Cuno von Pyrmont and von Ehrenberg
Cuno von Pyrmont and von Ehrenberg (* around 1380; † probably 1447) was the lord of the small imperial dominions Pyrmont in the Eifel and Ehrenberg between the Lower Moselle and the Middle Rhine . His portrait as a praying knight and donor in one of the earlier large, three-lane stained glass windows of the Carmelite Church of Boppard , is a frequently cited example of the late medieval donor representation in the art of the Middle Rhine. (Fig. 1)
Origin and family
Cone zuo Permunt and zuo Erenberg , as he is called in documents of his time, comes from a family de Schonenbergh (also Beaumont), which has its origins in the Ardennes region of Ösling, in what is now the eastern Belgian district of Malmedy . The Schönburg , which is said to have been the founding of the Benedictine Abbey of Prüm in the Eifel, was their ancestral seat. A first Cuno von Schönberg is documented in 1138
A branch of this noble family probably built the Pyrmont Castle in the Elztal at the end of the 12th century, not far from Eltz Castle , on Palatinate soil . The Elz forms the southwestern edge of the fertile Maifeld, in which the Rhineland Count Palatine Heinrich II. Von Laach , from the family of the Counts of Luxembourg, at the beginning of the 11th century. founded the Benedictine Abbey of Maria Laach .
The family's own castle Pyrmont (Fig. 4), a mill and nearby farms formed a small, imperial dominion. Along the lower Moselle and on the heights of the bordering Eifel, the lords of Pyrmont mostly had partial ownership and fiefdoms of vineyards, forests and agriculture, localities and serfs. The warm springs of Bad Bertrich were one of them, they were patron saints of various local churches and had jurisdiction over localities in their region.
Relationships existed almost exclusively with families of the same, lower aristocratic class in the Luxembourgish / Belgian and Cologne areas.
The name Pyrmont - originally also Pirremont, Pirmunt or Permunt - appears for the first time in 1253 through a Heinrich, Herr von Pyrmont, in its current spelling. The name is said to be derived from the Celtic “Baramunda”. This is the name of the mountain spur on which the castle was built. The identity of the name with the former county of Pyrmont in the Weserbergland is rather coincidental. A related parentage is not recognizable.
Life
Cuno von Pyrmont first documents in 1391. The Pyrmont genealogy counts him - according to the (see) European family trees - as the IX. his name. His parents were Heinrich von Pyrmont and Katharina von Gronsvelt . Before 1400 he married Margaretha von Schönburg (Rhine) , widow of Winand von Waldeck , who was a granddaughter and heiress of the last gentleman from Ehrenberg (Lower Moselle) on the Ehrenburg (Brodenbach) (Fig. 5). Cuno von Pyrmont thus inherited a 2/3 fiefdom claim over the Ehrenberg rule. From 1426 he called himself “Herr von Pyrmont and von Ehrenberg” when Count Palatine Stefan von Pfalz-Simmern-Zweibrücken transferred the last third to Ehrenberg Castle after the death of his parents-in-law Schönburg. His wife Margaretha died in 1439. Four sons and three daughters are ascribed to Cuno. The children missing in the former church windows in Boppard may have died at the time the windows were installed.
Cuno's children were: Cuno, Elsa (∞ Johann von Schöneck ), Heinrich (∞ Elisabeth de Sombreffe ), Johann (∞ Elsa Boos von Waldeck ), Friedrich (∞ Katharina zu Eltz ), Lisa (∞ Philipp vom Stein zu Nassau ) and Agnes (∞ Johann von Pallandt ).
Cuno was lord of two empires. He was a vassal of the Archbishop of Trier , feudal man of the Rhineland Count Palatine and Duke of Simmern and the Counts of Sponheim and Vianden . In the service of this West German nobility he was between the Rhine and Moselle a. a. Bailiff in Simmern, burgrave on Kastellaun , councilor of the city of Boppard and Vogt of several localities and courts of the Cologne and Trier churches. He owned and leased widely on the Rhine from Boppard to Sinzig and on the Moselle from St. Aldegund to Koblenz . More than half a hundred place and farm names can be found in documents. He is just as frequently mentioned as advice and witness in contract and procedural documents. The family had farms and houses in Boppard, Karden, Koblenz and Lahnstein . Cuno therefore certainly did not use his two castles as his sole residence.
