Wilhelmites

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Young man in prayer before Saint Wilhelm , Hans Memling, 1470

The Order of the Wilhelmites ( Ordo Fratrum Eremitarum Sancti Wilhelmi , Order of the Hermit Brothers of St. Wilhelm , historically also Wilhelmites or Guglielmites ), was an order of monks from the 12th to the 18th century, which was widespread in the Holy Roman Empire and France .

history

Emergence

Malavalle Hermitage, church ruins

The order emerged from the hermitage of the holy hermit Wilhelm († 1157) in Malavalle , southwest of Siena in Italy. This developed into the first monastery. Pope Gregory IX gave the young community ecclesiastical recognition, with the stipulation that they should live according to the Benedictine rule. After that, the order spread to Italy, France and north of the Alps.

Dissolution and restoration in the 13th century

Fundamental changes occurred in the middle of the 13th century. Due to the papal bull Licet ecclesiae catholicae from Pope Alexander IV , several orders of hermits were combined to form the mendicant order of the Augustinian hermits . The Wilhelmiterorden was dissolved in 1256 and its members integrated into the Augustinian hermits.

After considerable interventions on the part of the Wilhelmites, the Pope but one, Clement IV , released them from the Augustinian Hermits in 1266 and thus restored the Wilhelmite Order.

France and Belgium

In France, the Wilhelmites were also called Blancs-Manteaux ("white coats") because of their habit . They had priories in Louvergny near Rethel (founded in 1249 by Count Johann von Rethel , † 1251) and Montrouge near Paris (their second priory in France, founded in the second half of the 13th century), as well as from 1297 in Paris, where they the Replace Augustinians . Her house in Paris was in what is now the 4th arrondissement on the north side of the Rue des Blancs Manteaux, roughly where the Rue des Guillemites begins today. Guillemins , a district of Liège, is named after the Wilhelmites . The Wilhelmites had a settlement here from 1287, around which the settlement developed.

Dissolution in the 18th century

The Wilhelmites existed until the 18th century. After the monastery in Austria was dissolved under Emperor Joseph II , Graefinthal Monastery was the last Wilhelmine monastery in the empire . With the bull of November 24, 1785, the Pope dissolved this monastery at the request of the monks.

Monasteries

literature

  • Kaspar Elm : Contributions to the history of the Wilhelmite order . Böhlau, Cologne 1962.
  • Jörg Sonntag (Ed.): The statutes of the Wilhelmites (1251-1348). Evidence of the constitution of a European order. Regensburg 2018. Text

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kaspar Elm: The adoption of the Benedictine rule under Gregory IX. , in: Ders .: Contributions to the history of the Wilhelmite Order . P. 43ff.
  2. ^ Kaspar Elm: The union between Wilhelmites and Augustinian hermits (1256-1266) . In: Ders .: Contributions to the history of the Wilhelmite Order, pp. 108–119

Web links

Commons : Wilhelmiten  - Collection of images, videos and audio files