Maria Clara von Spaur, Pflaum and Valör

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The coat of arms of the Barons von Spaur, Pflaum and Valör on the foot of the reliquary donated by Maria Clara

Maria Clara of Spaur, Pflaum and Valör , often Maria Clara of Spaur, Pflaum and Vallier , (* 1590, † 14. December 1644 in Cologne ) was Abbess of Essen and abbess of Frauenstift Nottuln and Metelen . A permanent legacy of her term of office, which was shaped by the Counter Reformation and the Thirty Years' War , is a reliquary in the Essen cathedral treasury .

Life

Maria Clara came from a South Tyrolean aristocratic family, which, however, did not belong to the high nobility . Her father, Leo Freiherr von Spaur , Pflaum und Valör, had gained a reputation in the imperial service, her mother was Juliane Barbara Countess Frederici. The sex was strictly Catholic. Maria Clara's brother Christoph was canon in Brixen , where relatives had also been bishops . Nevertheless, Maria Clara's descent from an exclusively baronial sex was not elegant enough for the Catholic Essen monastery , which had developed into a highly aristocratic monastery in the course of the late Middle Ages and the early modern period . The admission of Maria Claras to Essen, which her sisters Veronika and Catharina and her niece Hieronyma were to follow later , meant a social advancement for the von Spaur family. The fact that Maria Clara, who was presumably admitted to the Buchau Abbey on October 7, 1600 , was able to join the Essen Abbey in spite of her minor background, had reasons of religious policy: When Abbess Elisabeth von Bergh-s'Heerenberg was elected in 1604, in Essen counter-Reformation forces prevailed. One of the campaign promises that had been imposed by Elisabeth Bergh, was that they only Catholic canonesses with prebends should provide, this edition was used to reach a Catholic majority in the canonesses again. However, it was not the abbess who had to decide on the admission of new canons, but the chapter chaired by the provostess . The provostess Felicitas von Eberstein , however, belonged to the Reformed faith and therefore blocked the admission of Maria Claras. Elisabeth von Bergh then withdrew one of her prebendess from the provost on December 12, 1607 and assigned her to Maria Clara. In doing so, Elisabeth violated the rules of the monastery, especially since there was no revolt by Maria Claras, but she enforced them as a canoness. In the Rellinghausen Abbey , a subsidiary in Essen, which was also open to the lower nobility, Maria Clara had fewer problems, where she is named as provost in 1607. In 1608, her family tried to accommodate Maria Clara in the Vreden Abbey , but she was only accepted there in 1612. A year earlier, Maria Clara had received the office of dean in Essen , and in 1613 Maria Clara’s ancestral sample was submitted in Essen. Such an accumulation of prebenders was not unusual; it served both the economic security of the canonesses and the prestige of the families.

Elected Abbess of Essen

On January 12, 1614, Elisabeth von Bergh, abbess of Essen, abbess of Freckenhorst and Nottuln, died very surprisingly at the age of only 33. On the day of her death, the Essen monastery agreed on February 11th as the election day for the election of a new abbess.

In addition to Maria Clara, the provost Felicitas von Eberstein, who had already failed ten years earlier in the election of Elisabeth von Bergh, had a chance to vote. Felicitas was of the Reformed faith. It had the support of the Essen city council, as the city of Essen regarded itself as a free imperial city and thus independent of the Essen monastery and had joined the Reformation in 1563. Felicitas von Eberstein also hoped for the support of one of the bailiffs , the Elector of Brandenburg . The bailiwick over the monastery had been with the dukes of Jülich-Kleve-Berg until 1609 , but they died out with the death of the last duke Johann Wilhelm von Jülich-Kleve-Berg on March 25, 1609. Due to the Dortmund recession , the bailiwick was jointly owned by Elector Johann Sigismund von Brandenburg , a Reformed, and Count Palatine Wolfgang Wilhelm von Neuburg , who had secretly converted from Lutheran to Catholicism in July 1613. The new election of the Essen abbess thus fell in the middle of the Jülich-Klevian succession dispute . In this situation the election of the abbess in Essen was politically explosive.

