Johann Ember

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Presumably Johann Ember's coat of arms on the southern front of the Liberei ( "Ember" means tub or bucket ).

Johann Ember (* around 1365 probably in Hanover ; † probably July 26, 1423, probably in Magdeburg ), also known as Johannes Embern or Johannes von Embern , was a German cleric , book collector and founder of a library in Braunschweig .

Early years

Little is known about Ember's early years. In 1382 he is said to have been admitted to the baccalaureus artium examination at the University of Prague as "Johann Emmere", after which he should have studied canon law . The degree of doctor of theology is, however, only attested after his death. In 1392 he had benefices in Magdeburg , in addition he was canon of the St. Nicolai Monastery on Neumarkt, where Ember had held the deanery and treasury since 1396 . He also held a vicarie at Magdeburg Cathedral . From around 1398 he belonged to Rudolf von Anhalt's surroundings , canon of Magdeburg and from 1401 Bishop of Halberstadt , whom Ember had probably met in Prague when both were studying there. In 1399 he is mentioned in a document, as he now held the vicariate at the St. Peters and Pauls altar in the St. George and St. Jacob's Church in Hanover. This, as well as the fact that he was referred to as "clericus Mindensis " as early as 1392 , suggests that Ember either came from Hanover or at least (like his direct successor Ludolf Quirre [† 1463]) from the diocese of Minden .

Cleric in Braunschweig

Pastor to St. Andrew

In 1399 Ember can be traced back to Braunschweig for the first time as pastor of the Andreaskirche , the parish church of the Weichbildes Neustadt . There he was Ludolf von Steinfurt's successor . Under certain circumstances, he received this position from Duke Friedrich von Braunschweig-Göttingen as a thank you for being involved in the Hildesheim provost controversy on the side of Rudolf von Anhalt, for which both were excommunicated in 1398/99 and Ember forfeited his benefices in Magdeburg. As vicar of the St. Blaise Monastery , he often stayed at the Curia in Rome between 1403 and 1405 .

Book collector and library donor

Since the parish church had a large collection of books for the time - the existing parish library was the work of Magister Jordanus († 1309) - and had been expanded by Ember's predecessor Ludolf von Steinfurt, Ember intended to add his own manuscripts to the library around 1412 to expand, which he had acquired while traveling to Italy and a few years later at the Council of Constance . These were mainly manuscripts of theological and legal content.

Library Foundation

See main article: Liberei

Aware of this large and at the same time important book collection , Johann Ember donated his own building to house the library for his parish by contract in 1412.

A surviving draft of the foundation agreement states:

"De anno domini M CCCC XII / Ek her Johann Ember, regerer of the parrkerken sante Andreas to Brunswyk, / hebbe to ghetekent and Gegheven myner vorscreven kerken to brukinge des perners / and syner cappelane ychteswelke boke to blivende in eynem / huse, dat me noch buwen scarf to ewyghen tyden ... "

The liberty

The foundation contract also determines how the books are to be stored and secured against unauthorized use (namely by being chained to desks), that the keys to loosen the chains are to be kept by both the Neustadt Council and the elders of the Andreaskirche. However, the key to the library itself was in the personal possession of the pastor of St. Andrew. It was Ember's intention to make the books of the Andreas community explicitly accessible to "all other venerable persons" in addition to the clergy of the city of Braunschweig . Liberei is thus the first public library north of the Alps. Finally, he stipulated that every new pastor, who was also the administrator of the Liberei, had to provide a sufficiently high guarantee to secure the library's holdings before taking up his new office .

On September 25, 1412, a contract was finally concluded between Ember and the church elders on the one hand and the master builder "Heinrich, Master Werner's son" from Lüneburg on the other. It specifies in detail how the building should look and what material it should be constructed from. The “next Pentecost (ie Pentecost 1413) was agreed as the completion date . The fact that the foundation is supposed to be an “ atonement ” on the part of Embers cannot be supported by the surviving files.

It can be assumed that construction work on the small brick building just a few meters south of St. Andreas began immediately. Around Pentecost 1413, the shell of the small building is said to have been completed, only the roof and other carpentry work , which was not mentioned in the contract, had not yet been carried out. However, it was not until mid-1422, ten years after construction began, that the roof was covered and the interior furnishings were installed. The reason for this considerable delay in the completion of the Liberei was the so-called "Braunschweiger Pfaffenkrieg" .

