Burchard from Michelbach

Burchard von Michelbach (* 12th century; † August 21, 1162 in Strasbourg ) was Prince-Bishop of Strasbourg from 1141 to 1162 under the rule of the Roman-German King Konrad III. and of the emperor Frederick I , during the pontificate of Innocent II , Cölestin II. , Lucius II. , Eugene III. , Anastasius IV. , Hadrian IV. And Alexander III. His diocese was in the Mainz Metropolitan Province under the patronage of the Archbishops Markolf von Mainz , Heinrich I von Mainz , Arnold von Selenhofen , Rudolf von Zähringen , Christian I von Buch and Konrad I von Wittelsbach .

Origin and family

Michelbach coat of arms

He was born in Gaggenau-Michelbach from the local nobility and died in Strasbourg in 1162. Burchard was the nephew of the Strasbourg bishop Kuno von Michelbach .

In the 11th century a nobleman named Werinhardus from Ufgau illegally built a castle called "Michilenbach" on the Michelbacher Schlossberg. After the death of Emperor Heinrich III. , who legitimately denied the construction of Michilenbach Castle and had it demolished, his sons, Eberhardus and Kuno, were able to rebuild the castle. As a nephew of Kuno, Burchard should therefore be a descendant of Eberhardus.

Burchard von Michelbach must not be confused with Burchard von Straßburg, who was born in Cologne and who acted shortly after his death, Vice-Dominus of the Bishop of Strasbourg, imperial notary on Emperor Frederick I's second expedition to Italy.

Live and act

From taking office to the coronation of Friedrich I.

He was the canon of the Strasbourg cathedral and provost of the colleges of Haslach and Jung-Sankt Peter when he was elected by the chapter. Conrad III. stayed in Strasbourg from March 30th to April 10th, 1141. He celebrated Easter in the presence of numerous princes and held a court day. The new Bishop Burchard was solemnly installed on this occasion.

Reconstruction of the churches by Burchard, cathedral and St. Thomas Church

Burchard inaugurated the chapel of the Strasbourg hospital in honor of Mary and Saint Erhard in 1143. He presented her with numerous goods and therefore occupies a privileged place among the benefactors of this hospital. At the intervention of Queen Gertrud and at the request of Bishop Burchard, the clergy and people of Strasbourg, the Roman-German King Konrad accepted on July 11, 1143 to take the hospital there with all its accessories under his protection and confirmed the hospital master, Brother Ulrich, in his office. On October 25, 1143, Burchard had the grave of saint Florence opened in Haslach and confirmed with a solemn act that the bones of the saint would continue to rest in Haslach and should not be transferred to Strasbourg.

He initially devoted himself to the reconstruction of the minster and the church of St. Thomas ; both were damaged by fire in 1144. All written documents were lost. Burchard still experienced the old, so-called Ottonian cathedral, as the construction of the current minster did not begin until half a century after his death.

Bernard of Clairvaux, by Jean Le Tavernier , 1450

On the fourth Sunday of Advent, December 23, 1145, Burchard received St. Bernard of Clairvaux , who had come to Strasbourg with the Bishop of Basel, Ortlieb von Frohburg . There he read Holy Mass in the minster . He then went to Speyer by ship on the Rhine to preach the crusade in the cathedral in the presence of King Konrad. Actually, the Pope had called the French King Louis VII on a crusade, but the papal bull does not seem to have reached the monarch. Conrad III. took the cross on December 27, 1145, but failed and returned home shamefully. The actual second crusade happened two years later, also by Bernhard von Clairvaux and the pontiff Eugene III. preached.

A schismatic bishop for the antipope Viktor IV.

Friedrich Barbarossa succeeded his uncle Konrad on the German throne on March 9, 1152. Hadrian IV crowned him emperor on June 18, 1155. He had grown up in Hagenau in Alsace and therefore visited his homeland when he began his reign. Incidentally, the imperial insignia remained in Hagenau for 46 years, from where the imperial chancellor Konrad III. von Scharfenberg , Bishop of Speyer, brought it to the Trifels .