The family will have earned most of its income from viticulture and wine trade. A traditional list of third-lease payments in kind on Pyrmont-Ehrenberg harvest proceeds, z. B. of the year 1581, suggests a total yield of more than 60,000 liters of wine p. a. conclude.
Cuno's support for Count Ulrich von Manderscheid , elected Archbishop of Trier but not recognized by the Pope , involved him and his three sons Heinrich, Johann and Friedrich between 1432 and 1436 in the “Trier War”, also known as the “Manderscheider Feud”. The Pyrmonters were on the defeated side against an alliance between the Emperor and the Palatinate Elector and lost 3,000 Rhenish guilders promised wages.
In 1441 lords, feudal claims and family property were divided among the three sons of Cuno. They and their descendants were all called von Pyrmont and von Ehrenberg .
1447 is probably the year of Cuno's death. His wife Margarethe had already died in 1438. Both are buried in Karden ad Mosel in or at the collegiate church of St. Kastor. Karden was the archdeacon of the "Lower Archbishopric Trier", an administrative center on the lower Moselle. Cuno may have had his last residence there after the division of property with his sons.
At the beginning of the 16th century, Philipp zu Eltz added the name Herr von Pyrmont and von Ehrenberg to his own when he married Elisabeth, the last from Pyrmont and von Ehrenberg, and inherited the rights to both lordships.
Portraits
Donor portrait of the Carmelite Church Boppard
(Fig. 1, 6 and 7) Cuno von Pyrmont and von Ehrenberg's most important foundation was around 1440 a window for glazing the Carmelite Church of Boppard. Cuno is a young knight - he is at least 60 years old there - with three sons (all in full armor but without weapons) in one pane, and his wife Margarethe with two daughters in a second pane, as the praying founder of this "Pyrmont Window" shown. The extravagantly long wheel spurs typical of the 15th century are striking. Between the donor disks there was a coats-of-arms disk with the shields of the Pyrmont / Ehrenberg and the Schönburg on Wesel / Ehrenberg families, which is unfortunately lost today.
According to recent studies, the guilds and craftsmen of Boppard, high church representatives and the nobility of the region are considered to be the donors of these church windows. Cuno's participation in this foundation is undisputed. It is not yet known what kind of connection he had with the Boppard Carmelites. His membership of the group of founders suggests an appropriate reputation and an economically good situation.
In 1818 the windows were sold by the city of Boppard and arrived at the end of the 19th century. in the international art trade. Many panes of this Marien cycle , "one of the most prominent examples of late Gothic stained glass on the Middle Rhine", have since been destroyed or are in private ownership, others are collected in important European and American museums (see sources: Gepa Datz, 2008).
The two donor panes and a few more of the so-called Pyrmont window are - after several changes of ownership - restored today and in the original, probably no longer completely, in the possession of the Catholic Salve Regina University in Newport / USA. The American collector and millionaire Ogden Goelet had them there in the stairwell of his late 19th century. "Ocher Court" summer villa built in Gothic style installed (today university campus).
Votive cross in Brodenbach
(Fig. 8) A late Gothic, 2.50 m high votive cross made of light sandstone in a house wall in Brodenbach is a lesser known depiction of Cuno. Adorned with the coats of arms of his parents and grandparents and depicted in relief as a sword-girded knight praying on his knees, it is - despite considerable signs of age - an important regional cultural monument for the medieval self-evident of knightly class consciousness and pious humility at the same time. It bears the year "anno 1446".
Grave slab of St. Kastor Church in Treis-Karden
(Fig. 9 from the 1940s) A nearly life-size relief representation of Cuno with his wife Margarethe is preserved in the Abbey Museum of Karden ad Mosel in two magnificent, late Gothic grave slabs (or epitaphs?) Made of red sandstone. Stylistically they are related to the grave slabs of their relatives, the Beyer von Boppard (today in the Bode Museum Berlin). The nine coats of arms of a knightly nobility trial are of importance for heraldry . They show the descent and kinship with respected, long-extinct families from the ministerial, Rhineland knight nobility between the Maas and Mosel, the Lösenich, Frye von Treis, Gronsvelt, Bongart zur Heyden (also de Pomerio ), Schönburg (on Wesel) tribe I and II .
