Leodegar Bürgisser

Leodegar Bürgisser (baptised Andreas; April 2, 1640 in Lucerne – November 28, 1717) was abbot of the Abbey of Saint Gall from 1696 to 1717.

The benediction was given to him by Auxiliary bishop Franz Christoph Rinck von Baldenstein from Eichstätt, a brother of the Saint Gall estate overseer Wilhelm, on 4 November 1696.

Werner Vogler states that Abbot Leodegar's reputation would have been better, had he lived in more favourable times and been confronted with adversaries exhibiting a greater willingness to compromise.

He would be called a very strenuous abbot as during his time the abbey was apparently characterised by immaculate discipline; Leodegar himself is said to have led an exemplary monastic life and his housekeeping was good.

In the first instance, the denominational conflicts in Saint Gall reemerged because crosses had been carried during the procession through the city; this was a provocation to the Protestant citizens and initiated the so called Kreuzkrieg (en.

Probably in order to better protect himself, Abbot Leodegar concluded a defence contract with Emperor Leopold I in 1702 which enraged some of the Swiss.

[4] The abbatial city of Wil was captured by the allied people of Zurich, Bern and Toggenburg, whereupon Abbot Leodegar fled, accompanied by his convent, from Rorschach into exile: first to Mehrerau and then to Castle Neu-Ravensburg, the centre of administration of a Saint Gall dominion north of Lindau.

As one of his last official acts, Abbot Leodegar discarded the peace that had been negotiated with Zurich and Bern in Rorschach on 28 November 1717; he beheld the rights of the abbey as largely restricted and the Catholic religion in Toggenburg as endangered.