Jens Grand

Seal of Grands

Jens Grand (* around 1260; † May 30, 1327 in Avignon ; also: Johann Grant, Jonas Fursat (Feuersaat) Grand) was a Danish church politician and successively cathedral provost in Roskilde , archbishop of Lund , Riga and Bremen .

Life

Jens Grand came from a Danish aristocratic family and was related to the Archbishop of Lund Jakob Erlandsen and the influential Danish noble family Hvide . A group around Stig Andersen Hvide d. Ä. had murdered King Erik V of Denmark in 1286 . Grand became Archbishop of Lund in 1289 (until 1302). The self-confident church politics of Grand in a time of demarcation and the power struggle between the church and the bearers of secular power reached the successor King Erik VI. together with the family membership of the Hvide clan, Jens Grand not only as politically uncomfortable, but also as extremely threatening.

Erik the VI. had Grand arrested in 1294 and imprisoned at Søborg Castle in the north of the main Danish island of Zealand . After one and a half years in prison, he managed to escape and flee to Bornholm , where he asked Pope Boniface VIII for help and support from his Hammershus castle . He issued an interdict and put the ban on King Erik VI., Which did not particularly impress him. The crisis between Denmark and the Catholic Church lasted until 1302. The agreement did not provide Grand with the compensation he had hoped for, Denmark's settlement payment to the Church was rather small and Grand was recalled as Archbishop of Lund. He was offered the Archdiocese of Riga , but Grand turned down this offer. He spent the next few years in Paris.

In 1310 he became Pope Clement V as Archbishop of Bremen appointed. After years of vacancy, the diocese had sunk into chaos. Among other things, Heinrich von Borch held Vörde Castle . Grand initially managed to bring calm to the pen. In order to consolidate the foundation's finances, he imposed a tax of 10% on all income of the clergy. Resistance arose, and in the following dispute Grand behaved obstinately, ignoring justified objections of his opponents or ignoring them completely. Instead, he imposed church sentences and excommunicated his opponents, which in turn were ignored by them. In 1314 the city of Bremen allied itself with the Counts of Hoya , Oldenburg and Diepholz against Grand. It came to a lawsuit, which was decided against Grand. The sentences and excommunications he imposed have been lifted. Grand began to rummage restlessly through the pen, but was nowhere welcomed. He was arrested twice and even beaten publicly by a woman in East Frisia.

The Bremen cathedral chapter deposed Grand in 1316 on the pretext that he was mentally deranged and appointed Johann I, the eldest son of the Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, as administrator . Grand moved to Avignon before the Curia and initiated a process against his removal. As the process dragged on, turmoil devastated the abandoned ore pen. In 1317, a papal collector described the Bremen archbishopric as a hideout for muggers. Lower clergy, nobility and common people wanted the archbishop back.

It was not until 1322 that Pope John XXII fell. a judgment: he declared Grand's dismissal null and void, but at the same time confirmed Johann I as administrator. Grand could not return to the monastery against the resistance of the city and cathedral chapter, but transferred the official business to locally largely powerless vicars . He stayed in Avignon, where he died in 1327.

literature

• Karl Ernst Hermann Krause:  Johann I (Archbishop of Bremen) . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1881, pp. 181-183.
• Günther Möhlmann:  Johann I .. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-428-00191-5 , p. 479 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Thomas Riis, J. (Johann, Jens) Grand . In: R.-H. Bautier [Hrsg.], Lexikon des Mittelalters , Vol. 5. Munich 1991. P. 552. ISBN 3-7608-8905-0 .
• Kai Hørby, Velstands crisis and tusind baghold: 1250–1400 . Olaf Olsen [Ed.], Gyldendal og Politikens Danmarkshistorie , Vol. 5. København 1989. pp. 155f, 164-170. ISBN 978-87-89068-09-1 .
• Ernst Schubert [ed.], Politics, Constitution, Economy from the 9th to the end of the 15th century. History of Lower Saxony , Vol. II, 1st Hanover 1997. P. 683f. ISBN 3-7752-5900-7 .
• Gottfried Lintzer, Studies on the History of Johann Grand, Archbishop of Bremen (1310-1327). Hamburg 1933.

predecessor	Office	successor
Jens Dros	Archbishop of Lund 1289–1303	Isarnus of Fontiano
Isarnus of Fontiano	Archbishop of Riga 1302-1304	Friedrich von Pernstein
Bernhard von Wölpe	Archbishop of Bremen 1310–1327	Burchard Grelle