Marc-Antoine Berdolet

Marc Antoine Berdolet was born the September 13rd 1740 with Rougemont-the-Castle (Territoire of Belfort - France) and deceased the August 13rd 1809 with Aachen (Germany). He was the son of Jean Georges Michel Berdolet, teacher, and of Marie Jeanne Gatois. He attended the college of Porrentruy, in Suisse then the seminar of Besancon and was cleaned of Phaffans (Territoire of Belfort - France) of 1770 with 1796.

In 1791, Berdolet lent oath to the civil Constitution. Member of the presbytery of the Haut-Rhin (1795 - 1796) then elected constitutional bishop in 1796, it resided at Soultz which then became the seat of évêché of 1798 with 1802. Berdolet resigned in 1801 and the following year, Bonaparte indicated it bishop of Aachen by the terms of the Concordat.

This évêché depended on the archbishop's palace of Mechlin and included/understood 79 parishes of first class and 754 of second class. For the greatest part, Berdolet left the management of its diocese to its general vicar Martin Wihelm Fonk.

In 1804, Berdolet offered to Napoleon the talisman of Charlemagne, gift of the caliph Haroun rear-Rachid. This jewel out of gold, emerald, pearls and sapphires containing a spine of the true Cross, was found with the neck of the emperor when he was exhumed, in 1166. (This invaluable object is deposited since 1919 with the Palais of the Tau to Rheims). By this gesture, Berdolet thanked the emperor for having returned to the church Aachen the relics which had been confiscated to him with the Révolution.

In an article of the August 3rd 1906, the Frankfurter Zeitung tells that the Empress Joséphine came to Aachen “to take water”. It could only make to like Berdolet. When it made him visit the treasure of the cathedral, it made him present at this occasion many relics and of old objets d'art religious. Among these relics the hair of the Virgin appeared that Charlemagne always related to him and a bone of the right-hand man of the old emperor himself. The chapter of the cathedral held a long time secret these gifts given to Joséphine which passed, by heritage, in the hands of Hortense, Eugene and Napoleon III.

In the cathedral of Aachen, on the right of the furnace bridge, the heart of Marc Antoine Berdolet, his first is sealed and last bishop. Because this church forever have one bishop, that Bonaparte had named, and which its epitaph qualifies “ primus aquisgranensis episcopus ” (“first bishop of Aachen”).

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