Gabriel from Eyb

Gabriel von Eyb (left) with the diocesan saints Willibald and Walburga . By Lucas Cranach the Elder Ä. (1520)

Grave monument of the Eichstätter prince-bishop Gabriel von Eyb in Eichstätter cathedral

Gabriel von Eyb (born September 29, 1455 in Arberg ; † December 1, 1535 in Eichstätt ) was the 52nd diocesan and prince-bishop of Eichstätt during the Reformation . He was the first German bishop to publish the papal bull threatening Martin Luther and other reformers.

origin

Gabriel came from the Frankish noble family of Eyb zu Eybburg and was the third oldest son of Ludwig Eyb the Elder († January 29, 1502), a lawyer and diplomat in the service of the Brandenburg house of the Margraves of Ansbach , at Arberg Castle , where the father was a carer from Eichstatt. The mother, Magdalena († November 14, 1473 in Heilsbronn ), came from the family of the Adelmann von Adelmannsfelden . The humanist Bernhard Adelmann von Adelmannsfelden , friend of Pirckheimer and Luther , was a cousin of Gabriel. Several church dignitaries emerged from the family.

Live and act

Training and canonicals

At the age of 16 he moved to the University of Erfurt in 1471 , where his youngest brother Kaspar followed him the next year . At the time of matriculation, Gabriel described himself as Canon of Bamberg and Eichstätt; the entitlement to the latter canonical, which was connected with the office of cathedral choirmaster, his father had already obtained in 1460. He kept the canonical until 1515, when he had long been Prince Bishop. In 1467 the prebend was added to the Bamberg canonical. In Erfurt he obtained the title of Magister Artium and thus the preliminary stage for an exam in one of the three other faculties. While still a student, in 1473, he was given the office of domicellar in Würzburg as a third source of income . On July 24, 1475, his uncle and great patron, the important humanist Albrecht von Eyb , whose extensive library Gabriel inherited, died.

Studied from April 24, 1475 Gabriel and his cousin William of Eyb in the three years before the Bavarian founded State University Ingolstadt law . A year later he was followed by his brother Kaspar, canon of Bamberg and Eichstätt. In 1478 Gabriel went to Italy to the University of Pavia , next to Bologna and Padua the most important school for aspiring lawyers; he stayed there for seven years and in 1485 acquired the title of Doctor of Canon Law . His doctoral degree is in the Bavarian Main State Archives ; his diary from this time, which he verifiably kept, has not survived.

The years until the election of a bishop

As a 30-year-old Gabriel returned to Germany and made his knowledge and services available primarily to the Eichstatter Prince-Bishop Wilhelm von Reichenau ; therefore he stayed mainly in Eichstätt for the next ten years and in Bamberg and Würzburg (resignation in 1497) probably only fulfilled his residence obligation of several days . His second oldest brother, Ludwig von Eyb the Younger , who had become court master of the Eichstätt prince-bishop in 1479 , was already staying in Eichstätt. He transferred to the Palatine court in 1487, and Gabriel was warmly connected to him until his death in 1521. Gabriel must have done the Würzburg council a service, because they sent him wine out of gratitude in 1506, when Gabriel was already Prince-Bishop, whereupon the bishop returned the favor with a round tabletop made of Solnhofen marble; the magnificent table with three coats of arms (including the Eybsche) in the core of the plate, carved by Tilman Riemenschneider , is now in the Mainfränkisches Museum on the Würzburg fortress .

In 1486 Bernhard Adelmann von Adelmannsfelden took up his canonical office in Eichstätt. A close friendship developed between Gabriel and his cousin , who was almost the same age . Later, in the election of a bishop, Bernhard resigned from his candidacy in favor of Gabriel.

In 1487 Gabriel von Eyb was appointed margravial councilor of Ansbach, an honorable duty that he fulfilled until he was elected bishop. In 1495/96 Pope Alexander VI commissioned him as the Bamberg canon . to settle the protracted dispute between the Bamberg canon Theoderich Morung and the margrave; In 1498 Morung was released from captivity in Ansbach. There are indications that Gabriel also carried out a public activity on behalf of the emperor. Why and when he was ordained a priest in Regensburg and not in Eichstätt until 1496 is not clear.

