Sigimund of Halberstadt

Sigimund († January 14, 923 or 924 ), also Siegmund, Sigmund, Sigemundus or Sigismundus , was Bishop of Halberstadt from 894 until his death .

Sigimund was the first bishop of Halberstadt to be named after his place of activity in contemporary written sources and to be buried there. For the cathedral chapter he gained the right to freely elect a bishop in 902. He is best known for his dispute with the later East Franconian King Heinrich I because of his marriage to the nun Hatheburch . While it has found its way into the research literature on Heinrich I due to this circumstance, a coherent biographical description has so far been lacking.

Life

Sigimund's origin is unknown. In particular, he did not come from the Hirsau Monastery , as Johannes Trithemius noted in the Hirsau monastery chronicles written by him at the beginning of the 16th century. Volkhard Huth suspects, based on the entry of a Simundus episcopus in the early 10th century bishop diptych of the much older Düsseldorf sacramentary manuscript D 1, a connection to Werden monastery . Sigimund's predecessors Thiatgrim , Haymo and Hildegrim II had exercised the office of Bishop of Halberstadt in personal union with that of Abbot of Werden and were buried there. Sigimund's inclusion in the memorial of Margrave Gero's clan , which results from a necrological entry in the Reichenau fraternity book , does not provide any further information. Because according to Gerd Althoff , the entry is not based on family, but on political relationships.

On May 5th, 895 Sigimund was first mentioned in a document. On that day he signed the resolutions of the Synod of Tribur . Since the signature is already provided with the addition of a bishop of Halberstadt, Sigimund's consecration as bishop, which has not been handed down, must have taken place between the death of his predecessor Agiulf 894 and May 5, 895. Thietmar von Merseburg reports that the investiture of Sigimund as bishop was made by Arnolf of Carinthia “in the seventh year of his reign”, i.e. 894.

At the instigation of Archbishop Hatto I of Mainz , to whose diocese Sigimunds diocese belonged, the East Franconian King Ludwig IV issued a document on August 7, 902 in Tribur, in which he assured the cathedral chapter of the diocese the right of free bishopric for the future and confirmed the privileges and property granted by Arnolf von Kärnten.

Around the year 906 Sigimund caused a sensation when he turned against the marriage of the future King Henry I with Hatheburch . Heinrich I had married Erwin's daughter of Merseburg not least because of her rich possessions around Merseburg . However, the connection was inadmissible under canon law. Because after the death of her first husband, unknown by name, Hatheburch had already entered a monastery . Apparently there were claims of the Halberstadt Church to Hatheburch's lands. This is probably one of the reasons why Sigimund objected, even when he superficially stated that the couple had neither applied for Hatheburch to be released from their vows , nor had such a dispensation been granted. In order to prevent the procreation of a legal heir, Sigimund forbade the bride and groom to have sexual intercourse and threatened with excommunication in the event of a violation . In addition, he called a synod and had Heinrich I and Hatheburch summoned to put them before an ecclesiastical court. Then Heinrich I turned to "the Kaiser" for help, who instructed Sigimund to transfer the matter to him for a decision. Possibly in return for the ecclesiastical recognition of the marriage and the renunciation of the Merseburg lands, Heinrich's father Otto the Illustrious assured the monastery of Hersfeld , which he presided over as lay abbot, the free election of abbots for the future in a document dated October 5, 908 in Trebur. Nevertheless, the marriage was dissolved again before the year 909.

Before February 1, 908, Pope Sergius III. Sigimund along with other bishops in an at least interpolated document to support Archbishop Adalgar in the ordination of bishops.

In autumn 916 Sigimund was one of those Saxon bishops who stayed away from the Synod of Hohenaltheim . The boycott of the Saxon bishops was directed against King Konrad I , whose power was to be strengthened by the synod.

