Thuringian Franciscan Province

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The monastery on the Frauenberg in Fulda, Provincialate until 2010

The Thuringian Franciscan Province of St. Elisabeth ( Thuringia ) was an order province of the Franciscans , which existed with several interruptions from the 16th century until 2010 when it merged with the other German order provinces to the German Franciscan Province of St. Elisabeth joined forces.

Custody Thuringia (from 13th century)

After an unsuccessful first attempt in 1217, the brothers of St. Francis of Assisi founded in 1209 and Pope Innocent III in 1210 . confirmed the Franciscan order from Italy to Germany in 1221 and settled first in Augsburg and soon in numerous other cities. In 1222 the first Franciscans reached Cologne, which then became the center of what was originally the only German province of Teutonia . Because the Franciscan movement was now developing in Germany with astonishing speed, Teutonia was divided into a Rhenish province ( Provincia Rheni ) and a Saxon province ( Provincia Saxonia ) as early as 1230 .

In Thuringian territory , the Friars of Mainz came from where they left on October 26, 1224th On Martin's Day, November 11, 1224, they reached Erfurt. Here they found accommodation in the “apartment of the priest for the lepers outside the walls” “by decision of the citizens and several clerics”. In 1225 they received the abandoned church from the Holy Spirit until they built a new church in 1232 . In 1225 they came to Eisenach and founded a branch at the Michaeliskapelle not far from the Wartburg , supported by Landgravine Elisabeth , which with four priest brothers and two lay brothers did not reach the minimum size of a convent, which was set at 12 brothers and was mainly intended for the pastoral care of the landgrave's house . In 1236 they started building a church .

From 1230 the monasteries in Thuringia belonged to the Saxon order province, which included two administrative areas, called "custodies" : a custodia thuringia under the direction of the Jordan by Giano and a custodia saxonia under the direction of Leonhard Lombardus. At the general chapter of the order in Lyon in 1274, the Saxon province was further subdivided. The Custody of Thuringia was now one of 12 custodians in the province; around 1340 it included the monasteries in Arnstadt, Coburg, Eisenach, Erfurt, Meiningen, Mühlhausen, Nordhausen and Saalfeld. The monasteries in two other places in what is now the state of Thuringia, Altenburg and Weida, belonged to the custody of Leipzig.

After a phase of expansion in the 13th century, the 14th century can be seen as a phase of consolidation. New convents were only founded sporadically, but the Franciscans began to open up the area around their locations "as a pastoral care field and material supply area" by setting up appointments as bases for regional pastoral care, but also for the collection of food and money as well as the extraction of Order offspring founded. At the time, Erfurt was of outstanding importance for the entire Saxon province. The study of the order at the local monastery, which was incorporated into the University of Erfurt in 1395 , was the most important place of study ( “studium generale” ) in the province; 15 provincial chapters took place in the city between the 13th and 15th centuries.

Observance movement and first Thuringian province (from 1521)

The disputes in the poverty struggle , which had preoccupied the Franciscan order since the 14th century, reached the Saxon province in Brandenburg in 1428 and its Thuringian custody in 1438, when Landgrave Friedrich the Friedfertige implemented a reform of the monastery in Eisenach in line with the observance movement. The subject of the conflict was the attitude towards money and real estate by individual Franciscans or the religious order. In line with the poverty ideal, the observance movement demanded the rigorous renunciation of money, property and steady income, which for the Franciscans meant a life in material insecurity. The Braunschweig Franciscan Johannes Kerberch called on brothers willing to reform in the 1420s to escape the convents and live together in their own convents. The order stood in the conflict “observance (compliance with the rules) versus obedience (regular obedience)”. With the approval of the Council of Constance , France initially began to develop its own observant provincial structures.

In the middle of the 15th century, with the reform of the monasteries in Arnstadt and Eisenach and the establishment of new monasteries in Weimar and Langensalza, the Custody of Thuringia became the core area of ​​the observance in the Saxon order province; further foundations followed by the end of the century. The influential monastery in Erfurt, together with Mühlhausen and Nordhausen, prevented an even greater expansion. However, the provincial and custodial structures increasingly disintegrated in these conflicts. In 1518, Saxonia was divided into an observant “Saxon Province of the Holy Cross” ( Saxonia S. Crucis ) and a moderately Reformed province that lived according to the Martinian Constitutions of Pope Martin V , the “Saxon Province of St. John the Baptist” ( Saxonia Johannis Baptistae ). The two provinces overlapped spatially.

