Aymer de Lusignan

Aymer de Lusignan (also Aymer de Valence ) (* around 1228; † December 4, 1260 in Paris ) was a bishop of the English diocese of Winchester . He was one of the so-called Lusignans , who from 1247 in high favor of King Henry III. stood.

Origin and youth

Aymer came from the French noble family Lusignan . He was the younger son of Hugo X. von Lusignan , Count of La Marche , and his wife Isabella von Angoulême , the widow of the English King John Ohneland . Aymer was thus a half-brother of the English King Henry III. He was born in Poitou , perhaps in the castle of Valence , a family castle near Angoulême . As a younger son, it was agreed in 1242 that he should inherit the small lordship of Couhé in Poitou, and he was earmarked for a spiritual career.

Spiritual career in England

His half-brother Heinrich tried to get him a benefice in the church of Northfleet in Kent in July 1242 , and in June 1246 he received the income from the church of Tisbury in Wiltshire . At the invitation of Heinrich, he came to England in the summer of 1247 together with his brothers Guy , Gottfried and William . By the favor of the king he quickly received further benefices from parishes in various dioceses, from Croyland Abbey and the Abbey of St Albans, as well as in York Minster and in London's St Paul's Cathedral . From July 1247 to September 1248, possibly longer, he attended schools in Oxford , where he was taught by Vincent de Pirmil , who later became Archbishop of Tours . The scholar Johannes de Garlandia wrote a textbook on grammar for him. His stay in Oxford was overshadowed by the murder of one of his servants, whereupon the king withdrew the city's rights from November 1247 to January 1248. As early as 1247 the king had tried in vain to have Lusignan elected provost of Beverley Minster , and the attempt to have him elected Bishop of Durham in 1249 failed because of the resistance of the cathedral chapter. During this time he was at least once in Poitou, where he was appointed one of the executors of his late father's will in August 1248. In March 1249 he paid homage to the abbot of the monastery of Saint-Maixent for his reign Couhé. After the death of Bishop William Raleigh on September 1, 1250, King Henry ordered the monks of Winchester Cathedral to elect Lusignan as the new Bishop of Winchester . In a long sermon in the cathedral, the king reminded the monks of their special obligations to the crown. Although the monks openly rejected Lusignan as a too young and inexperienced candidate, they finally gave in and elected Lusignan as the new bishop on November 4, 1250. After the king intervened with Pope Innocent IV on behalf of his half-brother , the latter confirmed the election in January 1251 and granted Lusignan a dispensation , according to which he did not have to be ordained bishop for the time being, but could continue to receive the income from his benefices, theirs The amount of Matthew Paris was estimated at about 1000 marks annually. In June 1251 Lusignan returned to England, and on July 23, he and the king celebrated his election as bishop with an elaborate festival in Winchester, at which the king gave him valuable chasubles and liturgical implements.

Act as a bishop

Lusignan became involved in violent conflicts as a bishop. As early as September 1251 there was a dispute with merchants from Southampton who refused to cease trading during the Winchester fair. This dispute dragged on until 1254. A serious conflict arose with Boniface of Savoy , Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1252 when this frustrated Lusignan's attempt to gain patronage over St Thomas' Hospital in Southwark . Aymer instigated his supporters, including his brother William de Valence , to plunder the Episcopal Palaces of Lambeth and Maidstone and to arrest an official of the Archbishop who was then incarcerated in Farnham Castle . The official was soon released, but the archbishop excommunicated Lusignan and his supporters. The excommunication was only lifted after the king's intervention and after an appeal to the Pope in January 1253. Lusignan then became embroiled in a heated argument with the monks of the Cathedral Convention of Westminster, who, after wishing to oversee the election of the prior , put up their own candidate. While Lusignan reminded the monks of their obligation to obey, they turned to the Pope, whereupon several leading members of the convent were arrested by Bishop Lusignan, while others voluntarily moved to other Benedictine convents. The dispute was in the meantime settled in June 1256 after mediation by Pope Alexander IV and the Franciscan Adam Marsh , but the issues were not completely resolved. In order to be able to bear the costs of their appointment to the Pope, the monks had borrowed from Italian merchants. Lusignan only wanted to settle these debts if the Cathedral Convention gave him the Isle of Portland with the estates of Weymouth and Wyke in Dorset .

Relationship with the king

Despite these conflicts, Lusignan was in high favor with his royal half-brother. The king constantly presented him with gifts, such as wine or game, but also with privileges and other perks, such as the right to hunt in royal forests. Thanks to privileges granted by the king, the Winchester fair grew rapidly, giving Lusignan increased income. Lusignan enjoyed such a high favor from the king that he could ignore all requests for payment from the royal treasury during his entire term of office, and only towards the end of his term did he pay small taxes. He even hoped for further privileges from the king, he asked him, for example, that he could acquire lands in Woolwich and Greenwich that had previously belonged to the monks of the Abbey of Saint-Jean-d'Angély in Poitou. Through the favor of the king he was also able to marry his niece Alice to Gilbert de Clare , the heir of the rich magnate Richard de Clare, 5th Earl of Hertford . However, the king's attempt to have him elected Archbishop of York in 1255 failed.

