Ratgar

Ratgar (also Ratger, Raitger, Latinized Ratgarius ); † 835 was 802-817 third abbot of the monastery of Fulda.

Life and work

With him the Carolingian Renaissance arrived in Fulda their full development. During his tenure, which was named after him, but had already begun under his predecessor Baugulf Ratgar Basilica was extended by addition of a vast transept with western apse over the grave of St. Boniface to the largest church north of the Alps. Your consecration, but was only 819 after Ratgers dismissal under his successor Eigil. On the Bischofsberg he replaced the 809 wooden chapel with a stone church, later Klosterfrau mountain.

He also had 811 first church built on the site of the later provost Johannesberg. Gifted monks as the later abbots Rabanus Maurus and Hatto and Brun Candidus and Reccheo Modestus he sent the most outstanding teachers such as Alcuin, Einhart and the Irish grammarians Clemens.

806, there was a first crisis. An epidemic and the flight of younger monks were probably in one context, but also complaints about the strictness of the teacher were loud, which Ratger could be personal. 809 determined in order of Charlemagne, a commission led by the Archbishop of Mainz Richulf and donated a fragile peace. During this time, the Treaty of Retzbach (27 March 815) he succeeded in a comparison with the Diocese of Würzburg in the dispute over the collection of tithes in the past in the field of Wuerzburg diocese of Fulda possessions.

Already 812 and 816 again, there was open rebellion against the abbot, his successor Eigil appears at the tip. A group of monks left the monastery in protest, but returned after some time back. The notice of appeal of the Fulda Convention against their own abbot, called the Supplex Libellus is obtained. He has individual measures of the abbot as interventions in the liturgy, laying of incapacitated monks in the branch offices of the monastery, restriction of trials of new brothers under economic criteria and reducing the supply of the monks as well as the expenses for the care of the poor and hospitality, in favor of the ambitious building program were enforced and led to the overexploitation of the Convention. But above all, shows that the uncompromising hardness and lack of willingness to communicate Abt Ratgars played a role in the Rebelion. Therefore, he was 817 by Emperor Louis the Pious, despite its reliance on the Aachener reform synod of 816, with the monastic reform of Benedict should be enforced by Aniane, deposed and banished. The monastery initiated provisionally two Missi ( Messenger ) Emperor Louis the Pious, the monks Aaron and Adalfrid from the vicinity of Benedict of Aniane. Later Ratgar was pardoned on the initiative of his successor Eigil and returns to the woman mountain, where he still lives to 835 and was buried in recognition of his in the perception of temporal distance again clearly prominent merits honorably in abbatial regalia, such as the from reports of the looting Sepulchre during the Peasants' War apparent. His career, which is still listed in the Fulda manuscript directories, was lost in the destruction of the Fulda library in the Thirty Years' War. Your overall positive trend testify to the Fulda Gesta abbatum ( 900 ). A far more critical picture of Ratgar other hand, is characterized Brun Candidus in the resultant by 840 Vita by his successor Eigil. Here appears Ratgar almost the epitome of a bad abbot, as a cautionary tale bugbear in discussions on the election of his successor and as abbot in the shape of a unicorn ( Illustration to Book II c. 4), ie as a persecutor of the Good Shepherd Jesus ( cf. Psalm 21 ), and with it .. as a perversion of what should be an abbot, namely, a guardian of the flock entrusted to him