Burchard Grelle

Burchard Grelle (* unknown; † August 12, 1344 , also: Burghard or Borchard ) was Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Bremen from 1327 to 1344 .

biography

Burchard Grelle came from a bourgeois family in Bremen. His father Volcmar Grelle was a member of the city council from 1296 to 1314. Next to Johann Rode von Wale, he was the only commoner who was elected bishop in Bremen. As a citizen's son, unlike many other Bremen archbishops, he always had a good relationship with the city ​​of Bremen .

Burchard received the magister artium in Paris , then became provost and from 1310 archdeacon in Rüstringen . There he was able to mediate between the feuding Rüstringers and the city of Bremen. After the death of his predecessor Jens Grand (also Johannes Grant, 1260-1327), against whom Burchard temporarily represented the interests of the Archbishopric before the Curia , Pope Johannes XXII. on September 25, 1327 Burchard as Archbishop of Bremen . 1327/28 Burchard stayed in Avignon with the curia and received the episcopal ordination and the pallium (official badge of the metropolitan). Politically, he now allied himself with the curia as an opponent of King and Emperor Ludwig IV of Bavaria, since the Pope was striving in terms of power politics to significantly weaken the empire. From the following period, however, no actions by Burchard are known that were directed against the emperor.

Burchard restored the order in the diocese of Bremen, which had been broken under Jens Grand. But it remained uneasy, Burchard had to pull against the Rüstringer several times, and the Kehdinger and Dithmarscher initially did not want to recognize him. Against Kehdingen he built the Kiek castle in de Elve , which was destroyed again by the Kehdinger after his death. He lost the Thedinghausen and Langwedel castles .

In 1329 he brokered on behalf of Pope John XXII. a peaceful solution to the chapter of Cammin in disputes between the Teutonic Order and the diocese of Breslau . It was probably due to his influence that the Bremen scholaster (head of a collegiate school) Helembert von Vischbeck in 1331 against the resistance of Gerhard III. von Holstein (1293-1340) became Bishop of Schleswig .

At Easter 1334, Burchard claimed that he had "miraculously" found the remains of Saints Cosmas and Damian that Archbishop Adaldag had brought back from Rome in 965 in Bremen Cathedral . At Pentecost 1335, he had a festival lasting several days held on the occasion of the relics of the relics, which included a large knight tournament on the cathedral courtyard.

Archbishop Burchard's successor was Otto I from the Oldenburg Count House in 1345 .

literature

• Wilhelm von Bippen:  Burchard . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876, p. 555 f.
• Eckhard Danneberg, Heinz-Joachim Schulze (ed.): History of the country between the Elbe and Weser . Volume II: Middle Ages . Landscape Association of the Former Duchies of Bremen and Verden, Stade 1995, ISBN 3-9801919-8-2 , pp. 175–180.
• Friedrich Bock: The pontificate of Borchard von Bremen in the context of the struggle between nation state and empire . In: Bremen Yearbook of the Historical Society Bremen . Volume 57. Schünemannverlag, Bremen 1957, pp. 15–51.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Wilhelm Lührs: The Domshof. History of a place in Bremen . Hauschild Verlag, Bremen 1987, ISBN 3-920699-87-4 , p. 10.

predecessor	Office	successor
Jens Grand	Archbishop of Bremen 1327–1344	Otto I.