Salaberga

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Reception of St. Salaberga and her convent by Bishop Attola of Laon; 17th century painting

Salaberga , also Sadalberga , Old High German "the benevolent protector", (* around 605 in Val-de-Meuse ; † around 670 in the Abbey of Notre-Dame de Laon ) was a monastery founder and abbess in the Franconian Empire under the rule of the Merovingians . She is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church .

Her life story forms the core of a short hagiography from the late phase of the Merovingian period, the Vita Sadalbergae .

Life

Origin and family

Salaberga was born around the year 605 in the Villa Mosa , which can be located in Val-de-Meuse on the upper reaches of the Moselle . She was the daughter of Gundoin , Dux des Pagus Bassianensis and the area around the Bernese Jura , and his wife Saretrud. She came from an influential aristocratic family in northern Burgundy , which had extensive goods, especially in the Bassigny area , and was related to the Agilolfinger and Burgundofarones clans . Named after Salaberga's father, who later became the first Duke of Alsace , the Gundoinen family was remembered as the founding clan of the Weißenburg monastery around the Speyer bishop Dragobodo .

Salaberga had four more siblings, including Fulculfus-Bodo as the younger and Leudinus Bodo , the later Bishop of Toul , as the older brother.

Life and founding a monastery

In addition to the comprehensive Vita Sadalbergae, Salaberga's life story is also passed down in parts through the Vita sancti Columbani of Jonas von Bobbio , which he wrote around the years 640 to 643 as a monk of Bobbio Abbey .

According to Jonas, Salaberga was born blind and therefore hidden from the public by her parents.

Eustasius , the second abbot of Luxeuil Abbey , which consists of the powerful Burgundian family of the Walt Riche to the Dukes Chramnelenus and Amalgar came, Gundoin was probably friendly, possibly even family connected. Around the year 617 he was on his way back from a missionary activity with the Bavarians and was entertained as a guest in the Villa Mosa. When Salaberga was introduced to him by Gundoin and his wife at his request, he healed the girl from her blindness by wetting her eyes with consecrated oil.

After this miraculous recovery, Salaberga remained in close contact with Eustasius in the following years, who also supported the young woman in her desire to renounce worldly life and enter the Abbey of Remiremont as a nun , which had been established a few years earlier by the Luxeuil monk Romaric Her father's duchy had been established.

Because their parents Salaberga denied entry into the convent, she married at the request of her father around the year 628 a Frankish nobleman named Richramnus, relations with the Austrasian court entertained. Richramnus died after two months, however, and widowed at an early age, Salaberga then withdrew to Remiremont Abbey without her parents' consent.

But just two years later, the Frankish King Dagobert I ordered that Salaberga had to renounce monastic life again. At the royal request and on the advice of her father, she remarried. Her second marriage was with a close adviser to Dagobert, Blandinus or Boso. According to the Vita Sadalbergae, this marriage was extremely happy and Salaberga had their sons Eustasius and Balduin and their daughters Saretrude, Ebana and Anstrude. Blandinus-Boso, described in the Vita as very godly, supported his wife in the endeavor to lead a life full of piety and charity.

Before 660, Salaberga and her husband renounced worldly life. Blandinus-Baso retired as a hermit into the woods of his estates, while Salaberga founded a convent for women in a place not known by name near Langres , which she herself ran as abbess. As a result of the violent conflict that followed the death of King Sigibert III in Austrasia . and Childebert's enthronement followed, Salaberga was forced to abandon the foundation and move the monastery to a safe place. On the advice of Waldebert von Luxeuil , she chose Laon. About the reasons for laying in the Neustrian part Empire giving the sources no information, however, could the intense friendship that forest Ebert with the bishops of Laon, Chagnoald and Attola, used to provide an explanation.

Bishop Attola of Laon assigned Salaberga a free piece of land in the southwest of the city and in 660, with the active help of Waldebert, she built an abbey for nuns and monks, which was consecrated as a double monastery under the patronage of St. Mary . Since the founding of the monastery was funded from the family fortune Salabergas, and because of the close bond that supported her family to Austrasian Royalty, the Abbey was formed in fact a bridgehead Austrasia in Neustrian part of Empire - a fact that in the ensuing confrontation between the House Meiern Pippin and Ebroin to the supremacy in the Franconian Empire should still play an important strategic role.

After almost ten years of abbatiat, Salaberga died around 670 in the abbey she founded and was probably buried there as well. Her grave site has not been preserved, however, as the Notre-Dame de Laon Abbey was partially devastated during the Huguenot Wars .

Adoration

The day of remembrance of Salaberg is celebrated by the Catholic Church on September 22nd.

Source editions

literature

  • Andreas Merkt:  Salaberga (Sadalberga). In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 8, Bautz, Herzberg 1994, ISBN 3-88309-053-0 , Sp. 1212-1213.
  • Yaniv Fox: Power and Religion in Merovingian Gaul: Columbanian Monasticism and the Formation of the Frankish Aristocracy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2014, ISBN 978-1-107-58764-9 , pp. 47, 82, 87, 142-143.
  • Jo Ann McNamara, John E. Halborg, E. Gordon Whatley (Eds.): Sainted Women of the Dark Ages Duke University Press, Durham 1992, ISBN 978-0-822-31216-1 , pp. 176-194.
  • Hans Josef Hummer: The Merovingian origin of the Vita Sadalbergae , in: German archive for research into the Middle Ages. Cologne 2003, Vol. 59 pp. 459-493
  • Hans Josef Hummer: Visions of Kinship in Medieval Europe , Oxford University Press, Oxford 2018, ISBN 978-0-198-79760-9 , pp. 199, 201-204.
  • Jamie Kreiner: The Social Life of Hagiography in the Merovingian Kingdom in: Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series, Volume 96, Cambridge University Press 2018, ISBN 978-1-107-65839-4 , pp. 14,189, 209.
  • Marilyn Dunn: The Emergence of Monasticism. From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages. Blackwell, Oxford 2003, ISBN 978-1-405-10641-2 , pp. 164-166, 169, 176, 178.
  • Martina Hartmann: Departure into the Middle Ages. The time of the Merovingians. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-89678-484-6 , p. 24.
  • Regine Le Jan: Convents, Violence and Competition for Power in Seventh-century Francia in: Mayke Jong, Frans Theuws (Ed.) Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages: (Transformation of the Roman World), Brill Academic Pub, Leiden 2001 , ISBN 978-9-004-11734-1 , pp. 249-268.
  • Michèle Gaillard: De l'Eigenkloster au monastère royal: L'abbaye Saint-Jean de Laon, du milieu du VIIe siècle au milieu du VIIIe siècle à travers les sources hagiographiques in: Supplements of Francia. Volume 52. Thorbecke, Stuttgart 2001, pp. 249-262.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Suzanne Martinet (Head of the Laon City Library , President of the Société historique de Haute-Picardie), L'abbaye Notre-Dame la Profonde et les deux premières abbesses , p. 6

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Salaberga
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sadalberga
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Saint of the Roman Catholic Church and Abbess of Notre-Dame Abbey in Laon
DATE OF BIRTH at 605
PLACE OF BIRTH Val-de-Meuse
DATE OF DEATH around 670
Place of death Notre-Dame de Laon Abbey