Emecho I of Clotten

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Emecho I. von Clotten (* around 1190 in Klotten ; † October 30, 1263 in Brauweiler ) was a German Benedictine and from 1237 to 1263 abbot of Brauweiler Abbey .

ancestry

It is documented that Emecho's ancestors belonged to the lower Klotten nobility . It is believed that he was a son of Johann von Clotten (Reichsvogt from 1202 to 1212) and his wife Aleydis. Accordingly, he was a brother of Franko von Klotten, who is still attested as the castle man of the Counts of Virneburg , and his grandfather was the Imperial Bailiff Theodorich von Clotten (* around 1105; † after 1163).

Life

Right from the start of his tenure as abbot of the Brauweiler monastery, Emecho von Clotten faced a whole host of difficulties. As one of his first official acts after the Benediction by the Archbishop of Cologne Heinrich von Müllenark , he tried to buy back the farm near St. Johann in Cologne , which had been sold by his predecessor Hermann I to the Kamp monastery , by reimbursing the purchase price. Emecho had also written to Kamp and, according to the reading of the text, the sale of the farm by his predecessor was the result of a financial need that the Archdiocese could have cleverly exploited.

Emecho saw that he could hardly cope with further economic difficulties, as he soon had to sell several rights and possessions of the monastery or pledge them, subject to the right to repurchase. However, there were various reasons that had brought him into this need. On the one hand, the fields could only be cultivated poorly due to a lack of public security, which soon led to bad harvests, and on the other hand there were also weather-related crop failures, such as the vineyards and fruit trees destroyed by hail on the Moselle .

Due to the financial circumstances, Emecho turned to the Archbishop of Cologne, Konrad von Hochstaden, in 1247 to confirm that he would not have to accept more than 40 monks in the Brauweiler monastery . This then caused that the decree of the papal legate Konrad von Poro from 1225 was renewed. The archbishop's prohibition, under threat of excommunication , to admit more than 40 monks, was intended to grant the monastery peace and protection from Rhenish nobles, who all too often demanded prebenders for their later sons.

In 1255 economic conditions deteriorated again when his own property and that of the convent were separated. The assumption that he would have used too much of the monastery's income for himself may, as has been noted, be the personal assessment of a chronicler on the occasion of the previous asset separation.

“How much the spirit of Benedict suffered in the abbey at the time of Emechos is shown by the division made in 1255 between the property of the abbot and the property of the convent. However regrettable this step was in and of itself, it required the consideration that the unrestricted power and the right of disposal over the entire property of the monastery in the hands of a single man, the abbot, if he were to imitate the worldly lord in expenditure endeavored or was a bad businessman, had to lead to the ruin of the monastery assets and to the neglect of the actual monastery tasks. "

- Alfons Friderichs :

From a letter from Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden dated April 27, 1255, it can be seen that the separation of the property of Emecho from the property of the convent happened against his will and only through the use of the ecclesiastical pastor. As a result of this measure, the election of the subsequent abbots was no longer judged solely on their actual qualifications for the office. Rather, one looked at the future applicants for the office of abbot also on their private financial situation and on their knowledge of dealing with secular business.

Brauweiler

From the fact that later abbots had to pay a third of their annual income to the Roman Curia , it can be inferred that Emecho's income from the monastery must have been around 100 gold guilders per year.

After his death on October 30, 1263, Emecho von Clotten was buried in the main aisle of the St. Nikolaus Abbey Church in Brauweiler.

seal

His seal, in green wax, oval, 5.8 × 4 cm, shows a clergyman sitting on a folding chair with abbot's staff and book. Inscription in capital letters : EMECHO DEI GRATIA BRUNWILARENSIS ABBAS

literature

  • Alfons Friderichs (Ed.): Von Clotten, Emecho In: Personalities of the Cochem-Zell district. Kliomedia, Trier 2004, ISBN 3-89890-084-3 , p. 72.
  • Josef Klein (Author): History of the Benedictine Abbey Brauweiler in the Middle Ages. Festschrift for the nine hundredth anniversary of the existence of the church and the abbey , publisher: Freimersdorf-Brauweiler, 1924 (2nd edition), 70 pp.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Alfons Friderichs (author): Emecho von Clotten - abbot in the Brauweiler monastery , Heimatjahrbuch Kreis Cochem-Zell 1986, pp. 76–78.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g The Archdiocese of Cologne - The Benedictine Abbey of Brauweiler , Germania Sacra, New Series 29, The Dioceses of the Church Province of Cologne, edited by Erich Wisplinghoff, Walter de Gruyter - Berlin - New York, 1992, Emecho I. von Klotten Pp. 193-194
  3. ↑ heimatjahrbuch-vulkaneifel.de Markus Friderichs: The ministerial, knight and count family of Daun. In: Heimatjahrbuch-Vulkaneifel. 2010
  4. ↑ Emecho I of Clotten In: Historical and statistical description of the country-house work to Brauweiler by Johann Baptist Ristelhueber in the Google Book Search
personal data
SURNAME Emecho I of Clotten
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Emecho from Clotten
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Benedictine monk and abbot of Brauweiler Abbey
DATE OF BIRTH 1190
PLACE OF BIRTH Clothes
DATE OF DEATH October 30, 1263
Place of death Brauweiler