By dividing the province of St. John the Baptist created an independent Thuringian province for the first time in 1521: the Saxonia superior ("Upper Saxon Province"), to which the General Chapter of Burgos in 1523 gave the name Thuringia . It comprised the custodians of Leipzig, Meissen, Thuringia, Breslau, Goldberg and Prussia. The "Lower Saxon Province" ( Saxonia inferior ) kept the name Saxonia Johannis Baptistae and was divided into the custodians of Brandenburg, Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Lübeck, Stettin and Bremen.

However, both provinces could no longer develop and, as a result of the monasteries being closed by the Reformation and the Peasant Wars, went under again by the middle of the 16th century, and it can no longer be clarified to what extent the division of the provinces had actually already been implemented. The last two convents of the Province of St. John the Baptist joined the Province of St. Cross to: 1541 Halberstadt and 1550 Greifswald.

Thuringian province (1633 until secularization)

On May 14, 1633, in the middle of the Thirty Years War , the Thuringian Province was restituted by the General Chapter of the Order in Toledo after Emperor Ferdinand II in 1629 demanded the return of the church property claimed by the Protestants. It was placed under the protection of St. Elisabeth and confirmed on November 22, 1637 by Pope Urban VIII , who assigned it to Thuringia, Hesse and, to the west, the areas up to the Rhine including Siegen and Attendorn . The southern border was the Main . Saxonia , which had already been restituted in 1625 , ceded some territories to the new province, and following conflicts over the terminating districts, the Diemel and Ruhr rivers were set as the border . No border was defined to the east to enable re-Catholicisation of areas that had become Protestant. In fact, the province consolidated to the south and west. All the monasteries, like those of Colonia and Saxonia, all belonged to the recollects within the Observance movement , so that there was no split in the province on this issue.

The province initially consisted only of the monasteries in Fulda and Limburg, the 24 brothers came from the Cologne province ( Colonia ). In the next few years the Erfurt, Wetzlar, Gelnhausen and Hersfeld convents as well as the residences in Hadamar and Krottorf / Friesenhagen were added. Some of the founding or reoccupations of monasteries (including Frankfurt / Main, Fritzlar, Siegen) were unsuccessful. Thanks to the support of various sovereigns, such as the prince abbots of Fulda and the electors of Mainz and Trier, Thuringia was able to expand in the second half of the 17th century. The number of members was 39 brothers in 1651 and increased to 110 brothers by 1656 through transfers from other provinces and new entries. The province reached its heyday with 22 houses in the middle of the 18th century. The territory ranged from Sauerland (Attendorn) and Siegerland (Friesenhagen) in the west to Franconia (Schillingsfürst, Hammelburg and Volkersberg) and the Electoral Mainz Eichsfeld ( St. Antonius (Worbis) ). The provincialate was in Limburg until 1762, then in Hammelburg. The start-ups were usually selected so that the branches were about a day's journey apart, so that they could serve as overnight stops.

activity

The Franciscans were active in pastoral care, they held church services, sermons , pilgrimages and processions , heard confessions in their monastery churches and in sister monasteries and helped out in pastoral care in surrounding parishes or also took on permanent pastoral care posts (" mission stations ") - especially in small numbers endowed parishes that would only have secured an insufficient income for a secular priest. They founded and supervised brotherhoods and particularly advocated the creation of crossroads and the introduction of passion devotions. In several regions, the activities of the Franciscans in the Diaspora contributed to the Counter-Reformation and denominationalization . In Attendorn they also took over teaching at the grammar school in 1639 because this was a condition of the city council for their settlement; the school was then called Marianum Seraphicum . Franciscan high schools (without exception for boys) also existed for a time in Hammelburg, Hachenburg, Limburg, Miltenberg, Montabaur, Mosbach, Salmünster and Wetzlar, in Hachenburg and Salmünster Franciscans also worked at elementary and Latin schools. An average of two to three Franciscans taught at the grammar schools. The school theater based on the model of the Jesuit gymnastics was also part of the program of the religious schools . Study houses for the training of the next generation of the order in philosophy and theology existed in Limburg and Fulda until 1647, after which the study locations changed between almost all convents in the province. The lecturers were provincial, the studies were not public.

