Gottfried II. (Arnsberg)

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Gottfried II. Von Arnsberg (* 1157 , † 1235 ) was regent of the county of Arnsberg from 1185 until his death .

Origin and family

Gottfried was the son of Count Heinrich I von Arnsberg. His brother was the older Heinrich II. , Who played only a subordinate role politically next to him. He himself was married twice. His first marriage was to Elisabeth, whose origin is unknown. The first woman is only known from a document from 1198. Gottfried's second marriage was with Agnes von Rüdenberg. This appears for the first time in 1210. For Johann Suibert Seibert it follows that all descendants must come from the second marriage because the daughter Adelheid is named as the only child at that time together with Agnes von Rüdenberg. This is also followed by the Arnsberg city archivist Michael Gosmann in a more recent presentation. If you follow this, Gottfried had ten offspring. The daughter Adelheid mentioned above married Konrad II , Burgrave of Stromberg . Another daughter Agnes was also mentioned in 1210. The heir Gottfried III. was first mentioned in 1213. Johann died young. Bertha was abbess of the Essen monastery . Irmgard was a nun in the Oelinghausen monastery . Ida was possibly abbess in Herford Abbey . Syradis was abbess of St. Aegidii in Munster . Sophie married Bernhard III. , Nobleman of Lippe-Detmold. One Heinrich was a Teutonic friar and a member of the Riga Cathedral Chapter.

Live and act

Although his father was still in good health, Gottfried took over rule in 1185. Right at the beginning of his rule, his troops defeated five neighboring counts in a battle near Neheim for an unknown reason . In gratitude, the count made a considerable donation to the Scheda monastery , near which the battle had taken place.

The sources for the following decades are incomplete. It is clear that Gottfried also lived in a tense relationship with the Archbishops of Cologne . Their position was strengthened when in connection with the throne dispute between Philip of Swabia and Otto IV. The latter (as the son of Henry the Lion ) renounced all remaining ducal rights in Westphalia in favor of the Cologne bishops in order to bind them to himself. Although Gottfried appeared as a witness for Archbishop Adolf, this meant a strengthening of the arch-chair and a restriction of one's own ability to act. Gottfried seems to have tried in the shadow of the inheritance dispute in the empire to take action against the position of the archbishop. Because of certain deeds (“super quibusdam factis suis”) he had to give the bishop satisfaction, to swear allegiance and to take hostages. In return, he received half of the income from the new town of Rüthen . Neither side should be allowed to go on military campaigns or build a castle from there.

In 1202 Gottfried transferred some possessions to Wedinghausen Abbey , such as a farm in Herdringen in return for the delivery of construction timber. Its use is not entirely clear; it may have been used to rebuild the burned down town of Arnsberg or to build the St. George's Chapel . In the following years, from which there is only a little news, mostly about donations to monasteries or monasteries, little is otherwise known. This includes the transfer of the church in Werl to the Wedinghausen Abbey.

Siege of Damiette 1218

At the advanced age of 60, the Count took part in the Damiette Crusade in 1217 . To finance it, he sold other properties to Wedinghausen. This donation was first solemnly sworn in front of the brothers in the monastery itself. In Drüggelte he repeated this oath in front of numerous knights and nobles who met there to start the crusade. Those present included Heinrich the Black from Arnsberg and his son, the noblemen from Ardey , the lords from Rüdenburg, three brothers from Neheim, six lords from Soest and other knights.

During the crusade, the Westphalia played a role in the siege of Damiette . They played an important role in the conquest of a fortress tower in front of the city in the middle of the Nile in August 1218. Soon after, Gottfried broke off his participation in the crusade, and when the crusaders conquered Damiette in November 1219, he was already back in Arnsberg. The crusade army was finally defeated in 1221 and the crusade failed completely. Over the following years there was news of further donations to monasteries, for example to Marienfeld in 1223, and the presence of Gottfried in a court camp of King Henry VII in Herford a year later.

Although contemporaries suspected him of participating in the murder of Archbishop Engelbert I of Cologne by an aristocratic frond around Friedrich von Isenberg , his active involvement cannot be proven and, given his advanced age of 68, is not very likely. In the last years of his life he appears in the sources as a supporter of religious institutions and as a partner and witness of the new Archbishop of Cologne, Heinrich . In addition, he bought back the castle in Hachen from Cologne , which had been lost in an earlier division of the estate.

Gottfried died in 1235 or possibly not until 1236 after a reign of about fifty years.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Johann Suibert Seibertz: Diplomatic family history of the old counts of Werl and Arnsberg. Arnsberg 1845, p. 148.
  2. ^ Genealogical table in: Michael Gosmann: The Counts of Arnsberg and their county. On the way to sovereignty (1180–1371). In: Harm Klueting (Ed.): The Duchy of Westphalia: The Electorate of Cologne Westphalia from the beginnings of Cologne rule in southern Westphalia to secularization in 1803. Münster 2009, p. 173.

literature

personal data
SURNAME Gottfried II.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gottfried II of Arnsberg (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Count of Arnsberg (1185–1235)
DATE OF BIRTH 1157
DATE OF DEATH 1235