The coat of arms of Prince-Bishop Gabriel von Eyb on the former Dominican Church in Eichstätt, dated 1512

Election and assumption of office

After the death of Wilhelm von Reichenau († November 19, 1496), Gabriel von Eyb was elected as the new prince-bishop by the Eichstätter cathedral chapter on December 5, 1496 . His first official act was to attend the solemn burial of his predecessor, who had died at Obermässing Castle, in Eichstätter Cathedral . He also commissioned his red marble tomb in the Willibald Choir and had the Pontifical Gundekarianum decorated and supplemented with a miniature Reichenau and the corresponding biography by an unknown master. After obtaining the papal election confirmation, which arrived shortly after March 1, 1497 and therefore rather late, because the Eichstätt vicar general Dr. Christoph Mendel von Steinfels had lodged an appeal with the Emperor in Rome and , on March 11, 1497, before the Chapter, he took over the bishopric and received homage in the monastery on the following days. On April 16, 1497, the bishop was consecrated by the Regensburg prince-bishop Rupert II , his suffragan and the Eichstätter suffragan in the Eichstätter cathedral. He was enfeoffed with the imperial regalia in Füssen in June , but was not personally present there because of an illness. On July 28, 1497, his ambassadors received the Mainz chancellorship for him at the Worms Reichstag , traditionally due to the Eichstatt bishops. In 1498 he met King Maximilian himself at a meeting in Ulm and then at the Reichstag in Freiburg im Breisgau . On June 10, Gabriel personally took the oath of allegiance to the emperor and was formally enfeoffed again with the regalia. On May 7, 1497, he conjured the cathedral chapter to surrender by election , with which the chapter secured a not always undisputed influence on the affairs of government of the new prince-bishop.

Two decades of calm work as a prince-bishop

In 1499 Gabriel von Eyb undertook a visitation trip through the Obere Hochstift around Herrieden , which dealt with matters of the prince-bishop's administration, but not with pastoral matters. In Herrieden, where half the town was devastated by a fire in 1490, he issued an order not to cover roofs with straw and to remove any thatched roofs that were still there .

In 1501 he was given the honor of consecrating Veit I Truchseß of Pommersfelden as Prince-Bishop of Bamberg ; this event was also recorded in a miniature in the Gundekarianum. When the scholar and humanist Kilian Leib became the new prior after the death of the Rebdorf prior in 1503 , Leib and the prince-bishop became lifelong friends; The prior recorded the conversations at the many meetings in a diary. In the Landshut War of Succession , which flared up in 1504 , the prince-bishop behaved neutrally and thus prevented the war from encroaching on his bishopric. In 1505 he consecrated the new prince-bishop of Augsburg, Heinrich IV of Lichtenau († April 12, 1517). His successor Christoph von Stadion also consecrated Gabriel von Eyb and maintained a close friendship with him.

Although his predecessor von Reichenau had already built a great deal, von Eyb had to commission a large number of additional construction measures. He had to complete the fortifications of the Hochstift cities that had begun under Reichenau (for example the wall belt of Greding around 1517 and 1519/24 of Beilngries ) and to build some churches (for example in Pfünz and in 1523 in Sappenfeld ). In 1527 he had Spalt's town hall demolished and rebuilt; In 1532 the box house in Herrieden was built. In Eichstätt he had a bridge built over the Altmühl , in 1506-08 the Willibaldsburg , his residence, was fortified and the court mill completed in 1515/16. The prince-bishop's palace of Herrieden was rebuilt by 1508 and the "permanent house" of Eibwang on the Anlauter was redesigned by 1530; the bishop liked to stay there. Also in 1508 he began to renovate the Eichstätter Hof in Regensburg (destroyed in 1634). Construction activity continued without major interruptions until the end of his reign; In 1535/36 he had a little church built at the new east cemetery in Eichstätt, and one year before his death the gate tower towards Ornbau was built in his home town of Arberg .

He was also an art-loving bishop, who primarily supplied the Eichstätt Renaissance sculptor Loy Hering with orders, who erected the Willibald monument on the steps of the west choir of the cathedral (1514) together with a large crucifixion group , which can be found today in the sacrament chapel. While the bishop was still alive, Hering created his epitaph in the cathedral (1520 or 1521, hidden behind a curtain until the bishop's death) and the tombstone. In 1520 Hering was allowed to design an epitaph for the prince-bishop's nephew, the Eichstätter canon Ulrich von Leutersheim, and - before 1525 - a sacrament house for the parish church of St. Vitus in Kottingwörth . In 1519 von Eyb ordered an altarpiece from Lukas Cranach the Younger for his castle chapel, the side pictures of which are now hanging in the bishop's palace, while the middle section is in the municipal gallery of Bamberg . In 1511 he had the Sittenspiegel printed with drama transmissions from antiquity by his relative and humanist Albrecht von Eyb, who died in 1475. In 1517 a large parchment was printed for Eyb in Nuremberg - a missal with a canon picture by Albrecht Dürer as a copperplate - a good source for the music and chorale history of the 15th and 16th centuries. The Eichstätter Breviary of 1497 was also published again in Nuremberg in 1525 .

