Johannes von Leuzenbronn the Younger

Johannes von Leuzenbronn the Younger († 1460 in Murrhardt ) was a Catholic priest , Benedictine and abbot of the St. Januarius monastery in Murrhardt.

Live and act

Like his predecessor of the same name, Johannes came from Johannes von Leuzenbronn the Elder , the lower nobility of the lords of Leuzenbronn near Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

A short time after the death of the elder John on April 22, 1444, John the Younger was elected as the new abbot by the convent . Under his direction, the renovation of the Murrhardt monastery church, which his predecessor had begun, was completed - this probably happened around 1451.

From 1446, under the leadership of Margrave Albrecht Achilles von Brandenburg-Ansbach, a princes' union had been formed, to which the Vogt of the Murrhardt Monastery, Count Ulrich the Beloved, also belonged. Due to the escalating hostilities between this coalition and the imperial cities , Abbot Johannes von Ulrich was given the diplomatic mission to keep the neighboring imperial city of Schwäbisch Hall out of a defensive alliance of the other cities. Despite the traditionally good contacts of the Murrhardt abbots to Schwäbisch Hall - the monastery had considerable property there - Johannes failed with this venture. When the conflict finally erupted in the summer of 1449 with the outbreak of the city war, the Murrhardt Monastery entered the war on the side of the Prince League and actively participated in acts of war against Schwäbisch Hall. Johannes von Leuzenbronn ordered his people to encroach on Hällisches territory and have cattle and goods stolen from the imperial city's property. These raids by the Murrhardt monastery were probably so frequent that the association of towns felt compelled to go to King Friedrich III. To lodge a protest against the Murrhardter approach. In a document issued on December 1, 1451 in his residence in Wiener Neustadt , the king finally obliged the Murrhardt abbot to stop all attacks and to pay damages to the city of Schwäbisch Hall.

In the last years of his term of office, the monastery and Abbot Johannes got into the burgeoning conflict between Count Ulrich the Beloved and Count Palatine Friedrich the Victorious . The lords of the Palatinate , after acquiring the Grafschaft Löwenstein in 1441, their legal successors and direct neighbors of Murrhardt, pushed for the restoration of Löwenstein's old rights, which had been tacitly collected from the Murrhardt monastery in the decades before. In particular, Sulzbach an der Murr , now in the Palatinate, developed into the center of a dispute between the Palatinate and Murrhardt, which could only be ended almost thirty years later. Since the Counts of Löwenstein held the bailiwick of Murrhardt Monastery until 1388 and the House of Württemberg was severely weakened in its political capacity to act due to the division by the Nürtingen Treaty , it can be assumed that Frederick the Victorious made efforts to influence the decisions of the Murrhardter monk community to win. Opposition within the monastery seems to have weakened the position of Abbot Johannes in 1451 to such an extent that Johannes von Leuzenbronn the Younger finally resigned from his office at the end of 1451 and the monk Herbord was elected as his successor.

After renouncing the abbot, Johannes von Leuzenbronn lived for eight years as a simple convent member in the Murrhardt monastery, where he died in 1460.

literature

• Gerhard Fritz: City and monastery Murrhardt in the late Middle Ages and in the Reformation period (= research from Württemberg-Franconia. Vol. 34). Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1990, ISBN 3-7995-7634-7 , pp. 335-336.

predecessor	Office	successor
Johannes von Leuzenbronn the Elder Ä.	Abbot of Murrhardt 1444-1451	Herbord, called God of goodness