Sigimund died after a long illness and was the first Halberstadt bishop to be buried at his place of work. The Quedlinburg Annals record his death in 923, the Fulda Annals in 924. Thietmar von Merseburg reports the day of his death. Thietmar also emphasizes that Sigimund had "not lying down, but sitting on his bishop's chair", that is, before his illness, he ordered to be buried in front of the Stephanus altar in Halberstadt Cathedral. This formulation has repeatedly been interpreted as a seat burial.

Sigimund's successor as Bishop of Halberstadt was his chaplain Bernhard von Hadmersleben . Sigimund's successor is said to have foreseen in a dream shortly before his death and then recommended Bernhard as the next bishop.

Afterlife

Almost 100 years after Sigimund's death, Thietmar von Merseburg reports about him. In the first book of his chronicle , written between 1012 and 1018, Thietmar describes the divine election of Henry I as ruler and his transgressions, for which he is repeatedly forgiven after repentant penance. As an example of Heinrich's sins, Thietmar cites the marriage with the nun Hatheburg and uses the person of Sigimund to assess Heinrich I's behavior as a grave sin on the basis of church law. In addition, he raised the Halberstadt Bishop to give him the right to condemn the ruler: Sigimund had surpassed all others without exception with his spiritual and worldly knowledge and, as a sign of his perfection, combined great piety with the most ardent zeal for the kingdom of Christ. With the mention of Sigimund, Thietmar also fulfills his memorial obligation to the episcopal minister, driven by the hope that later generations would reward him with the memory of himself. Regarding the biographical information to be found in Thietmar, it is assumed that he used a version of the Halberstadt bishops' chronicles written down by Bishop Hildeward (968-996) on the occasion of the consecration of Halberstadt Cathedral on October 16, 992, which was lost today .

A codex used by Sigimund is now in the Leipzig University Library. After the donation was made, Sigimund received the manuscript from the Paderborn bishop Biso († 907). The little book was originally made in the second half of the 9th century for the Hildesheim bishop Reginbert . Sigimund's seal and documents have not survived.

The southern wall of the choir wall of the Halberstadt Cathedral bears a memorial inscription for Sigimund from around 1491.

literature

• Raphaela Averkorn: The bishops of Halberstadt in their ecclesiastical and political work and in their relationships with the city from the beginning to the Reformation. In: Dieter Berg (Hrsg.): Citizens, mendicants and bishops in Halberstadt (= Saxonia Franciscana. 9). Dietrich-Coelde, Werl 1997, ISBN 3-87163-224-4 , pp. 1-79.

swell

• Ludwig Weiland (Ed.): Gesta episcoporum Halberstadensium. In: Monumenta Germaniae Historica . Scriptores. 5: Scriptores (in folio). Volume 23. Hahn, Hannover 1874, pp. 73-123 ( digitized version ).
• Robert Holtzmann (Ed.): The Chronicle of Bishop Thietmar von Merseburg and their Korveier revision (= Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores. 6: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum. Nova Series Volume 9). Weidmann, Berlin 1935 ( digitized version ).

