Goslar competition of rank

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the Goslar rank dispute escalated at Pentecost 1063 in the Goslar monastery of St. Simon and Judas, the dispute over a seating arrangement to an armed confrontation with several dead. The background is the early medieval legal system, which was based primarily on personal loyalties and privileges that could be granted and withdrawn at any time .

requirements

In medieval society, symbols and rituals of rank were associated with real power and income. One of these rituals was the keeping of a seating arrangement on ceremonial occasions. Those who were allowed to sit closer to the king or other high-ranking officials had greater rights than other people at the place of the ceremony. As a result, there were often so-called "armchair disputes" about the order of the seats when the delimitation of responsibilities and areas of jurisdiction was unclear. There was seldom an agreement, because "giving in and stepping back would have decided the dispute in favor of the other and ... (was) therefore out of the question" , according to the historian Gerd Althoff. However, none of these disputes ended in such a dispute with several dead and a subsequent monk uprising like the Goslar rank dispute between the abbot Widerad of Fulda and the bishop Hezilo of Hildesheim .

The course of the ranking dispute

Twice in the Goslar monastery of St. Simon and Judas, the abbot Widerad of the imperial abbey of Fulda and the bishop Hezilo of Hildesheim quarreled over who had the right to sit next to the archbishop of Mainz .

Christmas 1062

For Vespers at Christmas 1062 this dispute broke out for the first time. The abbot claimed this right mainly because of the traditional, special relationship between the Fulda monastery and the empire: The Fulda monastery was founded by the Archbishop of Mainz, Bonifatius , and numerous imperial and papal privileges gave the Fulda monastery and its abbot a special position . For example, the monastery was exempted , the abbot had a primacy and was entitled to episcopal pontificals .

The Bishop of Hildesheim, on the other hand, insisted that because of his position as bishop no one should be preferred to him, especially not within his diocese (the Goslar monastery was also exempt and therefore did not belong to the Hildesheim diocese, but was directly subordinate to the Pope).

The dispute turned into a scuffle, which the Duke of Bavaria , Otto von Northeim , ended by vigorously intervening. He decided the seat dispute in favor of the abbot of Fulda.

King Heinrich IV was not present at this meeting, he was spending Christmas in Freising . Tuomas Heikkilä (see lit.) therefore suspects a synod of the Archdiocese of Mainz, possibly in opposition to the transitional government of Annos II.

The Whitsun Bloodbath 1063

On June 17, 1063, the Saturday before Pentecost, the same dispute broke out again for the Vespers service. This time, however, the omens were different: The 13-year-old king was present, it was a court day . Hezilo could assume that he would be preferred this time because of his episcopal position, but he had taken precautions, knowing that Widerad would insist on his position at Christmas.

Hezilo had therefore placed armed men behind the altar under the leadership of Ekbert von Braunschweig . When they heard that the dispute was escalating again in the nave, they drove the people of Fulda out of the church with clubs. These in turn armed themselves and returned to the service. Lampert von Hersfeld describes the developing bloodbath, of which the king was an eyewitness, in his annals:

“In the midst of the choir and the psalmodying monks, there is a scuffle: you no longer fight with clubs, but with swords. A heated battle breaks out, and instead of hymns and spiritual chants, cheers and laments of the dying echo through the whole church. Horrible sacrifices are slaughtered on God's altars, rivers of blood run through the church, not shed as before through prescribed religious practice, but through hostile cruelty. The Bishop of Hildesheim had gained an elevated position and encouraged his people to fight bravely as if by a military trumpet signal, and so that they would not be deterred from using weapons by the sanctity of the place, he held up to them the figurehead of his authority and his permission. Many were wounded on both sides, many killed, among them primarily Reginbodo, the Fulda standard-bearer, and Bero, a particularly loyal follower to Count Ekbert. In the meantime the king raised his voice loudly and implored the people with reference to the royal majesty, but he seemed to preach to deaf ears. When his followers were reminded to think about securing his life and to leave the battlefield, he finally made his way through the crowded crowd and withdrew to the Palatinate. "

- Lampert von Hersfeld, Annalen

The Hildesheimers finally succeeded in pushing the Fulda people out of the church. These in turn besieged those barricaded in the church. Only when it got dark did the fight end.

The consequences of the ranking dispute

An investigation into the incident was held the following day, chaired by the king. This, under the influence of the Archbishop of Mainz Siegfried , pronounced abbot Widerad fully guilty and threatened him with impeachment. The abbot bought himself free from this charge.

According to Lampert's account, this judgment seems surprising, but Lampert's report was not objective. At the time of the dispute, there was great tension between the monasteries of the empire and the episcopate . As a member of the Hersfeld monastery, Lampert was on Widerad's side. His portrayal of Hezilos is therefore a bit exaggerated.

The abbot was accused of having appeared in Goslar with a remarkably large and armed entourage, and of having prepared the act well in advance. It was also the people of Fulda who took up their "sharp" weapons and triggered the bloodbath during the service. Before the service began, the people of Hildesheim “only” used the clubs. Last but not least, Ekbert, who was on Hildesheim's side, had excellent relationships with the king: Heinrich and he had a grandmother in Empress Gisela , and their two fathers were half-brothers. In addition, Ekbert Heinrich had saved the life of the Kaiserswerth coup . The abbot's guilt also seems to be indicated by the fact that he did not make use of a privilege granted by the Pope to the abbots of Fulda in 999, which said that only the Pope himself could decide whether the abbot should be removed from office.

In order to get rid of the charge, Widerad made payments to the king and probably also to Hezilo and the Goslar monastery. He also resorted to the property of the monks' convent. This plunged the monastery into a deep financial crisis and triggered a revolt by the Fulda monks against the abbot. Although Widerad was able to appease most of the monks, sixteen monks went to the king to complain about Widerad's access to the monastery property. In this case, King Heinrich decided in favor of Widerad. The uprising was seen as an attack on the spiritual and secular order, the rebels condemned to harsh sentences. They were whipped, shaved and their leaders were driven out of the monastery, the rest were distributed to other monasteries.

swell

  • Lampert von Hersfeld: Annals . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1957. (Selected sources on German history in the Middle Ages. Freiherr vom Stein Memorial Edition, 13)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Oswald Holder-Egger (Ed.): Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 38: Lamperti monachi Hersfeldensis Opera. Appendix: Annales Weissenburgenses. Hanover 1894, pp. 82–83 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version )