Braunschweiger Pfaffenkrieg

See main article: Braunschweiger Pfaffenkrieg

In the “Braunschweiger Pfaffenkrieg” (1413–1420), a non-bellicose but serious political dispute between the “ Common Council ” of the city and the Blasiusstift, which concerned the occupation of the vacant pastorate at St. Ulrici , arose Ember openly opposed the advice and represented the interests of the St. Blasius, St. Cyriakus and St. Aegidienkloster monasteries , which very quickly brought him considerable hostility, since he was the most important representative of the three monasteries in the case of Antipope John XXIII. was valid and the opponents of the monastery used the dispute as an opportunity to settle old bills. An archdeacon of the Archdiocese of Mainz , to whose district the Diocese of Hildesheim belonged, finally pronounced the ban on the monastery chapter, the dean of St. Cyriakus and Johann Ember , in public on behalf of the Pope . Because of this rapid escalation of the conflict, Ember was forced to flee the city together with the dean of the monastery and the pastor of the Martini church in 1413. As a result, some of the city's churches were orphaned and services were no longer held in them.

Council of Constance

After his escape from the city and still during the ongoing "Pfaffenkriege" Ember was appointed ambassadors by the Guelph dukes Otto von Göttingen and Bernhard I von Braunschweig-Lüneburg and took part in this function between autumn 1414 and 1418 at the Council of Constance part, where he represented the interests of the Braunschweig monasteries and the dukes. Probably as a reward for his work at the council, Ember was accepted into the brotherhood of canons by the Braunschweig cathedral chapter in 1418. In the same year he received from King Sigismund the provost of the imperial monastery of St. Simon and Judas in Goslar . However, there is no evidence that Ember ever resided in Goslar.

Braunschweig school dispute

The Braunschweig school dispute split off from the “Pfaffenkrieg” . The trigger was the desire of the common council to found urban - not church - Latin schools . Here, too, Ember took the side of the Blasius pen, which saw its school monopoly threatened. The main opponent in this dispute was the representative of the city of Braunschweig Heinrich Herbodi, who, like Ember, was vicar of the Blasiusstift.

After a long dispute, the parties finally agreed to found two schools, the Martineum and the Katharineum, which, after being united in 1866, still exist today as the Martino-Katharineum Gymnasium . The schools were founded in 1415 by antipope John XXIII. approved and confirmed by Pope Martin V in 1419 . The common council had largely prevailed with its demands.

End of the Pfaffenkrieg

The disputes known as the "Pfaffenkrieg" were finally ended on February 24, 1420 by an arbitration award from Duke Bernhard. Ember does not seem to have returned to the city immediately, but only around 1422 - just a year before his death - and to his old pastor at St. Andreas. In a document dated April 25, 1422, he is proven for the last time and in the same year handed over the office to his successor Ludolf Quirre .

Death and legacy

There is evidence that Johann Ember stayed in Magdeburg in the early summer of 1423 and may have died there in July; However, he was buried in the cemetery of St. Andrew's Church. He had appointed Quirre to be his executor and trustee of liberty. Early on, Ember had several, e.g. Some very detailed lists of his own manuscript holdings and those of his predecessors. From the Foundation records indicate that none of the books could be borrowed (the only exception was the founder himself) The already by the founder of the library Magister Jordanus acknowledge introduced by his death in 1309 custom, the takeover of the listed library collection and a reasonable him bail in Ember continued to deposit the dean of the Blasiusstift and Quirre also signed such a document on March 24, 1424.

literature

  • Hermann Dürre : History of the City of Braunschweig in the Middle Ages . Brunswick 1861
  • Hermann Herbst : The library of the Andreas Church in Braunschweig . In: Central Journal for Libraries . Vol. 58, issue 9/10, Sept./Oct. 1941, pp. 301-338
  • Horst-Rüdiger Jarck, Dieter Lent et al. (Ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon: 8th to 18th century . Appelhans Verlag, Braunschweig 2006
  • Brigide Schwarz : Hanoverian in Braunschweig. The careers of Johann Ember († 1432) and Hermann Pentel († after 1463) . In: Braunschweigisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte . Volume 80, 1999, pp. 9-54
  • Brigide Schwarz: A "rope team" of clerics from Hanover in the late Middle Ages . In: Sources and research from Italian archives and libraries . Volume 81, 2001, pp. 256–277 ( online at Perspektiveia.net )