Remarks

1. ↑ As it Raphaela Averkorn: The bishops of Halberstadt in their ecclesiastical and political work and in its relations with the city from the beginning to the Reformation. In: Dieter Berg (ed.): Citizens, mendicants and bishops in Halberstadt. 1997, p. 1–79, here p. 4. Already Otto Hafner: Regesten zur Geschichte des Kloster Hirsau. In: Studies and communications from the Benedictine and Cistercian orders. Vol. 12, 1891, ZDB -ID 220823-4 , pp. 422-431, here p. 426 , came to the conclusion that the source cited by Trithemius, the otherwise unknown annals of a Fulda monk Meginfried, “only in Tritheim's head existed. "
2. ^ Volkhard Huth : The Düsseldorfer Sacramentary Manuscript D l as a memorial certificate. With a reproduction of the names and groups of names. In: Early Medieval Studies . Vol. 20, 1986, pp. 213-298, here p. 252.
3. ^ Gerd Althoff : Noble and royal families in the mirror of their memorial tradition. Studies on the commemoration of the dead of the Billunger and Ottonen (= Münster medieval writings. Vol. 47). Fink, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-7705-2267-2 , pp. 24-29, ( digitized version ).
4. ^ Albert Hauck : Church history of Germany. Volume 2. 8th, unchanged edition. Akademie-Verlag et al., Berlin et al. 1954, p. 808; Joachim Ehlers : burial place and burial custom of the German kings in the early and high Middle Ages. In: Braunschweigische Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft. Yearbook. 1989, ISSN  0931-1734 , pp. 39-74, here p. 56, ( online ).
5. ↑ Wilfried Hartmann , Isolde Schröder, Gerhard Schmitz (ed.): The councils of the Carolingian sub-empires. 875-911. = Concilia aevi Karolini. DCCCLXXV – DCCCCXI (= Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Leges. 5: Concilia. Vol. 3). Unchanged reprint of the edition published in 2012 by Hahnschen Buchhandlung, Hanover. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2014, ISBN 978-3-447-10113-4 , p. 369 as Sigimundus Halvarastatensis episcopus and p. 371 as Sigimundus Alborastadensis.
6. ↑ Thietmar I, 22.
7. ↑ D LdK 15; ( Facsimile )
8. ↑ Thietmar I, 6 means with “ad imperatorem” in the opinion of Kerstin Schulmeyer-Ahl: The beginning of the end of the Ottonians. Constitutional conditions of historiographic news in the Chronicle of Thietmar von Merseburg (= Millennium Studies. 26). de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-019100-4 , p. 70, Konrad I. , who was not an emperor.
9. ↑ Hans Goetting : The Hildesheimer bishops from 815 to 1221 (1227) (= Germania Sacra . New series vol. 20: The dioceses of the ecclesiastical province of Mainz. The diocese of Hildesheim. 3). de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 1984, ISBN 3-11-010004-5 , p. 130.
10. ^ Annales Necrologici Fuldenses. In: Georg Waitz (Ed.): Supplementa tomorum I-XII, pars I. (= MGH SS 13). Hahn, Hannover 1881, pp. 161–218, here p.192 .
11. ↑ Thietmar I, 22.
12. ↑ Thietmar I, 22: non iacendo, sed super cathedram suam. To the interpretation of Katharina Corsepius: The Aachen "Karlsthron" between ceremonial and ruler's memoria. In: Marion Steinicke, Stefan Weinfurter (eds.): Investiture and coronation rituals. Assertions of power in a cultural comparison. Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2005, ISBN 3-412-09604-0 , pp. 359–376, here p. 362 note 10 with further references.
13. ↑ Most recently Matthias Springer : The early Diocese of Halberstadt in view of more recent research. In: Günter Masberg, Armin Schulze (ed.): Halberstadt. The first diocese in Central Germany. Contemporary testimonies from Emperor Charlemagne to the Great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg (= publications of the City Museum Halberstadt. 29). Städtisches Museum Halberstadt, Halberstadt 2004, ISBN 3-934245-04-08 , pp. 33–44, here p. 34.
14. ↑ Thietmar I, 22; in addition Sébastien Rossignol: The spooky stories of Thietmar of Merseburg. Reflections on the world of ideas and the working method of an 11th century chronicler. In: Concilium Medii Aevi . Vol. 9, 2006, pp. 47-76, here p. 65 .
15. ↑ Kerstin Schulmeyer-Ahl: The beginning of the end of the Ottonians. Constitutional conditions of historiographic news in the Chronicle of Thietmar von Merseburg (= Millennium Studies. 26). de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-019100-4 , pp. 70-74, 104.
16. ↑ Rolf Bergmann , Stefanie Stricker: Catalog of Old High German and Old Saxon gloss manuscripts. Volume 2, Part C: Catalog No. 201-492. de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2005, ISBN 978-3-11-018272-9 , p. 835.
17. ↑ DI 75: Halberstadt Cathedral (2009) No. 115 .

predecessor	Office	successor
Agiulf	Bishop of Halberstadt 895–923/924	Bernhard