Von Eyb successfully continued the acquisition policy of his predecessor for the territorial expansion of the bishopric. In 1523, the Hochstifts boundary against the Upper Palatinate was finally determined.

reformation

On November 16, 1510 , the prince-bishop transferred the vice- chancellery to the theologian Johannes Eck , who had been teaching in Ingolstadt since 1510, as chancellor of the university. He also instructed Eck to put his concerns about Luther's theses into writing. Although these were only intended for the bishop's personal use, they came into Luther's hands via Nuremberg through the indiscretion of his cousin Bernhard Adelmann von Adelmannsfelden, Eck's personal opponent. Only in the following argument about it did Eck develop into a resolute opponent of Luther and a champion of the Catholic cause. In 1520 the prince-bishop was the first German bishop to proclaim the papal bull Exsurge Domine, which Eck had brought with him from Rome, against the representatives of the “new doctrine”; Adelmann and the humanist Pirckheimer, also listed by name, bowed within the set period of sixty days. The prince-bishop was able to prevent the bishopric from being captured by the Reformation, but large parts of his diocese were lost to the old doctrine. In 1533 at the latest, the bishop had lost all jurisdiction in the margravial part and thus in one of the most important parts of the Eichstatt diocese .

Peasant uprising

In the peasant uprising of 1525, the rebels succeeded in capturing the prince-bishop's castle in Obermässing on April 21 and the town of Greding a day later. On April 24th, they looted the Plankstetten Benedictine monastery and burned it down five days later. They also took control of the Thannhausen Hofmark and Brunneck Castle in the Anlautertal, but they were defeated by the Upper Palatinate Landgrave Friedrich. Against the Krell revolt in Wellheim , the prince-bishop called the vigilante groups of Neuburg an der Donau to help. In the west of the Hochstift the Ansbach margrave defeated the rebels. The Eichstätter cloth miners, under the leadership of Hans Heule, under whom there was also ferment in 1525, but who had defended the city against the peasants, were pushed back from participation by the city council through a delegation of the Swabian Federation , to which the prince-bishopric belonged.

Old age and death

In 1520–23 the Principality of Ansbach , the Bavarian ducal house and the Palatinate Electorate tried in vain to have Eyb appoint a coadjutor with the right of succession; each of the three powers had its own competitor. Another attempt by Elector Ludwig V of the Palatinate in 1529 also failed.

When the 80-year-old bishop died in Willibaldsburg, he was buried in the east choir of the cathedral at his request; his grave slab from Loy Hering is now in the cathedral cloister. In Mortuarium his 1503 deceased Chancellor Willibald Fischl is buried; the priest's portrait of the epitaph shows him holding a seal stick with the Eyb coat of arms. It is the work of Loy Hering .

coat of arms

The prince-bishop's coat of arms is usually quartered . The fields of the coat of arms alternate with the original family coat of arms of the von Eyb family with three red shells on silver and the coat of arms of the Eichstätter Hochstift with a golden crook on red.

literature

• Josef Schlecht: Church hand dictionary . Munich 1907. 1. p. 1408.
• Theodor Neuhofer: Gabriel v. Eyb, Prince-Bishop of Eichstätt. 1455-1535 . In: Collective sheet of the historical association Eichstätt (part 1 in sheet 48, 1933, pp. 53-141 and part 2 in sheet 49, 1934, pp. 1–115).
• Klaus Kreitmeir: The bishops of Eichstätt . Publishing house of the church newspaper. Eichstatt 1992. pp. 66-69.
• Felix Mader : The art monuments of Bavaria. Middle Franconia. I. City of Eichstätt . Munich 1924. Reprint Munich / Vienna 1981.
• Theodor Neuhofer:  Gabriel von Eyb. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 9 ( digitized version ).
• Lexicons for theology and the church . Herder. Freiburg i. Br.
• Alfred Wendehorst : The diocese of Eichstätt. Volume 1: The row of bishops until 1535 . Series: Germania Sacra - New Episode 45 . Berlin 2006. ISBN 978-3-11-018971-1 . Pp. 241-265.

Web links

Commons : Gabriel von Eyb  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Gabriel von Eyb in the personal register of the Germania Sacra online

predecessor	Office	successor
Wilhelm von Reichenau	Bishop of Eichstätt 1496 - 1535	Christoph Marschall von Pappenheim