Yolanda from Vianden

Yolanda von Vianden (* approx. 1231 at Vianden Castle ; † December 17, 1283 in Marienthal ) was prioress of the Marienthal Monastery and is venerated as a blessed in her homeland to this day.

Life

Yolanda was born as the daughter of Count Heinrich I and Margaret of Courtenay at Château de Vianden (Luxembourg). When she visited her aunt, the abbess of Salines , at the age of nine , she wanted to stay with her in the monastery. On the recommendation of Walther von Meisenburg , the prior of the Dominicans in Trier, she later wants to enter the Dominican monastery in Marienthal . The parents, who want to marry Yolanda to Walram II von Monschau , are against Marienthal, as this does not seem appropriate to them. Therefore they lock Yolanda at Schönecken Castlea. The struggle in the family raged for several years until the parents finally let her go to Marienthal in 1248. She stays there for 35 years. She became the prioress, played a key role in the expansion of the monastery and had a five-aisled church built 50 meters long and 35 meters wide. When her father dies, her mother also enters the Marienthal monastery.

Afterlife

After the monastery was closed in 1783 and the stones were used as building material in 1823, the historian Auguste Neyen recovered Yolanda's skull on December 12, 1882. He brought it to Epenay , then it went to the Dominican Sisters in Luxembourg and in 1932 to the White Fathers , who had bought and restored Marienthal in 1890. In 1974, after the White Fathers had left Marienthal again, the relic came to Vianden. A reliquary made in 1996 is in the Trinitarian church in Vianden . Yolanda was venerated as a blessed by the people .

In the Codex Mariendalensis written by the Dominican Hermann von Veldenz around 1293 , a parchment manuscript that was repeatedly considered lost and was found again on November 6, 1999 on the Ansemburg by Guy Berg , her life is described in almost 6000 Middle High German rhyming verses.

literature

• Gerald Newton / Franz (eds.), Brother Hermann: Yolanda von Vianden. Moselle-Franconian text from the late 13th century with translation into New High German. Translated, explained and commented on Institut Grand-Ducal 2010.
• Claudine Moulin, brother Hermann von Veldenz, life of Countess Yolanda von Vianden. Faithful edition of the Codex Mariendalensis (Bibliothèque Nationale, Luxembourg, Ms. 860), Institut Grand-Ducal. Section de Linguistique, d'Ethnologie et d'Onomastique, Luxembourg 2009.