Marbach Abbey
The Marbach Abbey was a regulated Augustinian canon monastery . It should not be confused with the nearby Murbach Monastery .
history
It was founded in Marbach (today the municipality of Vœgtlinshoffen ) in Upper Alsace in 1089 by the nobleman Burckard von Geberschweier , a ministerial of the Bishop of Strasbourg, with the support of Manegold von Lautenbach as a reform pen. According to a 16th century legend, Burckard had a dream while resting during a hunting party in which Christ, Mary and Augustine appeared to him and asked him to build a monastery at the place of the apparition.
The monastery was in the diocese of Basel, but the secular rule in this area was held by the Bishop of Strasbourg. At first it was a double monastery for men and women, but the women's monastery moved to Schwarzenthann in 1124 . Manegold took over the leadership of the convent. As one of the most prominent fighters for the papal cause in the investiture controversy , he incurred the wrath of Emperor Henry IV . He had him captured in Marbach Abbey in 1098. The monastery received various papal privileges for its services, including the right to free followers of the banned imperial party from excommunication in the investiture controversy if they transferred to the papal camp. Relations with the empire improved: in 1153 King Friedrich Barbarossa placed Marbach under his protection, and during this time there were close ties to the Hohenstaufen royal court.
The “ Marbach Annals ”, one of the most important historical sources of the Staufer period , was created in the monastery in the 13th century .
In the High Middle Ages, the Marbach Monastery was the starting point for many new monasteries in southern Germany , on the Upper Rhine and in Switzerland . Marbach was instrumental in the canon reform through which “secular” priests, who lived without vows of poverty and rules, became “regulated” canons in monastery-like convents with a monastic way of life. The reform was based on the rule of Augustine spread by the monastery of St. Ruf in Avignon . The special Marbach expression of this order was laid down in the Consuetudines (habits of life). Its final version, developed from earlier preliminary stages, was created around 1122. As early as 1117/19 the Congregation split into an association with a milder rule interpretation ( ordo antiquus ) and one with more stringent practice ( ordo novus ). Numerous other monasteries took over the consuetudines and followed the liturgy developed in Marbach. The Alsatian monastery also had an impact across Europe by sending its own canons to other places. His reform association included: Abbey Backnang , Monastery Indersdorf , Monastery Interlaken , Hördt , Frankenthal (Pfalz) , Monastery Goldbach , St. Leonhard in Basel , Monastery Schwarzenthann , St. Arbogast and St. Trinity in Strasbourg and even the Lund Cathedral in southern Sweden. This congregation dissolved in 1462, in 1464 Marbach was affiliated to the Windesheim congregation , to which it belonged until 1769.
The Romanesque monastery church, built in the 12th century, had two choir-side towers and was dedicated to St. Irenaeus of Lyon , whose relics the monastery received from Lyon in 1098. An important Romanesque prayer book manuscript comes from the pen : the Codex Guta-Sintram . This is the joint work of the Augustinian choirwoman Guta von Schwarzenthann and the Augustinian canon Sintram von Marbach . Another important book illumination from the monastery, an evangelist , is now in the Laon City Library .
The monastery was abolished in 1790 and the buildings were demolished. Afterwards, the remaining parts of the choir stalls, as well as parts of the choir stalls of the former monastery Alspach near Kaysersberg in Upper Alsace , were brought to the Dominican church in nearby Colmar , where they can be viewed.
The remains of the former monastery ( narthex of the church, cemetery and foundation walls) can be viewed. With a beautiful view of the Rhine Valley, the ruins are located on a hill near Eguisheim between Husseren-les-Châteaux and Obermorschwihr , right on the outskirts of the village of Vœgtlinshoffen .
You can also visit the sparse ruins of the Augustinian women's choir monastery, Schwarzenthann Monastery , which once belonged directly to Marbach Abbey in the forest near Wintzfelden (near Soultzmatt ).
literature
- Hubertus Seibert : Marbach . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 6, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-7608-8906-9 , column 216.
- Volkhard Huth: Staufer "Reich historiography" and scholastic intellectuality. The Alsatian Augustinian canons of Marbach in the area of tension between regional tradition and universal horizon , Ostfildern 2004 ISBN 3-7995-4265-5 . ( Digitized ; review )
- Josef Siegwart: The Consuetudines of the Augustinian Canons of Marbach in Alsace . University Press, Friborg, Switzerland, 1965.
Web links
- The Codex Guta-Sintram
- The Marbach evangelist of the Bibliothèque municipale Laon
- The Marbach Annals in the repertory "Historical Sources of the German Middle Ages"
Remarks
- ↑ According to another tradition, the Church was dedicated to St. Dedicated to Augustine and all saints. Peter Weise: Sources on the liturgy of the Canons of Marbach. In: Archiv für Liturgiewwissenschaft 32 (1990), p. 310, note 22
Coordinates: 48 ° 1 ′ 31.1 ″ N , 7 ° 16 ′ 30 ″ E