Lusignan was by no means always a submissive servant of the king. In April 1253, for example, he supported the other English bishops when they resisted a papal tax, for which he was allegedly reprimanded by the king. His resistance to this tax, as well as his dispute with Archbishop Bonifatius, certainly meant that his opponents were able to convince Pope Innocent IV to withdraw the permission that Lusignan was allowed to receive the income from his previous benefices in addition to that from his diocese. In view of the financial crisis in which the King found himself, the preference for Lusignan and his brothers led to increasing resentment among the knights and barons. His dispute with Boniface of Savoy, a relative of Queen Eleanor , illustrated the division of the royal court into supporters of the Lusignans and the Savoy. Lusignan had given numerous offices in Winchester to compatriots of his, and from January to September 1257 he visited the Poitou. That is why he and his brothers were considered Poitevins in England , as foreigners, even if the king made him ambassador to the French King Louis IX in 1257 . had sent to negotiate an extension of the armistice between England and France. In January 1258, the king sent him again as an envoy to France to negotiate the return of territories claimed by Henry in France.

Escalation of the conflict with the barons, exile and death

In April 1258 there was a violent argument between followers of Lusignan and of John Fitz Geoffrey , Lord of Shere in Surrey , in which a follower of Fitzgeoffrey was killed. After the king refused to hear Fitz Geoffrey's accusation, a rebellion erupted from a group of barons who quickly gained widespread support from other barons. One of the main criticisms of the barons was the preference for the Lusignans. Although the king named Lusignan as one of his twelve negotiators who were to negotiate with the aristocratic opposition, he and his brother fled to Winchester in June 1258 in the face of resistance in Parliament . The angry barons pursued him and were already preparing to siege his residence Wolvesey Castle . He was accused of manslaughter of Fitzgeoffrey's henchman and rumors that he had poisoned various barons, including William de Clare . Between the choice of remaining in the custody of the barons in England or going abroad, he and his brothers chose exile. On July 14th, he left Dover in England. He was only allowed to take 3,000 marks of his treasure with him ; the rest of his fortune was confiscated by the new government of barons, which tried to convince the Pope to remove Lusignan from his office as bishop.

After Lusignan's attempt to stay at the University of Paris was rejected by King Louis IX, a brother-in-law of Queen Eleanor, he traveled on to Rome. There he was able to suggest his version of his exile to Pope Alexander IV, so that in January 1259 he tried to persuade the English king to reinstate Lusignan in his diocese. Under pressure from the barons, the king replied that Lusignan's exile was justified and that it had strained relations between him, his queen and the heir to the throne, Edward . The monks of the Winchester Cathedral Convention elected Henry Wingham to replace Lusignan as the new bishop in January 1259 , while Lusignan's possessions were sacked and his followers removed from office. In January 1260 the king asked the Pope to appoint Lusignan bishop of a diocese outside England. The Pope, on the other hand, consecrated Lusignan, after he had reached the canonical minimum age of 30 years, on May 29, 1260 as a priest and the following day as Bishop of Winchester. He then sent him back to England with the papal envoy Velascus and Archbishop Vincent von Tours, his former teacher. In addition, he threatened to impose the interdict on England and excommunicate Lusignan's opponents as long as Aymer was not reinstated as bishop. In Paris, however, Aymer fell ill and died in the abbey of Ste Geneviève . King Heinrich publicly mourned his death and had masses read for him. After the king had meanwhile regained power in the fight against the barons, Lusignan's heart was buried on March 20, 1262 in Winchester Cathedral.

rating

Lusignan was already heavily criticized by chroniclers during his lifetime for his foreign origin, his poor education and his violence. The dispute with the Cathedral Convention, which had existed since 1254, strained relations between the monks and their successors for many years and led to a financial crisis for both the monks and the bishops. Apart from these disputes, and despite his frequent absence from Winchester, the diocese was remarkably well administered during his tenure. Lusignan and his officials issued deeds, appointed pastors, resolved disputes such as the jurisdiction of the Archdeaconate of Surrey, and solicited foundations for the Hospital of St Cross near Winchester. According to the records received, large sums of money were donated under him to the benefit of the poor, and despite his poor education, Lusignan was one of the arbiters in the contest between the poets Henry d'Avranches and Michael of Cornwall . His land purchases, including Portland and an estate near Woolwich in Kent, were confiscated by his noble opponents during his exile. After his heart was buried in Winchester, miracles were reported about his heart urn, so that more than ten years later votive money was donated there.

literature

• HW Ridgeway: The ecclesiastical career of Aymer de Lusignan, bishop-elect of Winchester 1250-60 . In: J. Blair; B. Golding: The cloister and the world. Clarendon, Oxford 1996. ISBN 0-19-820440-X

Web links

• Nicholas Vincent: Lusignan [Valence], Aymer de (c.1228-1260), bishop of Winchester. In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004
• Aymer de Valence on thepeerage.com , accessed December 6, 2015.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Westminster Abbey: William and Aymer de Valence. Retrieved December 8, 2015 . 
2. ^ Richard H. Britnell: The Winchester pipe rolls and medieval English society. Boydell, Woodbridge 2003. ISBN 1-84383-029-9 , p. 164

predecessor	Office	successor
William Raleigh	Bishop of Winchester 1250–1260	John Gervase