Paul Albert (Bishop)

Episcopal coat of arms

Paul Albert (sometimes also Paul Albert von Radolfzell ; * 1557 in Radolfzell on Lake Constance , then Upper Austria ; † May 6, 1600 in Neisse , Principality of Neisse ) was elected bishop of Breslau , but died before the ordination.

Origin and career

His parents were Georg Albert and Anna, geb. Etschenreutin. As an alumnus of the Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum , he studied philosophy and theology in Rome from 1575. 1582 he left Rome and acquired in Bologna the academic degree of Dr. theol. After a stay in Altdorf he went to Breslau in 1583 , where he had had a diaconate since 1580 and became a scholastic in 1585 . In 1594 he acquired the Girsberg estate in the canton of Thurgau from the Mayer brothers from Stein am Rhein .

Paul Albert was one of the Swabian compatriots whom the future Bishop Andreas brought from Jerin to Breslau. After Jerin's election as Bishop of Wroclaw, Paul Albert became his advisor and chargé d'affaires and held this position several times at the papal court in Rome and the royal court in Prague. In 1591 he became governor of Neisse.

Bishop of Wroclaw

Although after Jerin's death in 1596 Emperor Rudolf II had suggested Paul Albert as his successor, the Breslau cathedral chapter chose the Silesian Bonaventura Hahn . The emperor then declared the election invalid. On May 5, 1599, Paul Albert was surprisingly elected as the new bishop and the election by Pope Clement VIII was confirmed on May 19, 1599. At the same time he was given the office of governor .

Since the new bishop was not a Silesian , the dukes Charles II von Münsterberg-Oels and his brother-in-law Joachim Friedrich von Liegnitz and Brieg refused to take part in the inauguration ceremony. This did not happen because Paul Albert died before his episcopal ordination . He was buried in the parish church of St. Jakob in Neisse . Apparently he had bequeathed his Girsberg estate to the Diocese of Breslau, from which it was sold to Emperor Rudolf. Paul Albert's library came to the Kreuzlingen monastery in 1601 .

literature

• Karl Kastner: Wroclaw Bishops . Ostdeutsche Verlagsanstalt, Breslau 1929 (here referred to as Paul Albert )
• Peter Erni and Alfons Raimann: The art monuments of the canton of Thurgau . Volume VII: The Kreuzlingen District I - The City of Kreuzlingen . ISBN 978-3-906131-90-0 , pp. 180, 266 and 443

Individual evidence

1. ^ Claudia Zonta: Silesian students at Italian universities. (PDF) A prosopographical study on the early modern history of education. Archived from the original on December 27, 2008 ; accessed on August 23, 2019 . 

predecessor	Office	successor
Bonaventure Rooster	Prince-Bishop of Wroclaw 1599 - 1600	Johann VI. from Sitsch