Godfried van Mierlo

Godfried van Mierlo OP (born February 2, 1518 in Mierlo , † July 28, 1587 in Deventer ) was the second Roman Catholic bishop of Haarlem .

Godfried van Mierlo

Life

Van Mierlo entered the Dominican monastery in 's-Hertogenbosch as a novice on May 22, 1534 . After studying theology, he returned to his home monastery in 1550, where he served as procurator for two years . In 1552 he was elected prior of St. Andrew's monastery in Utrecht , and held the office until 1559. On May 27, 1558 he took part in the general chapter of his order in Rome and was awarded his master's degree on this occasion. There he made contact with Cardinal Michele Ghislieri , later Pope Pius V , who exerted great influence on him. In the Netherlands he was elected on April 15, 1559 to the Order Provincial for the Low German Order Province. In 1561 he traveled to Avignon, where a general chapter met again on May 25 of that year, and it is reported that van Mierlo walked the whole way. Margaret of Parma proposed him in 1562 for the bishopric of Ghent , but another candidate was preferred to him. Shortly after Nicolaas van Nieuwland had to resign as Bishop of Haarlem in 1569, van Mierlo was appointed as his successor. On February 11, 1571, he received his episcopal ordination in the Church of St. Paul in Antwerp , and his appointment was confirmed in the consistory of December 11, 1571.

In October 1571 van Mierlo called a diocesan synod and established a cathedral chapter . He made sure that the decisions of the Council of Trent were carried out, in particular he took care of the income from the ecclesiastical property and the keeping of the register books .

After Haarlem fell to William of Orange on July 3, 1572 during the Eighty Years' War and troops under Nicolaas Ruychaver had taken the city on July 25, van Mierlo fled to the Terkamere Abbey near Brussels . He stayed there until Haarlem had to surrender to the Spaniards after a siege in 1573. Van Mierlo returned to the episcopal city on July 13, 1573. In 1577, however, Haarlem again went to the " Geusen " and van Mierlo had to flee the city again on the evening of May 29, 1578. This time he came to Utrecht via Amsterdam, where he could not be given any refuge. At the end of April and beginning of May 1579 van Mierlo was in Rome, where he met Gregory XIII. informed about the situation in the Netherlands. A will from him, dated September 23, 1581, was drawn up in Bonn. On March 14, 1582 he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Münster. After 1584 he consecrated several churches in the Münsterland at the instigation of the Archbishop of Cologne Ernst von Bayern .

After Deventer fell back to the Spaniards on January 30, 1587, van Mierlo was summoned there to rededicate some churches; He is therefore listed by some sources as Bishop of Deventer . On July 28, 1587 he was the victim of a plague epidemic in Deventer. His grave in St. Lebuinus Church was rediscovered in 1841 and restored in 1985.

Works

• Calendarium perpetuum secundum institutum fratrum Praedicatorum . Antwerp 1566
• Statuta synodi diocesanae Harlemi publicata anno 1571 .

literature

• Wilhelm Kohl : Gottfried von Mierlo . In: Germania Sacra , New Series 37,4, Berlin 2004, pp. 49–50 ( online )
• AHL Hensen: Mierlo, Godfried van . In: Petrus Johannes Blok , Philipp Christiaan Molhuysen (Ed.): Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek . Part 2. N. Israel, Amsterdam 1974, Sp. 918–924 (Dutch, knaw.nl - first edition: AW Sijthoff, Leiden 1912, reprint unchanged).

Web links

• Entry on Godfried van Mierlo on catholic-hierarchy.org

Individual evidence

1. ^ EH (Guus) Bary: Excentriek in het bisdommenlandschap. Deventer as bischopsstad in de rooms-kathiek en oud-kathiek traditie. In: Lebuïnus en Walburgis bijeen. Deventer en Zutphen as the historical center of kerkelijke leven. Delft 2006, ISBN 978-90-5972-148-7 , pp. 20-21.

predecessor	Office	successor
Nicolaas van Nieuwland	Bishop of Haarlem 1570–1578	---
Aegidius de Monte	Bishop of Deventer 1587	Albert de Thill