Meinhard von Bamberg

Meinhard († June 20, 1088, probably in Würzburg) was a German cleric in the 11th century .

He came from a noble Main Franconian family and received clerical training in Speyer and Reims. Around 1058, Bishop Gunther appointed him as cathedral scholaster (head of the cathedral school) to Bamberg, "where under his leadership the cathedral school developed into a spiritual center recognized throughout the empire" (according to Wendehorst).

He has received 66 (or 68) letters from the period from around 1060 to 1075 to mostly high-ranking addressees, some of which he wrote on behalf of the Bamberg bishops Gunther and Hermann I and the cathedral chapter . Among other things, they form an important source for the history of the investiture controversy . In them, Meinhard shows himself to be familiar with the literary tradition of antiquity and as a skilled Latin prose stylist. Of his theological works only the treatise De fide (On Faith) survived. Meinhard was on the king's side in the investiture controversy. In the summer of 1075 he belonged to a delegation of three regni philosophi sent to Rome , which marked the last attempt at an agreement between Pope Gregory VII and the Imperial Church. In the later church dispute, Emperor Heinrich IV appointed him Bishop of Würzburg on May 25, 1085 , after he had deposed his predecessor Adalbero as a member of the Pope's part. Meinhard only held this office for three politically troubled years until his death.

Text output

• Letters from Meinhard from Bamberg . In: Carl Erdmann (†) and Norbert Fickermann (eds.): The letters of the German Empire 5: Letter collections from the time of Heinrich IV. Weimar 1950, pp. 107-131, 173-178, 189-248 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized )

literature

• Alfred Wendehorst : Article Meinhard von Bamberg . In: Lexikon des Mittelalters , Vol. 6, Col. 474–475.
• Alfred Wendehorst:  Meinhard von Bamberg. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , p. 670 ( digitized version ).
• Rudolf Schieffer: Article Meinhard von Bamberg . In: Autorlexikon , Vol. 6 (1987), pp. 310-313 (with lit.) .

Web links

• Meinhard von Bamberg in the repertory "Historical Sources of the German Middle Ages"

predecessor	Office	successor
Adalbero of Würzburg	Counter-bishop of Würzburg 1085-1088	Adalbero of Würzburg