The Franciscans practiced simplicity in building their churches and monasteries. Builders were mostly provincial members, so that the churches built in the baroque period were largely similar. The monasteries were usually built as a quadrum and had a garden and a brewery.

Division 1762

In 1762 the province was divided into a Thuringia superior ( Provincia Thuringiae superioris S. Elisabeth ) and a Thuringia inferior ( Provincia Thuringiae inferioris S. Elisabeth ) due to disputes . There were conflicts between brothers who felt they were at a disadvantage in assigning offices to the position of provincial minister. From the very beginning of the founding of the province, there had been tension between the former members of the Colonia , who came from Belgium, and other brothers. The dispute escalated at the provincial chapter on May 9, 1761 due to the controversial action of Commissioner General Lambert Colette, who was sent by the order's leadership, when the new provincial leadership was appointed. Both provinces regarded themselves as legal successors of the Thuringia and argued over names and seals. The General Chapter confirmed the separation in 1762, and on August 13, 1764, the provinces signed a treaty on the partition.

The Thuringia inferior with 153 brothers included the branches in Attendorn, Friesenhagen, Hachenburg , Hadamar, Limburg (also Provincialate), Marienthal (Westerwald) , Montabaur and Wetzlar, and the Thuringia with 416 brothers the monasteries in Dermbach, Fulda, Hammelburg, Heiligenblut, Miltenberg , Mosbach, Salmünster, Schillingsfürst, Schwarzenberg, Sinsheim, Tauberbischofsheim, Volkersberg and Worbis. Hammelburg became the new seat of the provincial government of Thuringia and was the largest convent with 38 brothers, most of the other convents had between 15 and 30 members.

Enlightenment and secularization

At the end of the 18th century, the Thuringia took measures against the influence of the Enlightenment on their monasteries, which included the introduction of new textbooks, the obligation of the lecturers to the religious studies on orthodoxy up to the visitation of the monastery cells.

In the course of secularization , most of the convents in both provinces were dissolved between 1802 and 1824, after restrictions had already been imposed in the previous decades - for example in terms of scheduling, contact between the monasteries or the admission of novices. Since the Thuringia touched several domains, the abolition of the monastery was not uniform and extended over a period of about 20 years. Also, because of their poverty, the Franciscan monasteries escaped immediate dissolution after the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss 1803, which placed the monasteries under the control of the sovereigns. The monastery buildings and the inventory were often put to state or municipal exploitation, the brothers remained active as secular priests or received a state pension. Only the monasteries in Fulda and Salmünster with around 30 brothers remained.

Custody of Thuringia and Province of Thuringia (19th - 21st centuries)

The two convents in Fulda and Salmünster were transferred to the Saxon Franciscan Province ( Saxonia ) on May 7, 1853 by the Bishop of Fuldens, Christoph Florentius Kött, for disciplinary reasons , which by then had already overcome the consequences of secularization and was on the upswing. In 1855 the two convents regained a certain degree of independence and formed the custody “Thuringia S. Elisabeth” within Saxonia . In 1894, the custody of General Minister Aloysius Canali was raised again to an independent province. The former custodian Aloys Lauer became Minister General of the Franciscan Order in 1897 after Pope Leo XIII. with his bull Felicitate quadam, the three observant branches of the order ( Alcantarines , Reformates and recollects ) had united to form a single order, the ordo fratrum minorum .

The Thuringia of the 20th century had monasteries in the federal states of Hesse and Baden-Württemberg . In Thuringia proper, there was only one community in one place and only for a few years: from November 1, 1992 to June 30, 2004, three Franciscans lived in Schmalkalden in a prefabricated building and worked in hospital and prison chaplaincy.

On June 1, 2010, after several years of preparation, Thuringia and its 130 members merged with the three other German provinces, the Bavarian Franciscan Province of St. Anthony of Padua (Bavaria) , the Cologne Franciscan Province of the Three Kings (Colonia) and the Saxon Franciscan Province from the Holy Cross (Saxonia) to the German Franciscan Province of St. Elisabeth (Germania) .

Monasteries (2010)

Provincial minister

  • Aegidius Houtmans (1633-1639, 1643-1646)
  • Lambert Weyer (1639-1643)

...

  • Octavian Köllner (1758-)

...

  • Vinzenz Rock (around 1940)

...

  • Deochar Gredig (around 1956)
  • Peregrin Herbst (around 1961)
  • Beda Schmidt (around 1962/1966)

...

