Johannes Schele

Johann Schele (also: Scheele , * approx. 1385–1390 in Hanover ; † September 8, 1439 in Hungary ) was Bishop of Lübeck from 1420 until his death in 1439 , as John VII , from 1433 participant of the Basel Council (1431–1449 ) and from 1434 finally also envoy of Emperor Sigismund at the council. He comes from a respected bourgeois family in the city of Hanover and is considered one of the most influential council fathers of the Basel Council as well as a staunch conciliarist .

Life

Cleric and Bishop of Lübeck

Schele was "probably [the] son ​​of a Hanoverian councilor " and attended the cathedral school, today's Theodorianum , in Paderborn around 1400 . He began his studies around 1408. In 1412 it is proven that he enrolled in the register of the University of Bologna . There he received his doctorate in 1413 for licentiatus in decretis . After that, positions as thesaurar in Minden, as canons in Dorpat and Lübeck and as dean in Bremen are known.

After the death of the Lübeck bishop Johann von Dülmen , Johann Schele was unanimously elected his successor as a member of the cathedral chapter in early 1420 . His election was confirmed on March 13th by Pope Martin V in Florence. On his return to Lübeck, Johann Schele received the academic degree of doctor iuris canonici from the University of Bologna . In his office as Bishop of Lübeck, the aspects of securing and increasing the episcopal income as well as the repeated mediation activities of the bishop came to the fore. The bishop of Lübeck was named papal arbitrator in the dispute between King Erik VII and Count Adolf VIII of Holstein over the Duchy of Schleswig shortly after his election as a bishop , and he acted as a mediator several times in this matter.

Participant in the Basel Council

Bishop Johann Schele was incorporated on June 19, 1433 as a participant in the Basel Council, of which he remained a member until his death . During this time he stayed in his diocese only once for a few months in 1438 . Due to his origins, he was a member of the German nation at the Basel Council, in addition he was assigned to the deputatio pro communibus , whose presidency he exercised in April 1434. Through his participation in numerous offices and commissions of the council bureaucracy, such as B. as a member of the twelve-man committee or as one of the assistants of the general congregation , Schele participated in the administrative tasks of the council.

The Basel Council had set the causa fidei ( matters of faith), the causa pacis (peace matters ) and the causa reformacionis (church reform) as its priorities. Bishop Schele was active in all these areas in the form of commissions or council delegations. On the Hussite question, for example, the Lübeck bishop was a member of a council delegation to Regensburg between July and October 1434 for discussions with supporters of the Hussites and Emperor Sigismund. Furthermore, Schele was active several times in peace missions, B. 1436 in negotiations with the feuding Frederick I of Brandenburg and Duke Ludwig VII of Bavaria. In questions of church reform, Schele participated in numerous commissions in the preparation of the council decrees.

With regard to the causa reformacionis, the reform text “Avisamenta reformacionis in curia et extra” , which was probably written between 1433 and 1434, stands out. It is debatable whether Schele already brought large parts of the script with him to Basel or whether it was first created at the council. However, it is certain that Schele put together a wide variety of ideas from among the German council members in a document commissioned by the council president Cesarini . The reform treatise lists 114 reform proposals in note form, the majority of which deal with the reform of the church at its head and members, but a small part treats reform in the secular as a typical feature of this type of reform writings. Schele's understanding of reform thus encompasses a reform of Christianity in both the spiritual and the secular.

Imperial and Royal envoy

After Bishop Schele had made the acquaintance of Emperor Sigismund before the beginning of the council, the Basel Reichstag in 1433/34 offered the opportunity to deepen this relationship. Finally, on August 8, 1434, Schele was born together with Dr. Georg Fischer and Dr. Georg Heimberg selected as the imperial envoy at the Basel Council. At the council, in addition to his position as council father, he also held the function of imperial deputy. His duties as imperial envoy included the protection of the council against its opponents, compliance with imperial law against the efforts of the council, and diplomacy with representatives of other powers who were politically active at the Basel council. With Sigismund's death on December 9, 1437, Schele's mission also ended, but on May 4, 1438 he was again appointed envoy of the newly elected King Albrecht II .

From Albrecht "zu Kysdy an der Theysse", Schele obtained a document dated August 23, 1439, in which all previous rights and freedoms of the city of Hanover were confirmed.

