Pankraz Vorster

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Pankraz Vorster
Pankraz Vorster

Pankraz Vorster
Born 31 July 1753 (1753-07-31)
Naples, Italy
Died 9 September 1829 (1829-09-10) (aged 76)
Muri, Switzerland
Occupation Swiss-bishop

Pankraz Vorster (July 31, 1753, Naples – 9 September 1829, Muri) was a Swiss bishop. He was the last abbot of the Abbey of Saint Gall from 1796 to 1805.

Life

Pankraz Vorster was born in Naples of an old family of Fürstenland, as the son of Captain Joseph Zacharias Vorster and the Countess Anna Maria Rosa Berni. He was raised mainly by his uncle, who was a pastor in Grub and Wittenbach. In 1771, he completed his profession in St. Gallen and taught at a school that teaches philosophy, science, and theology. On July 13, 1777, he was ordained as a priest. In 1784 he undertook a study trip with Johann Nepomuk Hauntinger to Swabia and Bavaria. In 1785 he led the opposition against abbot Beda Angehrn, threatening the existence of the monastery by its large investments and his autocratic administration in the eyes of many monks. He was penalized and was moved in September 1788 as 'suboeconomus' in Ebringen, Freiburg im Breisgau, once an enclave. Until 1796, Vorster reconciled with abbot Beda Angehrn and returned to St. Gallen.

On June 1, 1796, Vorster was elected abbot and immediately met the Democratic efforts in the dominions of the monastery. In 1797 he had to concede its own seal and the choice of a magistrate to the ancient landscape. On February 3, 1798, the chapter arbitrarily dismissed the subjects in the independence, the secular rule of the monastery was at the end. The last Vogt of the Abbey in the County of Toggenburg, Karl von Müller-Friedberg, had arbitrarily dismissed the counts of Toggenburg in independence on January 1. On February 14 which took in Gossau the constituent Landsgemeinde «Republic of landscape free St. Gallen» took place. Vorster moved to Neu-Ravensburg, a which exclave of North of the Lake Constance and raised protest against the action of his subjects formally on 3 March 1798. After the invasion of France, Vorster tried in vain to remove the Abbey from Switzerland with a proclamation on June 9, 1798 and to rejoin to the Holy Roman Empire. With the arrival of the troops of the coalition in St. Gallen, Vorster returned once again on May 26, 1799 in the monastery and began to rebuild the Dominion. He had to flee again but on September 29 Mehrerau, because after the defeat of the coalition in Zurich the sheet again had turned.

From his exile in the sphere of influence of Austria, Vorster worked continuously for the recovery of his monastery. Uncompromising, he refused all offers of a restoration of the monastery without sovereignty. in 1803, he sent an emissary to the Helvetic Consulta in Paris, to obtain the restoration of the monastery of Napoleon personally. Despite the assurance in the Act of mediation, that all monasteries should be restored, the first local was a restoration of the monastery of St. Gallen, Karl von Müller-Friedberg prevent St. Gallen because the extensive demands of Vorster the existence of the newly established Canton would have endangered St. Gallen. Nevertheless, Vorster received St. Gallen by the Basel bishop Franz Xaver von Neveu November 17, 1804 in Offenburg the blessing as abbot of St. It decided the great Council of the canton of St. Gallen on 8 May 1805 the liquidation of the monastery. Vorster has called so tragically despite his gravedigger of the monastery, because he prevented any compromise solution.

Vorster remained abbot of the monastery from the perspective of the Catholic Church, because the lifting was not Church-sanctioned. in 1814/15 personally strove Vorster at the Congress of Vienna for a recovery of the reign of the monastery, could only obtain that Congress awarded a pension of 6000 florins him on November 20, 1815, the Canton had to make St. Gallen. Vorster attempted with the support of the Pope the establishment of affiliated at least one Diocese of St. Gallen failed to achieve, but also that on July 16, 1816, before the Federal Tagsatzung. In the same year he moved to Arth. From 1819 he withdrew bitterly in the Muri Abbey, where he died in 1829. Formally it remained Gallen until his death of abbot, because the monastery from the perspective of the Catholic Church was abolished in 1845. In 1923 his body was interred in the St. Gallen Cathedral.

Further reading

  • Historisch-Biographisches Lexikon der Schweiz, Bd. 7, Neuenburg 1934, S. 300.
  • Alfred Meier: Abt Pankraz Vorster und die Aufhebung der Fürstabtei St. Gallen. Freiburg i.Ue. 1954 (Studia Friburgensia NF 8).
  • Werner Vogler: Abt Pankraz Vorster von St. Gallen und der Wiener Kongress 1814/15. St. Gallen 1982.
  • Pankraz Vorster, in: Helvetia Sacra III/1/2 (1986), S. 1348–1350.

External links

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