Well-known members of the province

literature

  • Thomas T. Müller, Bernd Schmies, Christian Loefke (Hrsgg.): For God and the world. Franciscans in Thuringia. Text and catalog volume for the exhibition in the Mühlhausen museums from March 29 to October 31, 2008. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn / Munich / Vienna / Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-506-76514-7 .
  • Christian Plath: Between Counter Reformation and Baroque piety: The Franciscan Province of Thuringia from the re-establishment in 1633 to secularization. Mainz 2010, ISBN 978-3-929135-64-0 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Willibald Kullmann: The Saxon Franciscan Province, a tabular guide to its history. Düsseldorf 1927, 9.14-20.
  2. ↑ Johannes Schlageter: The beginnings of the Franciscans in Thuringia. In: Thomas T. Müller u. a .: For God and the world. Paderborn u. a. 2008, p. 32-37, here p. 34f, based on the Chronica Fratris Jordani ;
    Dieter Berg (Ed.): Traces of Franciscan History. Werl 1999, p. 23.35.
    Bernd Schmies: Development and organization of the Saxon Franciscan Province and its Thuringian Custody from the beginnings to the Reformation. In: Thomas T. Müller u. a .: For God and the world. Paderborn u. a. 2008, pp. 38-49, here p. 43.
  3. ↑ Dieter Berg (Ed.): Traces of Franciscan History. Werl 1999, p. 29.67
    Bernd Schmies: Structure and organization of the Saxon Franciscan Province and its Thuringian Custody from the beginning to the Reformation. In: Thomas T. Müller u. a .: For God and the world. Paderborn u. a. 2008, pp. 38-49, here p. 41f.
  4. ↑ Bernd Schmies: Structure and organization of the Saxon Franciscan Province and its Thuringian Custody from the beginnings to the Reformation. In: Thomas T. Müller u. a .: For God and the world. Paderborn u. a. 2008, pp. 38-49, here p. 43.
  5. ↑ Bernd Schmies: Structure and organization of the Saxon Franciscan Province and its Thuringian Custody from the beginnings to the Reformation. In: Thomas T. Müller u. a .: For God and the world. Paderborn u. a. 2008, pp. 38-49, here p. 47f.
  6. ↑ Bernd Schmies: Structure and organization of the Saxon Franciscan Province and its Thuringian Custody from the beginnings to the Reformation. In: Thomas T. Müller u. a .: For God and the world. Paderborn u. a. 2008, pp. 38-49, here p. 48f.
  7. ↑ Dieter Berg (Ed.): Traces of Franciscan History. Werl 1999, p. 255.257.
  8. ^ Karl Suso Frank : Recollects . In: Walter Kasper (Ed.): Lexicon for Theology and Church . 3. Edition. tape 8 . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1999, Sp. 1025 f .
  9. ^ Christian Plath: Structure and development of the Thuringian Franciscan Province (Thuringia). In: Thomas T. Müller u. a .: For God and the world. Paderborn u. a. 2008, pp. 50-66, here pp. 42.50f.
    Christian Plath: Between Counter Reformation and Baroque piety. Mainz 2010, pp. 37-40.55.88.90.
  10. ↑ Christian Plath: Between Counter Reformation and Baroque piety. Mainz 2010, pp. 68-72.84.189.214-217.229-232.249.
  11. ↑ Christian Plath: Between Counter Reformation and Baroque piety. Mainz 2010, pp. 269–281.
  12. ↑ Christian Plath: Between Counter Reformation and Baroque piety. Mainz 2010, p. 348.
  13. ↑ Christian Plath: Between Counter Reformation and Baroque piety. Mainz 2010, pp. 142-150.
  14. ↑ Christian Plath: Between Counter Reformation and Baroque piety. Mainz 2010, p. 151.
  15. ↑ Christian Plath: Between Counter Reformation and Baroque piety. Mainz 2010, pp. 153ff.162f.183ff.
  16. ↑ Dieter Berg (Ed.): Traces of Franciscan History. Werl 1999, p. 477.479.515.
  17. ^ Herbert Schneider : The Franciscans in the German-speaking area. Life and goals. Dietrich-Coelde-Verlag, Werl 1988, pp. 61-87.
  18. ^ Christian Plath: Structure and development of the Thuringian Franciscan Province (Thuringia). In: Thomas T. Müller u. a .: For God and the world. Paderborn u. a. 2008, pp. 50-66, here p. 50.53.