The Catholic forces took action quickly to secure the election of an abbess who pleased them. On January 30 in Essen hit a mandate Emperor Matthias ' one in which the pen choosing a Catholic abbess was suggested, otherwise it would "stürtzen in highest beschwär and inconvenient satisfaction." A few days later sent vicar general of the Archdiocese of Cologne on 3 February, at the request of Maria Claras also a mandate that the Archdiocese would only accept one election according to the regulations of the Tridentine . Two days before the election, Johannes von Darl, the Cologne governor of Vestes Recklinghausen , arrived in Essen. The next day he succeeded in arranging a contract between the provostess Felicitas von Eberstein and the other canons, in which the provostess was promised to guarantee her rights and income. However, this agreement was no electoral capitulation Maria Clara's because they did not sign him to their choice. On election day itself, the Catholic canons agreed to allocate space for the Jesuit order in Essen to live and a school.

Felicitas von Eberstein had nothing to counter these diverse efforts in favor of Maria Claras. The Elector of Brandenburg sent envoys to Essen, but they did not arrive until after the election and left without having achieved anything. With the contract of February 10th, Felicitas gave up her efforts, the election of Maria Claras in Essen the next day was certain. Maria Clara's choice in the city of Essen was not met with enthusiasm. On her festive entry into the city on October 14th, Maria Clara had to be accompanied by Spanish cavalry who shot two citizens of Essen. Your papal confirmation had already arrived in Essen on July 18, the imperial confirmation did not follow until 13 years later.

In Nottuln Abbey, whose abbess was also held by Elisabeth von Bergh, Maria Clara's choice also encountered difficulties. Ferdinand von Bayern , Archbishop of Cologne and Bishop of Munster, successfully put the chapter there under pressure.

Administration

Maria Clara's term of office is divided into two halves: she was abbess in Essen until 1629, then abbess of Essen, as she left the monastery due to the advance of Protestant forces in the Thirty Years' War and resided in Cologne until her death.

Shortly after their election, the Capuchin Order was called to Essen, which was settled in the former Beguine Convent "Im Kettwig" near the Kettwiger Tor in the south of the city. Maria Clara gave them, like the Jesuits, generous gifts of property. In 1616 and 1624 Maria Clara issued restrictive religious orders for the monastery area, which, like similar counter-Reformation orders in the Archdiocese of Cologne at the same time, aimed to restore the Catholic faith. Quiet had returned to the convent itself: Felicitas von Eberstein, the Protestant provostess, had retired to Herford, where she had been abbess herself since 1604, and died there in 1621. The few remaining Protestants in the convent saw themselves through new admission of further Catholic canonesses, including a niece of the abbess, a stable Catholic majority. However, there was also a dispute with Felicitas von Eberstein's successor, Johanna Helena von Staufen , who was first appointed as a Catholic counterpropess from 1616 and then elected in 1621 . The reason for this was the abundance of power of the Essen provost's office, which on the one hand was associated with rich property, but on the other also included the right to assign the prebendors to new canonesses in the name of the women's chapter and to check their pedigree beforehand. In the drafts of the statutes of the monastery, which were drawn up under Maria Clara, these competencies were reduced and the provostess was more clearly subordinated to the abbess: the provostess was supposed to swear obedience to the abbess and obtain her confirmation. From 1638 onwards, the provostess concluded an election surrender.

The awarding of candidates to applicants from Tyrol and Burgundy by Maria Clara led to a conflict with the neighboring Catholic imperial counts, who saw their interests in Essen at risk. In 1629 Maria Clara tried to block the admission of daughters from the Salm-Reifferscheidt family , including the future abbess Anna Salome . The Counts of Salm-Reifferscheid and Manderscheid- Blankenheim even threatened to file a lawsuit with the emperor. In 1633 the abbess, who had since fled to Cologne, finally gave in.

