4091 , pp. 81-114.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Inv. No. GK 838, CREDO - Christianization of Europe in the Middle Ages, Volume II: Catalog ( Memento of the original from November 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , ISBN 978-3-86568-827-9 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.credo-ausstellung.de
predecessor Office successor
--- Bishop of Aachen
1802–1809 		Jean-Denis-François Camus
personal data
SURNAME Berdolet, Marc-Antoine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Berdolet, Mark Antony
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French Catholic priest and Bishop of Aachen
DATE OF BIRTH September 13, 1740
PLACE OF BIRTH Rougemont-le-Château , Belfort
DATE OF DEATH August 13, 1809
Place of death Aachen