On January 27, 1153 he paid a visit to the Hohenburg convent on Mount Odile , today the most important place of pilgrimage in Alsace. His companions were Arnold I , Archbishop of Cologne , and the heads of the two dioceses for Alsace, Bishop Burchard of Strasbourg and Ortlieb von Frohburg , the Bishop of Basel. Numerous abbots, dukes, counts and lords joined them. On July 12, 1153, they resided in Erstein .

In the same year Burchard consecrated the Saint Martin chapel in the Strasbourg cathedral, which was later replaced by the sacristy of the canons.

Ceiling frescoes in the Kaisersaal in the Würzburg Residenzschloss: Apollo brings Friedrich Barbarossa to Beatrix of Burgundy.

On January 25, 1156, Burchard succeeded in having the exemption from public town charter and the exemption from all fiscal charges for the servants of the Strasbourg Cathedral Foundation confirmed by Emperor Friedrich. This privilege was extended to the servants of the St. Thomas and St. Peter monasteries in the suburbs of Strasbourg. After his coronation, Frederick I. went to Würzburg to meet up with Beatrix to marry, daughter of the Count of Burgundy, in June 1156th Bishop Burchard was one of the wedding guests and accompanied the emperor to Colmar after the festivities to discuss the affairs of the church. In that year the emperor became immensely angry by a peace between Pope Hadrian and Wilhelm , King of Sicily, and sparked the well-known conflict over the term “beneficium” and thus over the question of whether the emperor ruled by God's grace or not.

→ Main article : Frederick Chapter I: Intensified conflict with the papacy

City wall Venete in Crema

On May 4, 1158, Burchard inaugurated the abbey church in Neuburg , and shortly afterwards he accompanied the emperor to the war against rebellious Lombard cities.

When Pope Hadrian died on September 4, 1159, the emperor favored Cardinal Octavian, to whom the electoral college only gave two votes. Cardinal Roland Bandinelli received the other votes and ascended the Roman chair under the name of Alexander III. He went into exile in France.

The antipope Viktor IV received the papal ordinations on October 4th, 1159 under the protection of the emperor and his troops. Friedrich I tried to settle the matter amicably. However, the pope, who was elected in all legality, did not put up with anything, because the calling of councils was only available to the rightful Pope.

On February 5, 1160 in Pavia, Emperor Viktor IV had more than 53 bishops and archbishops recognized as Pope. The monarch enthroned the Pope, so to speak, by force of arms. Alexander III responded with the usual means at the time and excommunicated Emperor Friedrich zu Anagnia on March 24, 1160.

On July 19, 1161, Viktor IV convened a council in the newly built Lodi, which was attended by the emperor and the vast majority of all German bishops, including Burchard von Michelbach. The prelates paid homage to the new Pope.

After his return to Strasbourg, Bishop Burchard was able to win over the canons, the collegiate members, the clergy and the monasteries of his diocese for Viktor IV, although it is not entirely clear whether they knew about the conditions of the election at that time and therefore the antipope Viktor IV . as the rightly elected Pope.

Artistic and intellectual activities during Burchard's tenure

Hortus Deliciarum

In Burchard's diocese became famous Abbess Relindis who had called the Emperor from the Benedictine monastery Bergen Raichberg on the Danube, then living into the once decaying Hohenburg monastery on the Odilienberg restore law and order under the control of the incumbent bishop Burchard.

Guta Sintram Codex

The noble, well-read Relindis taught the nuns of the convent and, among others, the future superior of the monastery, Herrad von Landsberg , who succeeded her master in 1167. She is the famous poet of the delightful garden ( hortus deliciarum ). The delightful garden is now in the library of the Great Seminary in Strasbourg.

