Berthold II of Völkershausen

Berthold II von Völkershausen (born around 1320, probably in Völkershausen ; died June 1387 in Bad Hersfeld ) was abbot of the Imperial Abbey of Hersfeld from 1367 until his death . Because of his attempts to restore the former position of power of the imperial abbey, and because of his involvement in the Vitalisnacht, he is considered one of the most historically important Hersfeld abbots .

Life

Berthold von Völkershausen came from a Thuringian aristocratic family from the Hersfeld Abbey, named after their ancestral seat in the village of Völkershausen, southeast of the city of Vacha . He was probably born there around 1320. Since he was embarking on a spiritual career, it can be assumed that he had at least one older brother who took over the family seat.

The exact date of Berthold von Völkershausen's entry into the convent of Hersfeld Abbey is not known. He was first mentioned in 1358 as provost of the Benedictine monastery in Kölleda, which belonged to Hersfeld . In the following years he was promoted to chamberlain to Abbot Johann II. Von Elben , his responsibility was the difficult financial situation of the formerly prosperous imperial abbey. Under Johann II, as under his predecessors, the monastery had to sell property repeatedly and gradually lost power and influence. At the end of 1366, Berthold von Völkershausen was provost of the Frauensee monastery, which also belongs to Hersfeld . From a illegitimate relationship, he had a son named Wigand.

At the end of 1366 or beginning of 1367 Abbot Johann II von Elben died and Berthold von Völkershausen was elected as his successor. He first registered as abbot on January 9, 1367. Berthold began vigorously with the attempt to restore his abbey to its former position of power, which had lost power and possessions in previous years to the Landgraves of Hesse and Thuringia . In previous years, the citizens of the city of Hersfeld had expanded their independence from the abbot as nominal city lords, and the new abbot also wanted to take action against this. Initially, he continued the construction of Eichhof Castle, which was interrupted by Johann II, as a fortress against the city and completed it in 1372. He also joined the Sternerbund , a knightly union in which various smaller territorial lords had come together against the expansion policy of the Hessian landgrave Heinrich II . In the Star Wars that began in 1372, however, the Landgrave remained victorious, among other things because the citizens of Hersfeld had opened the gates to a Landgrave's army against the will of the Abbot. In January 1373, Heinrich II concluded an alliance with the city of Hersfeld, followed by an alliance between the city and the Thuringian Landgrave Balthasar in October of this year . The position of the abbot towards the city of Hersfeld was considerably weakened.

Abbot Berthold made a last attempt to force the city back under his rule on Vitalisnacht . To this end, he had allied himself with members of the Sternerbund, which was nominally dissolved again in 1373. Some members of the covenant were secretly hidden in a town house belonging to the monastery and were supposed to ambush and kill the town council and the aldermen of the town on the night of April 29, 1378, and then open the gates of the town to the abbot and the army of Sterners. However , the action was betrayed by a feud letter from the knight Simon von Haune and the Hersfelder were able to repel the attack. As a result, the knight army devastated the area around the city, but could not take it. After long legal disputes, King Wenceslas finally sentenced the abbot and the knights involved to fines due to the city's lawsuit. Nominally, the city remained part of the Reichsstift. Abbot Berthold was finally forced to conclude a protective alliance with the Hessian landgrave in 1383.

Abbot Berthold largely continued the policies of his predecessor within his territory. Among other things, he confirmed their letters of protection to Jews residing in Hersfeld in 1371 and 1373 , a right that Abbot John II had received from Emperor Charles IV .

literature

• Elisabeth Ziegler: With miter and crook - the abbots of the Reichskloster (the Reichsabtei) Hersfeld , in: Bad Hersfelder Jahresheft, Volume 16, Bad Hersfeld 1970, pp. 6–22

Web links

• Berthold II von Völkershausen in the Hessian biography

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Early evidence of Jewish life in the Hersfeld - Rotenburg area ( Memento from March 22, 2005 in the Internet Archive )

predecessor	Office	successor
Johann II of Elben	Abbot of Hersfeld 1367 - 1387	Reinhard von Boyneburg-Hohenstein