Mauritius Knauer

Mauritius Knauer (* 1613 or 1614 in Weismain ; † November 9, 1664 in Langheim ) was abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Langheim from 1649 to 1664 .

In 1630 Knauer entered the monastery . A few years later he was sent to the Austrian Cistercian monastery of Heiligenkreuz to protect him from acts of war . The first traces of his presence in the Heiligenkreuzerhof , the city courtyard of the Cistercians in Vienna, go back to 1632. In 1637 he enrolled at the University of Vienna . He studied in Vienna and worked on the organization and indexing of the Heiligenkreuzer Stiftsarchiv, which at the time was in the Viennese court. He was ordained a priest in 1640 in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna and initially worked in the incorporated parishes of the Heiligenkreuz Abbey , including Alland .

When he returned to Langheim, he assumed the post of subprior. In 1646 he became prior . As an abbot, Knauer stood out as the defender of the rights of his monastery against the Bamberg bishop , who therefore had him arrested in 1652 and held for two months. Knauer took care of the economy of his monastery, which fell to the ground after the Thirty Years' War . In addition to the reintroduction of compulsory labor, the participation in an iron mine, the settlement of Jews on monastic properties and the development of the Calendarium Oeconomicum Perpetuum Practicum (later known as the Centennial Calendar ), with which his monks were to be able to do this, served this purpose Predict weather.

Knauer also enlivened the pilgrimage to Vierzehnheiligen by printing a new book of prayer and miracles for the pilgrims in 1653.

literature

Despite countless small essays and articles about Knauer, the work of the Bamberg librarian and former Langheim conventual Joachim Heinrich Jäck (1777–1847) is fundamental:

• Biography of Abbot Mauriz Knauer, author of the centenary calendar. (Erlangen 1813) In: Joachim Heinrich Jäck: Pantheon of the litterates and artists of Bamberg. Bamberg / Erlangen 1812–1815, Sp. 561–608 and extensive bibliographical supplement ( digitized version ).

Other writings:

• Günter Dippold : Mauritius Knauer and the centenary calendar . Epilogue to: Knauer, Mauritius: Calendarium oeconomicum practicum perpetuum ("Centennial Calendar"). Reprint of two editions from 1707, Neustadt ad Aisch 1988, pp. 1-25.
• Günter Dippold: Mauritius Knauer: Abbot and Scholar . In: Dippold, Günter (Ed.): Weismain. A Franconian town in the northern Jura. Vol. 2, Weismain 1996, pp. 393-410.
• J. Paas: The Langheim abbot Mauritius Knauer as a doctor and medical writer . In: Bamberger Blätter for Franconian Art and History 4 (1927) No. 23.
• Hans Jürgen Rieckenberg:  Knauer, Mauritius. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , p. 160 f. ( Digitized version ).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hermann Watzl : "in Loco, Qui Nunc ad Sanctam Crucem Vocatur ..." Sources and treatises on the history of the Heiligenkreuz Abbey (Heiligenkreuz 1987), pp. 484–485.
2. ↑ Stiftsarchiv Heiligenkreuz, 22–11–4, p. 38r.