coat of arms
(Fig. 2 and 3) In white (silver) a diagonally right red zigzag bar is the coat of arms of the Pyrmont from the Eifel. In a description of the coat of arms from the time of Archbishop Baldwin of Luxembourg in Trier , it says in old French: "D'Argent à la bande vivrée de geules". The zigzag bars, sloping or straight, are used in different tinctures by several genders in the Ardennes / Eifel and Moselle regions. The Lords of Reuland, Manderscheid, Kerpen, Free von Treis, Winneburg and the like. a. , thus not showing a genealogical connection, but a common vassalage, possibly to the Counts of Luxembourg. Since the beginning of the 15th century united the dominions Ehrenberg and Pyrmont, the family also carries the Ehrenberg coat of arms in a quartered alliance coat of arms with the golden sloping bar and lily crosses as a symbol in the blue field. (Fig. 3) The tincture from the Trier coat of arms description from 1340 already quoted above reads: “D'Azur à la bande d'or”. A younger branch of the family from the middle of the 14th century was responsible for this. in the escutcheon.
4. Pyrmont castle ruins and mill in the Elztal around 1840. Stone print after JD Glennie.
5. Ehrenburg castle ruins around 1850. Drawing for a presumed English travel description.
6. Cuno von Pyrmont and von Ehrenberg with sons. From the former Pyrmont window of the Carmelite Church (Boppard) .
7. From the same window: wife Margarethe and two daughters. On the far right possibly daughter Lisa in religious costume.
8. Late Gothic votive cross for Cuno von Pyrmont and Ehrenberg in Brodenbach ad Mosel.
9. Grave slabs of the von Pyrmont and von Ehrenbergs. Sandstone in the middle of the 15th century Collegiate Church of St. Kastor in Karden ad Mosel
Literature and Sources
- Detlev Schwennicke (Ed.) European Family Tables , New Series Vol. XI. Plates 12 and 13, Marburg 1986
- Gepa Datz: The Carmelite Windows by Boppard. A source-critical contribution to the controversy of its reconstruction. In: Magister Operis. Contributions to the medieval architecture of medieval Europe. ISBN 978-3-7954-2065-9 . Regensburg 2008
- Bernhard Gondorf: Pyrmont Castle in the Eifel. Cologne 1983
- Wilhelm Arnold Günther : Codex Diplomaticus Rheno-Mosellanus. 15th century documents, Koblenz 1825
- JC Loutsch, Johannes Mötsch : The coats of arms of the Trier Burgmannen around 1340. Yearbook Westdeutsche Landesgeschichte Vol. 18, ISBN 3-922018-98-X , Koblenz 1992
- Walter Möller: Family tables of West German noble families in the Middle Ages. NF 2 vol. Darmstadt 1952
- Eberhard J. Nikitsch (arrangement): The inscriptions of the Rhein-Hunsrück district I. Vol. 60. (with a detailed description of the Boppard Carmelite church window) ISBN 3-89500-346-8 , Wiesbaden 2004
- Elmar Rettinger (edit.): Historical local dictionary of Rhineland-Palatinate. Vol. 1: Former district of Cochem. ISBN 3-515-04173-7 , Stuttgart 1985
- Dieter Rogge: The "Black Knight" from Brodenbach. In: Moselkiesel Vol. 3, ISBN 3-9806059-1-4 , Kobern-Gondorf 2002
- Ernst Wackenroder (edit.): Art monuments of the district of Cochem. Vol. II, Düsseldorf 1959
- For heraldry Pyrmont: http://www.welt-der-wappen.de/Heraldik/aktuell/galerien3/galerie2130.htm
Individual evidence
- ↑ All of the following biographical information relates to the European family tables published by Detlev Schwennicke , new sequences, vol. 11, table 13, Marburg 1986
- ↑ European family tables. New series, Detlev Schwennicke (ed.), Vol. XI, Marburg 1986, plate 13
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Cuno von Pyrmont and von Ehrenberg |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Fief of the bishop of Trier |
| DATE OF BIRTH | before 1380 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Pyrmont Castle |
| DATE OF DEATH | uncertain: 1447 |