Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Münchenwiler
Summary
Münchenwiler (Villars-Les-Moines) is a municipality in the Bern-Mittelland administrative district in the canton of Bern in Switzerland.
Münchenwiler is first mentioned in 1080-81 as Vilar. In 1228 it was mentioned as Vilar les Moinos.
In 1080-81 the village was given by the brothers Gerold and Rudolf de Vilar to Cluny Abbey. Shortly thereafter a priory was founded, which served as a way station for pilgrims on the Way of St. James. The Priory church was built in 1100, using spolia from the Roman ruins at Avenches. The small priory community normally consisted of a prior and two to four monks. The priory suffered during the local wars of the 14th and 15th centuries. It was damaged during the Battle of Laupen in 1339. Over a century later, in 1448, it was damaged again during the Freiburgkrieg between the emergent city-states of Bern and Fribourg. In 1476 it was damaged a third time during the Burgundian Wars. During the 15th century, the small priory began to lose importance until the office of prior was reduced to a title without power. In 1484, by papal decree, leadership of the priory was transferred to the college of canons of the Munster of Bern. In 1528, Bern adopted the Protestant Reformation. Despite resistance from Fribourg, in 1530 Bern was able to retain control and secularize Münchenwiler.
A village developed outside the walls of the Priory to support the farmers that worked the ecclesiastical fields. A tavern and a mill were built by the Priory and operated as a fief under the Prior. By 1436 it had a communal bakery and a school house. Originally, the villagers attended church in the Priory chapel, but after the Bernese college of canons took over, the residents joined the parish of Morat. Even after Bern adopted the new faith of the Protestant Reformation and spread it to Münchenwiler they remained part of the Murten parish.
In 1535 Bern sold the Herrschaft of Münchenwiler to the former Bernese Schultheiss Hans Jakob von Wattenwyl. Over the next two years, under von Wattenwyl, portions of the priory church and priory buildings were converted into a castle.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.