Maria Clara resided in the Mariengarten monastery in Cologne from 1629 until her death in 1644

In 1627 Maria Clara fled to Cologne, as Protestant Dutch troops were advancing on Essen and the Catholic Spanish troops were withdrawing from Essen. When she escaped, Maria Clara took the treasury and the office files with her. When the fortunes of war had turned in 1629, she returned shortly to Essen under the protection of Catholic troops. Then she moved with the troops to St. Gertrudiskirche , which has been Protestant since 1563 , where the pulpit was whipped and the Catholic mass was read again. This interlude was short, however, as the Protestant troops were increasingly returning. Maria Clara returned to Cologne, where she stayed until her death. In Cologne she lived in the Mariengarten monastery , but did not give up the claims of Essen abbess. In May 1634, during the great relic procession in Cologne on the occasion of the jubilee year proclaimed by Pope Urban VIII , the Essen relics, including the extremely magnificent Marsus shrine , which itself caused a sensation among the splendid Cologne shrines, were carried along in the procession. On this occasion, Aegidius Gelenius wrote the most precise description of this lost shrine in 1797. After the death of the provostess Johanna Helena von Staufen in 1639, Maria Clara had the provost's archive moved to Cologne and demanded that chapter meetings in future only take place at the abbess's place of residence.

Maria Clara died on December 14, 1644 in her exile in Cologne. Her grave was in the Capuchin Church in Cologne, which was laid down after 1800. Anna Eleonore von Staufen was elected as her successor in Cologne .

The Cosmas and Damian reliquary

The Cosmas and Damian reliquary in the exhibition Gold before Black 2008

In 1643 Maria Clara von Spaur donated a silver reliquary for the Essen monastery treasure, which is still used in the liturgy every year on July 8th, the feast day of the two patrons of Essen Cathedral . The reliquary, which Georg Humann attested in 1904, that it showed "neither taste in the invention nor care in execution", is partly composed of reused parts and the type for its time was unusual. The reliquary is 45 cm high and 23.5 cm wide at the base. It consists of two parts that are made of different silver alloys and therefore differ in color. The foot and shaft of the reliquary have a higher silver content. Individual forms such as the star-shaped shaft gusset point to the origin of the foot in the first quarter of the 16th century. The foot was therefore taken from an older ostensorium when the reliquary was created . Maria Clara had this foot decorated with engravings. Saint Clara is engraved on the right side of the foot and the coat of arms of the von Spaur, Pflaum and Valör family on the left. The engravings are connected by an engraved inscription that follows the contours of the foot: "MARIA CLARA DEI GRATIA ABBATISSA NATA EX COMITIBUS DE SPAUR ME FIERI FECIT ANNO 1643" (Maria Clara, abbess by the grace of God, born of the Counts of Spaur, ordered to make me in 1643). The reliquary is a three-tower reliquary, which contains relics of Saint Cosmas and Saint Marsus in the glass cylinders on the side and the relics of the skulls of Cosmas and Damian in the middle, stacked glass capsules . On the spiers of the towers there are statues of Saints Cosmas and Damian and Mary in the middle. As the hallmark under the foot shows, the reliquary was made in Cologne. It was created during the abbess's exile. The iconographic program of the reliquary should be understood against this background: It contains the relics of the collegiate and city patrons Cosmas and Damian as well as Marsus, whose precious collective reliquary contained the most important Essen relics (at times even the sword of the pen cartridge ), and thus the most important ones in the monastery Eating venerated saints who are gathered under the central figure of Mary - who was both namesake of the abbess and another patroness of the monastery. It thus made clear the continued existence of Maria Clara's claim to power over the Essen Abbey and at the same time made it possible to carry out her duties associated with the office in exile.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ HSDü : EA 34 fol. 248f., Here quoted from Küppers-Braun, Frauen, p. 131
  2. ^ Küppers-Braun, women of the high nobility, p. 264
  3. ^ Mews, Die Essener Marktkirche, EB 78 (1962), p. 12
  4. ↑ Beuckers, Der Essener Marsus-Schrein, p. 1f.
  5. ^ Boschka, p. 257
personal data
SURNAME Spaur, Pflaum and Valör, Maria Clara von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Spaur, Maria Clara from
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Princess Abbess of Essen
DATE OF BIRTH around 1590
DATE OF DEATH December 14, 1644
Place of death Cologne