Dietrich II of Moers

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Dietrich von Moers with his coat of arms, Heroldsbuch 1479, now Jagiellonian Library Krakow

Dietrich von Moers (* around 1385; † February 14, 1463 at Friedestrom Castle in Zons ) was Archbishop of the Archbishopric of Cologne as Dietrich II from 1414 to 1463 and from 1415 as Dietrich III. Administrator of the Diocese of Paderborn .

Life and domination

Dietrich was the second son of Count Friedrich III. von Moers and his wife Walburga von Saar Werden . His two brothers Heinrich and Walram were both successively bishops of Munster . The Archbishop of Cologne Friedrich III. von Saar Werden was his mother's brother.

His uncle Friedrich III. von Saar Werden appointed him provost of the Cassius monastery in Bonn in 1397 . At the same time Dietrich got a canon position in Cologne without having received higher orders. From 1401 he studied in Heidelberg and Bologna . In 1409 he took part in the Council of Pisa as a representative of his uncle .

After his death, Dietrich was elected the new Archbishop of Cologne on May 24, 1414 with a majority of 16 votes and numerous promises to the canons. In doing so, he asserted himself against his powerful opponent, the Paderborn Bishop Wilhelm von Berg . The election took place in Bonn Minster because his voters in Cologne did not feel safe from his opponent. In the dispute that followed, Dietrich was quickly able to assert himself and even acquire the diocese of Paderborn the following year . He obtained papal approbation with the support of the king and through numerous payments in October 1414.

At this point he had not yet received any ordinations. On November 3, 1414 he was ordained a priest and on February 3, 1415 as a bishop. The coronation mass for King Sigismund , on whom Dietrich put the crown on his head, was also his first ceremony .

In the years that followed, Dietrich tried to establish a large, contiguous territory on the Lower Rhine and in Westphalia and, for his family, an area of ​​rulership that stretched almost to the North Sea. As a result, he repeatedly came into conflict with his powerful opponent, the Duke of Cleves. He was also Count von der Mark and strove to expand his power many times over in the same areas as the Archbishop.

In 1415 Dietrich became administrator of the prince-bishopric of Paderborn . His efforts not only cost him considerable sums, but he also knew how to secure them by marrying his niece Adelheid von Tecklenburg with one of his opponents. His efforts to incorporate the prince-bishopric into the archbishopric of Cologne had only temporary success. In 1429 Pope Martin V abolished the diocese at his request. This provoked massive resistance from the cathedral chapter, the nobility and cities. The cathedral chapter of Paderborn, which became superfluous after the abolition of the diocese, was able to restore the diocese from Pope Eugene IV in 1431.

In 1424, at the instigation of the archbishop, his brother Heinrich von Moers was elected Bishop of Münster . In 1441 he also became the administrator of the Osnabrück diocese . With his death in 1450 and the subsequent Münsterschen Stiftsfehde both the Diocese of Osnabrück and the Diocese of Münster lost the influence of the Archbishop of Cologne.

In terms of imperial politics, in 1424 he was part of the opposition of the electors, who formed the Binger Kurverein against King Sigismund .

In the county of Mark , Dietrich supported the brother of the Duke of Kleve, Gerhard von Mark zu Hamm , who wanted to make himself independent from Kleve. In return, the archbishop received the then important Kaiserswerth with the lucrative Rhine toll in 1424 as a pledge. An attempt to join the county to the archbishopric, which was supported by most of the county's towns, failed in 1429 due to the resistance of the town of Unna . In 1435 there was a contractual agreement between the opponents, which ended the fighting for the time being and initially left the county of Mark independent.

Dietrich's plan to acquire the Duchy of Berg for a lot of money through an inheritance contract from 1450 also remained unsuccessful . The Duchy of Jülich and the County of Ravensberg were associated with this duchy at that time . What his predecessors had achieved about 80 years earlier with the county of Arnsberg , failed in this case. In 1455 the Duke von Berg, who had been childless until then, was unexpectedly born with an heir.

Dietrich needed a lot of money to implement his hegemonic policy. He could not enforce the introduction of regular taxes in the required amount. When he tried in 1435 to collect an extraordinary poll tax by force, this provoked massive resistance in his countries. In doing so, Dietrich unintentionally promoted the formation of a class movement that gradually institutionalized itself to safeguard its rights.

