Henry of Marcy

Heinrich von Marcy ( Latin Henricus de Marsiaco , French Henri de Marcy ; * around 1136 in Marcy , † January 1, 1189 in Arras ) was a Cistercian and cardinal of the Roman Church . In 1181 he led the so-called “pre-crusade” against the Cathars , also called “Albigensians”, in southern France ( Occitania ).

Life

Heinrich came from the lordly family of Marcy, located near the Cluny Abbey . Around 1155 he joined the Cistercian Brotherhood as a monk in Clairvaux Abbey, was elected Abbot of Hautecombe in 1160 and finally the seventh Abbot of Clairvaux in 1176.

In preparation for the third Lateran Council , Heinrich was sent to Toulouse in the company of Cardinal Peter von Pavia in 1178 to investigate the situation there with regard to the heretical beliefs of Catharism that were spreading there . The previous year, Count Raymond V of Toulouse wrote to the Cistercians asking for help against the heresy in his country. In Toulouse, Heinrich had rejected the diocese offered to him , the city of which he considered the place of origin of the heresy, as well as the leadership of the Cîteaux Abbey and thus the leadership of the Cistercians, who had carried the main burden of the Cathar mission in Occitania since the missionary work of St. Bernard in 1145. After the excommunication of Roger II Trencavel , who had imprisoned the Bishop of Albi , and a dispute with two leading Cathar clergymen, Heinrich wrote a letter to the Pope advising the Pope of a military intervention against heresy, which was the first time the thought of a violent one Action against the Cathars was formulated. At the Third Lateran Council he was appointed Cardinal Bishop of Albano in May 1179 . At the head of a small army, Heinrich returned to Occitania as papal legate in 1181. With the support of Count Raimund V, he besieged the city of Lavaur , where the two Cathars who had faced him three years earlier in the dispute had moved. The city surrendered after only a short time, the two Cathars willingly converted to the orthodox church and became canons in Toulouse. Then the army broke up and the “pre-crusade” against the Albigensians came to an end without having any serious impact on the political and religious conditions in Occitania. The will to combat the Cathar heresy militarily remained in the Roman Church and culminated in the proclamation of the Albigensian Crusade by Pope Innocent III in 1208 .

Together with the Bishop of Paris , Maurice de Sully , Heinrich consecrated the choir and altar of the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris on May 19, 1182 . In 1187 he was offered the election of Pope, but he renounced this dignity and instead supported the candidacy of Albertus de Morra, who was then also elected as Gregory VIII . From this he was sent as a legacy to Germany, where he mediated the dispute between Emperor Friedrich I Barbarossa and the Archbishop of Cologne and called on the Emperor and the German nobility to the third crusade on a court conference in Mainz in March 1188 . On the way to France he took the crusade oath from Bishop Rudolf in Liège . In Bonsmoulins in November 1188 his attempt to mediate between Philip II of France , Henry II of England and Richard the Lionheart , whom he also wanted to persuade to take the cross, whereupon he returned to Germany. Heinrich himself was a keen advocate of the ideology of the crusade, which he formulated in writing in a treatise . His desire to take part in the third crusade to retake Jerusalem was prevented by his death in Arras in 1189 . He was buried in Clairvaux Abbey.

literature

• Yves Congar: Henry de Marcy, abbé de Clairvaux, cardinal-êveque et légat pontifical. In: Studia Anselmiana , Vol. 43 (1958), pp. 1-70.
• Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz :  Heinrich von Clairvaux. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 2, Bautz, Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-032-8 , Sp. 673-674.
• Malcolm Barber: The Cathars. Heretic of the Middle Ages. Artemis & Winkler Verlag, Düsseldorf and Zurich 2003. (English first edition: The Cathars. Dualist heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages. Pearson Education Limited, Harlow 2000).
• Michel Roquebert: The History of the Cathars. Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition in Languedoc. German translation by Ursula Blank-Sangmeister, Philipp Reclam jun. GmbH & Co. KG, Stuttgart 2012. (French first edition: Histoire des Cathares. Hérésie, Croisade, Inquisition du XIe au XIVe siècle. Éditions Perrin, Paris 1999).

Web links

• Marsiac, O.Cist., Henri de. In: Salvador Miranda : The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church. ( Florida International University website), accessed August 2, 2016.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gesta Regis Henrici secundis et Gesta Regis Ricardi Benedicti abbatis , ed. by William Stubbs in: Rolls Series , Vol. 49.1 (1867), pp. 198-206.
2. ↑ Epistolae Domni Henrici Claraevallensis quodam Abbatis postmodum Episcopi Albanensis , ed. by Jacques Paul Migne in, Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Latina. Vol. 204, Col. 235-240.
3. ^ Geoffroy du Breuil , Ex Chronico Coenobitae Monasterii S. Martialis Lemovicensis ac Prioris Vosiensis Coenobii , in: Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France , Vol. 12 (1877), pp. 448-449. Chronicon Clarevallensis , ed. by Jacques Paul Migne in, Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Latina. Vol. 185, Col. 1249-1250.
4. ↑ Geoffroy du Breuil, Gaufredi Prioris Vosiensis, Pars Altera Chronici Lemovicensis , in: Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France , Vol. 18 (1822), p. 212.
5. ↑ Domni Henrici tractatus de peregrinante civitate dei , ed. by Jacques Paul Migne in, Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Latina. Vol. 204, Col. 251-402.

predecessor	Office	successor
Walter II.	Cardinal Bishop of Albano 1179–1189	albino