Individual evidence

  1. a b Reinhard Dorn : Medieval churches in Braunschweig . Hameln, 1978, p. 208.
  2. ^ A b Hermann Herbst: The library of the Andreas Church in Braunschweig . In: Central Journal for Libraries . Vol. 58, issue 9/10, Sept./Oct. 1941, p. 310.
  3. a b Horst-Rüdiger Jarck, Dieter Lent et al. (Ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon: 8th to 18th century . Appelhans Verlag, Braunschweig 2006, p. 377f.
  4. ^ Reinhard Dorn: Medieval churches in Braunschweig . Hameln, 1978, p. 208.
  5. a b c Heinrich Dürre: History of the city of Braunschweig in the Middle Ages . Braunschweig 1861, p. 472.
  6. ^ Brigide Schwarz: Hanoverian in Braunschweig. The careers of Johann Ember († 1432) and Hermann Pentel († after 1463) . In: Braunschweigisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte . Volume 80, 1999, p. 14.
  7. ^ Brigide Schwarz: Hanoverian in Braunschweig. The careers of Johann Ember († 1432) and Hermann Pentel († after 1463) . In: Braunschweigisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte . Volume 80, 1999, pp. 16f.
  8. Hermann Herbst: The library of the Andreas Church in Braunschweig . In: Central Journal for Libraries . Vol. 58, issue 9/10, Sept./Oct. 1941, p. 312.
  9. Hermann Herbst: The library of the Andreas Church in Braunschweig . In: Central Journal for Libraries . Vol. 58, issue 9/10, Sept./Oct. 1941, p. 304.
  10. quoted from: Hermann Herbst: The library of the Andreas Church in Braunschweig . In: Central Journal for Libraries . Vol. 58, issue 9/10, Sept./Oct. 1941, p. 314.
  11. Cord Meckseper (ed.): City in change. Art and culture of the bourgeoisie in Northern Germany 1150–1650 . Volume 1, Stuttgart 1985, p. 580.
  12. Hermann Herbst: The library of the Andreas Church in Braunschweig . In: Central Journal for Libraries . Vol. 58, issue 9/10, Sept./Oct. 1941, p. 315.
  13. Paul Jonas Meier and Karl Steinacker : The architectural and art monuments of the city of Braunschweig . 2nd edition, Braunschweig 1926, p. 30.
  14. Hermann Herbst: The library of the Andreas Church in Braunschweig . In: Central Journal for Libraries . Vol. 58, issue 9/10, Sept./Oct. 1941, p. 328.
  15. Hermann Herbst: The library of the Andreas Church in Braunschweig . In: Central Journal for Libraries . Vol. 58, issue 9/10, Sept./Oct. 1941, pp. 316f.
  16. Hermann Herbst: The library of the Andreas Church in Braunschweig . In: Central Journal for Libraries . Vol. 58, issue 9/10, Sept./Oct. 1941, p. 313f.
  17. a b Brigide Schwarz: Hanoverian in Braunschweig. The careers of Johann Ember († 1432) and Hermann Pentel († after 1463) . In: Braunschweigisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte . Volume 80, 1999, pp. 22f.
  18. ^ Brigide Schwarz: Hanoverian in Braunschweig. The careers of Johann Ember († 1432) and Hermann Pentel († after 1463) . In: Braunschweigisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte . Volume 80, 1999, p. 25.
  19. a b Brigide Schwarz: Hanoverian in Braunschweig. The careers of Johann Ember († 1432) and Hermann Pentel († after 1463) . In: Braunschweigisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte . Volume 80, 1999, p. 26.
  20. Hermann Herbst: The library of the Andreas Church in Braunschweig . In: Central Journal for Libraries . Vol. 58, issue 9/10, Sept./Oct. 1941, p. 317.
  21. Hermann Herbst: The library of the Andreas Church in Braunschweig . In: Central Journal for Libraries . Vol. 58, issue 9/10, Sept./Oct. 1941, p. 319.