Franz von Hatzfeld
Franz von Hatzfeld (born September 13, 1596 at Crottorf Castle ; † July 30, 1642 in Würzburg ) was Prince-Bishop of Würzburg from 1631 and from 1633 until his death in 1642 Prince-Bishop of the Bamberg Monastery .
family
Franz von Hatzfeld came from the Hessian, imperial-free noble family of the von Hatzfeld . His father was Baron Sebastian von Hatzfeld -Wildenburg (1566-1630), Electoral Mainz Council, bailiff and county judge of Eichsfeld in Heiligenstadt , his mother Lucia von Sickingen (1569-1603) was the daughter of the Palatine Council Franz von Sickingen. Franz von Hatzfeld was born as their third son at Crottorf Castle in the Wildenburger Land . The eponymous place Hatzfeld is now a town in the Waldeck-Frankenberg district in Hesse .
His older brother Melchior von Hatzfeld was a well-known general from the Thirty Years War . Other brothers were Heinrich Friedrich (* 1592), canon in Mainz, and the Reichshofrat and Colonel Hermann von Hatzfeld (1603–1673). At the age of seven he lost his mother, who died giving birth to his youngest brother Hermann. In the following year his father entered into a second marriage with his cousin Maria Margaretha von Hatzfeld, who gave birth to a daughter who was named Lucia (1605-1670) and died as the wife of Baron Bertram von Nesselrode (1592-1678). Margaretha von Bockenförde called Schüngel became his father's third wife after Maria Margaretha's death. She seems to have been the mother of the daughters Maria Margaretha and Anna Maria.
Life
His father Sebastian, who had changed early from the Lutheran to the Catholic denomination , was of the opinion that Franz should devote himself to the clergy; His aim was to secure the future of his sons, since the Hatzfeld estates were not too extensive and only generated little income. At the age of ten, Franz achieved the office of Canon of Würzburg ; two years later he became canon of Bamberg . At the age of thirty he assumed the office of cathedral cantor in Bamberg as a Bamberg canon ; a year later he became Würzburg cathedral capitular , then he held the office of provost of the collegiate monastery of St. Gangolf , which he officially held until 1633.
On August 7, 1631, the cathedral chapter in Würzburg elected him Prince-Bishop , thereby honoring his services to the Franconian bishoprics, which he had previously acquired in his numerous offices. His work as Würzburg envoy on the electoral collegiate day in Regensburg and the representation of the Bamberg bishop on the so-called composition day in Frankfurt am Main shortly before his election brought him recognition . In addition there was his always loyal attitude to the emperor as well as his good relations with the Viennese court. At the time of Franz von Hatzfeld's appointment as Prince-Bishop, Urban VIII was Pope and Ferdinand II was Emperor. During the Thirty Years' War the Swedes occupied Bamberg and Franz von Hatzfeld was forced to flee to Cologne . On June 20, 1633, the Swedish Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna enfeoffed Duke Bernhard of Saxony-Weimar with the dioceses of Würzburg and Bamberg. The two dioceses were to be merged permanently under the name of the Duchy of Franconia.
The Catholic estates expelled from their possessions by the Swedes then gathered in Cologne under the local Archbishop Ferdinand (1612–1650); Hatzfeld also joined them. There decided in addition to the Rhenish archbishops of Cologne, Mainz , Trier, the bishops of Osnabrück , Worms and Würzburg, with King Ludwig XIII. (1610–1643) to establish contact in order to dissuade France from supporting the Protestant camp, in particular from the alliance with Sweden, in favor of the Catholic party; Franz von Hatzfeld was entrusted with this mission. On January 24, 1632, he met Louis XIII in Metz . and its chancellor Richelieu together. After the unsuccessful outcome of his mission, he misrepresented the result, which caused him to fall out of favor at the Viennese court. On August 4, 1633, he was elected bishop in the Bamberg enclave of Wolfsberg in Carinthia , where the cathedral chapter had fled. From Cologne the prince-bishop promoted the establishment of a regiment to protect the Franconian dioceses; to recruit the mercenaries he won his brother Melchior.
At the beginning of September 1634, as a result of the victory of the imperial troops over the Swedish commanders Horn and Weimar in the battle of Nördlingen, the dioceses were largely liberated. In November 1634 Franz von Hatzfeld ended his exile in Cologne and returned to Würzburg with the troops of Field Marshal Philipp Graf von Mansfeld at the end of the year, after he had previously been in Stuttgart from the later Emperor Ferdinand III. had been received. After his return, it has been proven that there were individual witch trials .
On May 27, 1635 the three brothers Franz, Melchior and Hermann were elevated to the rank of imperial count by the emperor ; In 1636 the emperor appointed the prince-bishop to his plenary tentario (plenipotentiary and envoy) in view of the impending peace negotiations with Sweden ; however, the negotiations failed. As a result of the Peace of Prague on May 30, 1635, the prince-bishop had to accept the reintroduction of the Protestant church system ; His efforts to remove the devastation caused by the war, which had now lasted for twenty years, were largely fruitless because the French under Richelieu were now invading Franconia.
Franz von Hatzfeld did not live to see the end of the Thirty Years' War; he died of a stroke in Würzburg in 1642. In 1639 he gave the manors Stockheim and Hasslach to the city of Kronach ; he also made sure that the Hatzfeld house came into the possession of the Franconian lords of Holdberg-Stetten , Rosenberg and Waldmannshofen . Numerous charitable institutions, such as the Würzburg orphanage , also went back to his initiative . In Würzburg and Bamberg, close confidante of Hatzfeld, Johann Philipp von Schönborn and Melchior Otto Voit von Salzburg, took the bishop's seats.
literature
- Reinhard Weber: Würzburg and Bamberg in the Thirty Years War. The reign of Bishop Franz von Hatzfeld, 1631–1642. Echter-Verlag, Würzburg 1979, ISBN 3-429-00602-3 (At the same time: Würzburg, University, dissertation, 1976: Würzburg and Bamberg under Bishop Franz von Hatzfeldt. ).
- Winfried Romberg: The Würzburg bishops from 1617 to 1684 (= Germania Sacra . Series 3, 4: The dioceses of the ecclesiastical province of Mainz. The diocese of Würzburg. 7). de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-025183-8
Web links
- Entry on Franz von Hatzfeld on catholic-hierarchy.org ; accessed on November 24, 2017.
- Description of the coat of arms of the Prince-Bishop's multiple coat of arms
- Franz's coat of arms in the cathedral treasury
Individual evidence
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| Johann Georg II. Fuchs of Dornheim |
Prince-Bishop of Bamberg 1633–1642 |
Melchior Otto Voit from Salzburg |
| Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg |
Prince-Bishop of Würzburg 1631–1642 |
Johann Philipp von Schönborn |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hatzfeld, Franz von |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Bishop of Bamberg |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 13, 1596 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Crottorf Castle |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 30, 1642 |
| Place of death | Wurzburg |