Bishop Burchard also had another learned and artistically hardworking Augustinian choirwoman under his episcopal care, Guta von Schwarzenthann , from the monastery founded in 1149 near Marbach. Guta and the Augustinian canon Sintram von Marbach wrote the Codex Guta-Sintram in 1154 in the Marbach monastery near Voegtlinshoffen in Alsace , containing the martyrology of Usuard, the rule of St. Augustine , the commentary by Hugo von St. Viktor and the old ones Contains Constitutions of Marbach. This precious manuscript of European standing is now in the library of the great Strasbourg seminary.

literature

• Ludwig Gabriel Glöckler: History of the diocese of Strasbourg. Printed by Le Roux, Strasbourg 1879, 484 pages
• Henry Riegert: Le journal historique de l'Alsace. Editions L'ALSACE, Mulhouse, 1980, tome 1, 4ème édition, 1995, 120 pages.
• Francis Rapp: Le Diocèse de Strasbourg. Editions Beauchesne, January 1, 1982 - 352 pages, "Histoire des diocèses de France" collection, number 14
• Base numérique du patrimoine d'Alsace (BNPA), Histoire de Strasbourg, Center régional et départemental de pédagogie (CRDP).
• Strasbourg: la ville au Moyen Age (Alsace). Chapter 2. Le Moyen Age: la ville épiscopale 1002-1334. Cape. 2.1 La ville sous l'épiscopat de Wernher. Cape. 2.2. Strasbourg et la querelle des investitures. Read online at (fr) [6] (accessed on July 28, 2014)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ GND = 10242585X
2. ^ Hermann Cardauns: Burchard. In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, published by the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Volume 3 (1876), p. 566, digital full-text edition in Wikisource, version of October 21, 2014
3. ↑ Burchardus Argentinensis on geschichtsquellen.de, accessed on August 5, 2014
4. ^ RI IV, 1,2 n. 202, in: Regesta Imperii Online, [1] (accessed on October 22, 2014)
5. ↑ RI IV, 1,2 n. 280, in: Regesta Imperii Online, [2] (accessed on October 22, 2014)
6. ↑ During this stay the saint is said to have cured a girl suffering from gout and a lame boy, see literature Gloeckler, page 196
7. ↑ RI IV, 2.1 n. 384, in: Regesta Imperii Online, [3] (accessed October 22, 2014)
8. ↑ GND = 10311520X - Article "Relindis" by Wilhelm Wiegand in: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, published by the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Volume 28 (1889), p. 186, digital full-text edition in Wikisource, [4] , Version dated October 21, 2014
9. ↑ Strasbourg district archive p. 28, simultaneous copy of the bull Lucius III. Compare on the Bergen time C. Bruschius in his Monasteriorum Germaniae chronologia, Ingolstadt 1551, p. 97 and Grandidier, Oeuvres inédites II, 291 ff. - On literary relationships cf. W. Scherer in Z. fd A. XX, 198 ff. And T. Hayner in Paul and Braune's contributions III, 491 ff.
10. ↑ ADB: Herrad von Landsberg - GND = 118549901
11. ^ Article "Herrad von Landsberg" by Alfred Woltmann in: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, edited by the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Volume 12 (1880), pp. 205–206, digital full-text edition in Wikisource, [5]

Remarks

1. ^ The Vizedominus, in Austria Vizedomus, was the administrator of the episcopal table goods.
2. ↑ Imitations of the imperial insignia are exhibited at Trifels Castle in the Palatinate. In 1273 Rudolf von Habsburg kept them in his Kyburg Castle in Switzerland, from where they finally came to Nuremberg.
3. ↑ In a document of Provost Konrad von St. Thomas in Strasbourg for the inhabitants of Mutzig it is indicated in the dating that the bailiff of St. Thomas, Kaiser Friedrich, and Bishop Burchard of Strasbourg fought against Crema at that time. According to: RI IV, 2.2 n.750, in: Regesta Imperii Online, URI: http://www.regesta-imperii.de/id/1159-08-00_2_0_4_2_2_192_750 (accessed on October 22, 2014)
4. ↑ Only three bishops resisted: St. Peter, Archbishop of Tarentaise (Savoy), Eberhard of Salzburg and Hartmann of Brixen .

Web links

• City wiki Michelbach
• City wiki Karlsruhe Kuno

Commons : Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Commons : Nave of Église Saint-Thomas, Strasbourg  - Collection of images

Commons : Interior of Saint-Pierre-le-Jeune Catholic Church (Strasbourg)  - Collection of images

• The Ottonian Minster Reconstruction computer image