Hiltebold

Hiltebold († October 8, 1131 ) was the third bishop of Gurk .

Hiltebold was elected Bishop of Gurk in 1106 and found an ominous legacy that his predecessor Berthold von Zeltschach had left him. The goods of the young diocese often fell into strange hands and Hiltebold had the difficult task of getting them back. He received support from his secular liege lord, Archbishop Konrad I of Salzburg. Archbishop Konrad did not want to recognize Berthold von Zeltschach's fief distribution and got into a dispute with the ministerials, who sued him at the emperor, to whom Konrad also had to go to Mainz in 1111 to defend himself.

The bellicose bishop Hiltebold advanced to Duke Heinrich III of Carinthia . when he did not want to return the cucumber fiefs he had been given. Hiltebold, supported by the archbishop, was superior to the duke and when peace was made, the duke had to return his Friulian possessions to the bishop. In 1123 the bishop again armored against the Carinthian Duke in order to have the market in Friesach returned . He won the support of Duke Leopold III. of Austria and the Carinthian Duke gave in. Archbishop Konrad feared that the Duke of Carinthia or one of his successors might lay claim to Friesach again, so he had the market on the left side of the Metnitz demolished and rebuilt in 1124 on the right bank, with the latter between the bishops of Salzburg and cucumber should be shared. The establishment of the new market Friesach was by King Lothar III. approved.

In 1123 Hiltebold founded the first Gurk cathedral chapter, and in 1124 it was officially established.

Allocation of a separate diocese had already been envisaged in King Henry IV's privilege from 1072, but Archbishop Gebhard did not do this, although he was expressly warned to do so by Pope Gregory VII . On July 17, 1131, Hiltebold was assigned a small diocese by the Archbishop of Salzburg. It included the Gurktal and the Flattnitz , the eight to nine original parishes of today's diocese.

In 1131 Hiltebold traveled with the archbishop to Lower Styria, from there to submit a complaint against the Hungarian king Béla II because of his breach of the peace. Soon afterwards, on October 8th, 1131, Bishop Hiltebold died. He had succeeded in regaining most of the former Gurk property and went down in the history of the diocese as the founder of the cathedral chapter.

literature

• Jakob Obersteiner: The bishops of Gurk. 1072–1822 (= From Research and Art. 5, ISSN  0067-0642 ). Verlag des Geschichtsverein für Kärnten, Klagenfurt 1969, pp. 20-25.