Gundekar II.

Gundekar II. (Also: Gunzo) (* August 10, 1019 ; † August 2, 1075 in Eichstätt ) was Bishop of Eichstätt from 1057 to 1075. He is venerated as a blessed, although there was never an official beatification .

Gundekar II in the Pontifical Gundekarianum

High grave of Bishop Gundekar II in Eichstätter Cathedral

origin

His father was called Reginher, his mother Irmingart, his sister Touta. Nothing reliable can be said about the gender he came from. However, he was related to Archbishop Siegfried I of Mainz (1060-84), so that it can be assumed that Gundekar belonged to a noble family from the Middle Rhine region. Another relative was Bishop Egilbert von Passau (1045–65), previously court chaplain of Empress Agnes von Poitou , the wife of King Heinrich III.

Live and act

When and how the young Gundekar came to Eichstätt is not recorded; in any case, he stayed here as a child, was brought up here and at an unknown point in time a member of the cathedral chapter . In 1045 he was appointed court chaplain by Queen Agnes, succeeding Egilbert, and left Eichstätt. In the following years he belonged to the royal family, so to speak, and came into contact with the other court chaplains, mostly bishops, who often administered the imperial chancellery; with some of them he maintained lively friendly relations even in later times. At the side of the empress he witnessed the early death of Henry III. on October 5, 1056. On August 20, 1057, at the instigation of the Empress, he was appointed Bishop of Eichstätt in the Palatinate to Tribur and invested as bishop on October 5, 1057 in Speyer in the presence of 14 imperial bishops. The enthronement in Eichstätt took place on October 17, 1057. The episcopal consecration took place on December 27, 1057 in the imperial palace of Bodfeld .

Previously in the service of imperial affairs, as bishop he concentrated on spiritual work. To this end, he consolidated the network of parishes and had churches built everywhere; Of his 126 church consecrations, 101 took place within his own diocese, in the county of Hirschberg , in Weißenburg , Pleinfeld , Ornbau , Wassertrüdingen , Pappenheim , in Berching and its current district of Holnstein, in the Herrieden area and in the countryside south of the Pegnitz and around Altdorf near Nuremberg . Outside the diocese, the church consecrated in the dioceses of Augsburg , Würzburg and Freising . This extensive expansion of the parish structure and the construction of the churches in Romanesque and thus for the first time entirely stone architecture was only possible through the individual church system , ie through the commitment of the respective landlord; only a few episcopal churches with the sole right of occupation by the bishop were created. In Eichstätt himself he had the partially dismantled cathedral rebuilt and rededicated it in 1060. Two years later he was able to consecrate the Johanneskapelle, which was added to the south of the cathedral, and again two years later the east crypt .

Gundekar did not completely give up contact with the imperial court. In 1059 he was on a court day in Speyer, and in 1061 he took part in the consecration of the east choir of the Speyer imperial cathedral - probably at the invitation of the Empress widow Agnes. When Heinrich IV called for help for his campaign against the Saxons, Gundekar set out for the north and stayed in the court camp at Breitenbach near Fulda . During his reign, three Eichstätt canons were appointed imperial bishops. In the investiture dispute, however, Gundekar was neutral; he renounced any influence on imperial and church politics.

Gundekar was buried in the Johanneskapelle of the cathedral, which he built in 1062. Soon the veneration of the dead bishop began, who is considered the “blessed”, even if there was never an official beatification process . In 1309 his bones were raised in a stone sarcophagus, which was moved inside the cathedral in 1808 and has been in the Gothic successor building to the Johanneskapelle since 1975.

Bishop with canons. A page from the Pontifical Gundekarianum

Gundekarianum

Main article: Pontifical Gundekarianum

In 1072 Gundekar handed over a magnificently decorated manuscript to his cathedral church, the so-called Gundekarianum, an anthology of 204 sheets, which, according to Gundekar, was expanded to 257 sheets. 110 sheets form a pontifical, a compilation of the sacraments , ordinations and blessings to be donated by the “pontifex”, the bishop . This also shows that Gundekar was a supporter of church reform , because it placed particular emphasis on the valid mediation of sacramental salvation. A calendar is followed by a ritual, that is, a compilation of blessings, invocations and prayers . The whole thing is pages with historical entries since the foundation of the diocese under St. Willibald and pages with miniature paintings upstream, which were supplemented by his successors up to 1697 with a total of 19 integrated continuations with the bishop's vitae and bishop's pictures in miniature painting . The original is kept in the diocesan archive; an annotated reprint of important pages has been available in 380 copies since 1987.

literature

• Julius Sax: The bishops and imperial princes of Eichstätt . Landshut 1884. pp. 157-175.
• Julius Sax and Josef Bleicher: History of the bishopric and the city of Eichstätt . Eichstätt 2nd edition 1927. pp. 60–66.
• Franz Heidingsfelder (ed.): The regests of the bishops of Eichstätt . Erlangen 1938. pp. 76-86.
• Andreas Bauch:  Gundekar (Gunzo). In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1966, ISBN 3-428-00188-5 , p. 312 ( digitized version ).
• Andreas Bauch: Gundekar II., Bishop of Eichstätt . In: Franconian pictures of life . Vol. 6. Würzburg: Schöningh 1975. pp. 1-29.
• Konrad Held: Gundekar . Eichstätter Courier No. 175 from 2/3 August 1986.
• The "Pontifical Gundekarianum". Facsimile edition of Codex B 4 in the Eichstätt diocesan archive , 2 volumes, facsimile volume, 46 × 37 cm, 82 pages, 37 of which are in color, commentary volume with contributions by Brun Appel, Andreas Bauch, Walter Dürig, Johann Konrad Eberlein , Monika Fink-Lang, Helmut Flachenecker , Hermann Hauke, Dietmar von Hübner, Klaus Kreitmeir, Ernst Reiter and Stefan Weinfurter, bibliography by Maria Mengs, 28 × 20 cm, 199 pages with 9 illustrations and 1 frontispiece, Verlag Reichert 1987
• Klaus Kreitmeir: The bishops of Eichstätt . Publishing house church newspaper. Eichstätt 1992. pp. 22-24.
• Bruno W. Häuptli:  Gundekar II. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 26, Bautz, Nordhausen 2006, ISBN 3-88309-354-8 , Sp. 547-550.
• 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. 64-69.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ see also list of the bishops of Passau

Web links

• Gundecharus episcopus Eichstetensis in the repertory "Historical Sources of the German Middle Ages"
• Gundekar II in the personal register of the Germania Sacra online

predecessor	Office	successor
Gebhard I.	Bishop of Eichstätt 1057-1075	Udalrich I.