Cornelius Gerhard Lersmacher

Cornelius Gerhard Lersmacher (* around 1660 in Freialdenhoven ; † November 24, 1731 in Trier ) was vicar general for the Obererzstift Trier .

Life

Lersmacher studied in Trier and received his master's degree in 1684 . He received minor orders and the subdiaconate in Mainz in 1687 and was ordained a priest in 1688. On June 21, 1688, after more than ten years of effort, he was accepted as a canon of the capitulary at St. Paulin Abbey in Trier. As the nephew of the dean of the St. Kastor Abbey in Karden , Cornelius Seulen von Freialdenhoven, he was presented in 1685 by another uncle, the Karden scholaster and senior Johann Wilhelm Felix the Elder, to the vicarie of the Altar St. Maria. In 1692 he is attested there as a canon and godfather.

From 1703 to 1719 Lersmacher was a factory foreman in St. Paulin. During this time he had the Liège painter Louis Counet, who worked in Trier from 1700 to 1721, various paintings of the Trier martyrs and St. Paulinus , probably also of St. Produce Nepomuk, which were intended for the St. Walburgis Church and now hang in the St. Paulinus Church. On March 26, 1706, he was elected dean by the collegiate chapter and held this office until his death in 1731. In 1704 he was appointed apostolic protonotary and in 1718 he was electoral secret council (also executor of the will of Auxiliary Bishop Verhorst).

On March 16, 1719, he was appointed vicar general for the Obererzstift and president of the consistory in accordance with the consistory ordinance of Archbishop Franz Ludwig von Pfalz-Neuburg . The activity that was his undoing was that of the syndic of the clergy of the Obererzstiftes. Arrested on May 24, 1721 on the (presumably unjustified) accusation of misappropriating funds from the monastery and the clergy, he was imprisoned for seven years in the Ehrenbreitstein fortress and released from the offices of vicar general and secret council.

Released from prison on July 25, 1728, he was publicly respected, but not rehabilitated. He died on November 24, 1731 and was buried in front of the St.-Johann-Nepomuk-Altar in the collegiate church of St. Paulin . In his will of August 11, 1729, he had determined that his tombstone should have no words of praise or coat of arms, but only the sentence: Hic iacet Cornelius Gerardus Lersmacher indignus sacerdos - "Here lies the unworthy priest Cornelius Gerhard Lersmacher". His successor as dean was Lothar Friedrich von Nalbach (1732–1748).

literature

• Franz-Josef Heyen : The St. Paulin Abbey in front of Trier . Germania Sacra Neue Episode 6, The Dioceses of the Church Province of Trier. The Archdiocese of Trier 1. The St. Paulin Abbey in front of Trier. De Gruyter, Berlin 1972, especially p. 637f.
• Ferdinand Pauly : The St. Kastor Abbey in Karden on the Moselle. Germania Sacra New Episode 19: The Archdiocese of Trier 3. The St. Kastor Abbey in Karden on the Moselle. De Gruyter, Berlin 1986, p. 443
• Wolfgang Seibrich : Lersmacher, Cornelius Gerhard. In: Erwin Gatz : The Bishops of the Holy Roman Empire. Volume 3: 1648 to 1803. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990
• From state prisoners; Dean Lersmacher . In: Christian von Stramberg : Memorable and useful Rhenish antiquarian, Volume 1, Middle Rhine. Hergt, Koblenz 1845, p. 504ff.