After his departure from a council delegation to Albrecht, Bishop Johann Schele died of the consequences of the plague in an unknown location in Hungary before returning to Basel on September 8, 1439 . His body was buried in the Schottenkloster in Vienna .

Works

• Avisamenta reformacionis in curia et extra , printed in: Sources on church reform in the age of the great councils of the 15th century. Second part. The councils of Pavia / Siena (1423/24), Basel (1431–1449) and Ferrara / Florence (1438–1445). Edited by Jürgen Miethke and Lorenz Weinrich, Darmstadt 2002, pp. 203–237.

literature

• Johann Rudolph Becker : Cumbersome history of the Kaiserl. and salvation. Roman Empire freyen City of Lübeck , Vol. 1, Lübeck: Green, 1782, pp. 356, 373–379
• Hans Ammon: Johannes Schele. Bishop of Lübeck at the Basel Council. (Publications on the history of the Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck, 10), ed. from the Lübeck City Archives , 1931.
• Hartmut Boockmann : About the connection between imperial reform and church reform. In: Hlaváček, Ivan; Patschovsky, Alexander (Ed.): Reform of Church and Empire at the Time of the Councils of Constance (1414–1418) and Basel (1431–1449) , Konstanz-Prague Historical Colloquium (October 11–17, 1993), Konstanz 1996, Pp. 203-214.
• Günther Hödl: On the imperial policy of the Basel Council. Bishop Johannes Schele of Lübeck (1420–1439). In: Mitteilungen des Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 75 (1967), pp. 46–65.
• Günther Hödl:  Johannes Schele. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-428-00191-5 , p. 494 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Heinrich Koller: On the reform policy of Emperor Sigismund. In: Macek, Josef; Marosi, Erno; Seibt, Ferdinand (Ed.): Sigismund von Luxemburg. Emperor and King in Central Europe 1387–1437. (Studies on the Luxembourgers and their time, 5), Warendorf 1994, pp. 15-25.
• Claudia Märtl: The reform idea in the reform writings of the 15th century. In: Hlaváček, Ivan; Patschovsky, Alexander (Ed.): Reform of Church and Empire at the Time of the Councils of Constance (1414–1418) and Basel (1431–1449) , Konstanz-Prague Historical Colloquium (October 11–17, 1993), Konstanz 1996, Pp. 91-109.
• Alexander Patschovsky : The concept of reform at the time of the Councils of Constance and Basel. In: Hlaváček, Ivan; Patschovsky, Alexander (Ed.): Reform of Church and Empire at the Time of the Councils of Constance (1414–1418) and Basel (1431–1449) , Konstanz-Prague Historical Colloquium (October 11–17, 1993), Konstanz 1996, Pp. 7-28.
• Johannes Schmitdinger: Four former Paderborn scholars as bishops at the Basel Council. In: Scheele, Paul Werner (ed.), Paderbornensis Ecclesia. Contributions to the history of the Archdiocese of Paderborn, Festschrift for Lorenz Cardinal Jaeger on his 80th birthday on September 23, 1972. Munich, Paderborn, Vienna 1972, pp. 181–195.
• Helmut Zimmermann : The origin of Johann Schele, Bishop of Lübeck. In: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter , New Series, vol. 23, 1969, pp. 79–85.
• Helmut Zimmermann: Hanoverian portraits. Life pictures from seven centuries, illustrated by Rainer Ossi Osswald , Hanover: Harenberg, 1983, p. 5ff.
• Brigide Schwarz : All roads lead through Rome. A "rope team" of clerics from Hanover in the late Middle Ages (1st episode): Dietrich Reseler, Bishop of Dorpat, Johann Schele, Bishop of Lübeck, Ludolf Grove, Bishop of Ösel . In: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter , New Episode 52 (1998)
• 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 )
• Dirk Böttcher : Schele, Johannes. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 539.

Web links

• Schele, Johannes in the repertory "Historical Sources of the German Middle Ages"

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Dirk Böttcher : SCHELE, Johannes. In: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon , p. 311f .; partly online via Google books
2. ↑ According to Dirk Böttcher, the certificate can be found today in the Hannover City Archives .
3. ^ A complicated history of the free city of Lübeck, Volume 1 , p. 379

predecessor	Office	successor
Johannes Hundesbeke	Bishop of Lübeck 1420 - 1439	Nicholas II. Sachau