In 1437 there was a first so-called hereditary union in the Rhenish archbishopric and in the Duchy of Westphalia . Here we meet the oldest class associations in the German Empire. In 1438 Dietrich succeeded again in breaking the unity of the estates in return for confirmation of their privileges and abolition of the poll tax. He was able to isolate the city of Soest as a supposed ringleader within the Duchy of Westphalia. The city, which until then had had a largely good relationship with the sovereign, then looked for allies outside the country.

The disputes with the city of Soest, which had been simmering since then, culminated in 1444 when the city fell from Kurköln and joined the Duchy of Kleve . In the Soest feud , which lasted five years , Dietrich found himself again at war against the Duke of Kleve, behind whom the powerful Duchy of Burgundy stood. The duke's far-reaching plans were aimed at the formation of a separate diocese of Kleve and thus the separation from the archbishopric of Cologne and the complete connection of the duchy of Westphalia to Kleve. In 1445, Pope Eugene IV , who was allied with Burgundy, tried unsuccessfully to remove Archbishop Dietrich from his office in order to decide the war in this way.

This war consisted to a large extent of mutual raids and raids. More significant events were the conquest of Fredeburg and Bilstein at the beginning of the war and the unsuccessful siege of the city of Soest by the archbishop in 1447. For this purpose Dietrich had recruited Hussites from Bohemia as mercenaries, whom he had got to know there during his Hussite campaigns and have been since that time were widely known as feared fighters. In 1449 the war ended with a papal arbitration award in Maastricht that was recognized by both sides . Neither side had gained the upper hand. Soest and Xanten stayed with Kleve, while Fredeburg / Bilstein and Kaiserswerth stayed with Kurköln. This brought the development to a close, which gave the Electoral Cologne area its final shape with the three spatially separated territorial structures (Rheinisches Erzstift, Vest Recklinghausen and Duchy of Westphalia). After the end of the Soest feud, Dietrich II tried to make his brother Walram von Moers bishop of Münster in the Münster collegiate feud .

Because he could not get enough money any other way, the archbishop tried to cover his financial needs with loans. To secure them, he pledged almost all of the sovereign income from around 1438 and gradually increased from 1444. If he had previously always advocated the unity and expansion of his countries, this dubious financial policy put the unity of the Electorate of Cologne in greater danger. In particular, peripheral areas threatened to fall under the control of neighboring rulers through the pledging of offices or administrative districts. Against this, the estates repeatedly emerged as guardians of national unity by buying back pledges of their own accord and at their own expense. At the same time they strengthened their own rights.

The areas over which Archbishop Dietrich aspired to rule cover large parts of today's state of North Rhine-Westphalia . Ultimately, Dietrich was unable to achieve the supremacy of the Archbishops of Cologne in the northern Rhineland and Westphalia that he and his predecessors strived for. On the contrary, the power vacuum that set in with his death soon led to a war with Burgundy under his successor Ruprecht von der Pfalz , which ultimately wanted to incorporate the territory of the Archbishops of Cologne.

In 1421 and 1431 Dietrich took part as imperial prince in the unsuccessful campaigns of imperial armies against the Hussites . Dietrich elected Albrecht II of Habsburg in 1438 and Friedrich III in 1440 as elector . from Habsburg to the German king.

As bishop he worked in his diocese through visitations and provincial councils. His work was apparently focused exclusively on collegiate clergy and monastery politics. The parishes and thus the pastoral care on site apparently interested him little. He personally distinguished himself through a pronounced devotion to Mary .

Dietrich II von Moers died in 1463 at Friedestrom Castle in Zons. He is buried in the ambulatory of Cologne Cathedral .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stephan Beissel : Monetary Value and Wages in the Middle Ages , 1885, p. 56.
predecessor Office successor
Friedrich III. from Saar Werden Elector Archbishop of Cologne
1414–1463 		Ruprecht of the Palatinate
Wilhelm I. von Berg Bishop of Paderborn
1415–1463 		Simon III to the lip
personal data
SURNAME Dietrich von Moers
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dietrich II of Cologne; Dietrich III. from Paderborn
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Roman Catholic clergyman, Archbishop of Cologne
DATE OF BIRTH around 1385
DATE OF DEATH February 14, 1463
Place of death Friedestrom Castle , Zons