Stanislaus Thurzo

Stanislaus Thurzo (also Thurzó von Béthlenfalva, Turzo, Turzó ; * 1470 in Cracow , † April 17, 1540 in Olomouc ) was Bishop of Olomouc .

Career

Stanislaus came from the Thurzo patrician family from the Upper Hungarian Spiš , which had become rich in mining and whose members held high offices at the Hungarian court and in the mining administration. His father Johannes Thurzo settled in Kraków in 1462, where Stanislaus was born eight years later.

Stanislaus was educated at the court of King Matthias Corvinus in Buda and studied in Krakow from 1485. With the study of theology and law at the University of Padua he acquired the degree of "Doktor decretorum". After his return he was canon in Cracow and Olomouc.

As a diplomat in Rome

In 1495 Stanislaus was commissioned by the Olomouc Cathedral Chapter to renounce Pope Alexander VI. Bishop of Monreale Johannes ( Juan ) Borgia , who had been Bishop of Ferrara since 1494, was appointed Olomouc administrator in 1493 . Since the appointed administrator never came to Olomouc, the diocese had to be administered by the cathedral chapter under the direction of cathedral dean Konrad Altheimer .

With a second assignment, Stanislaus should achieve the return of the right to bishopric with the Pope so that the cathedral chapter could elect a new bishop after Pope Innocent VIII and his successor Pope Alexander VI. despite the request of the king and the estates refused to confirm Bohuslaus Lobkowitz von Hassenstein , who was elected in 1490 .

After tough negotiations and with the use of money, Stanislaus succeeded in enforcing the resignation of the administrator and the recognition of the right to vote.

Episcopate

After the election of Bohuslaus Lobkowitz von Hassenstein had been declared null and void by the Pope, the cathedral chapter elected Stanislaus Thurzo as Bishop of Olomouc on January 30, 1496 while he was still in Rome. Since on January 30, 1497, Juan Borgia had officially renounced the office of administrator in exchange for an annual pension of 500 ducats, Stanislaus received papal confirmation on the same day, so that he could take up the office of Olomouc bishop after a seven-year vacancy .

As early as May 3, 1498, Stanislaus held his first diocesan synod in Wischau , through whose resolutions the religious life of the diocese was to be promoted. In the same year he had a missal and a psaltery of the "Olomouc Rite" and various legal provisions printed in Brno and Nuremberg . In 1501 he issued a statute for the cathedral chapter , with which it was stipulated, among other things, that canonicals may only be given to persons who can demonstrate a theological doctorate or a licentiate .

His diocese should also be consolidated through legal and economic measures. With the help of his financially strong father and the support of King Vladislav II , he redeemed the pledged Kremsier in 1499 and the Hochwald rule in 1507 , whose castle received a new fortification. In Olomouc he had a new bishop's palace built and the cathedral's Gothic choir expanded.

The diocesan administration was instructed to create copy books and registers . He also had the Olomouc feudal law and the land law printed and designated Kremsier as the seat of the episcopal feudal court and the feudal court. From 1531 only the bishop and his feudal court were responsible for the episcopal fiefdoms and estates and no longer the land and the land law. Even the bishop should no longer be subordinate to land law, but directly to the King of Bohemia .

Humanist circle

Like his brother, Prince-Bishop Johann Thurzo from Breslau, Stanislaus was a great promoter of Renaissance humanism . His cathedral chapter, which became a spiritual center of Moravia , included the Celtis students Gregor Nitsch and Martinus Sinapinus , who founded the humanist group “ Sodalitas litteraria Meierhofiana ”, to which Olomouc citizens also belonged. Ursinus Velius , Bohuslaus Lobkowitz von Hassenstein , Jan Šlechta von Všehrd and others humanists were in contact with the Olomouc Circle.

Denominational problems

From a religious point of view, Stanislaus Thurzo's long tenure fell at a difficult time when Moravia was a multi-denominational country. The faiths of the Bohemian Brethren , the Waldensians , the Lutherans , the Utraquists and the Anabaptists spread rapidly among the population. Stanislaus took measures against them that can only be understood from the perspective of the time. At his instigation, the brotherhood , which was largely under the protection of the nobility, was banned by the Prague state parliament in 1508. The Augustinian canon of Klosterneuburg and imperial court chaplain Jakob Pamperl was appointed as papal delegate and the Dominican Heinrich Kramer, known as the inquisitor, was appointed preacher. Heretical writings were to be tracked down and burned, books censored and printed only with episcopal permission. Stanislaus obtained a royal arrest warrant in 1523 against Paul Speratus , former court preacher in Würzburg , who appeared as a Lutheran preacher in Iglau and Olomouc.

Honorable tasks

Stanislaus carried out his political functions in close association with the Bohemian kings Vladislav and Ludwig . In the Bohemian diets he was mostly at the head of the royal embassy, ​​represented the interests of the kingship and settled conflicts between the estates. In 1509 he crowned King Ludwig and in 1522 his wife Maria of Hungary . In 1527 Ferdinand I and his wife Queen Anna of Bohemia and Hungary were crowned by Stanislaus. In 1506 he consecrated his brother Johann as Prince-Bishop of Breslau on papal instructions .

expenditure

• Martin Rothkegel : The Latin correspondence of the Olomouc bishop Stanislaus Thurzó. An East Central European humanist correspondence from the first half of the 16th century (= Hamburg Contributions to Neo-Latin Philology , Volume 5). Lit Verlag, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-8258-9868-7 (critical edition)

literature

• Winfried Eberhard in: Erwin Gatz : The Bishops of the Holy Roman Empire , Vol. 2, pp. 714–717, ISBN 3-428-08422-5
• Joachim Bahlcke , Winfried Eberhard, Miloslav Polívka (eds.): Handbook of historical places . Volume: Bohemia and Moravia (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 329). Kröner, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-520-32901-8 .

predecessor	Office	successor
John XV Borgia	Bishop of Olomouc 1497–1540	Bernhard Zoubek from Zdětín