Council of Pavia

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A series of medieval church assemblies in the city of Pavia are called the Synod of Pavia or the Council of Pavia .

As the former capital of the Longobard Empire and the Franconian coronation city until 1024, Pavia was one of the preferred places for church meetings in the high Middle Ages.

Meetings before 1000

A church assembly had already taken place in Pavia in 698. Another synod in Pavia in 850 prohibited the bishops from hunting. Furthermore, it was forbidden to use clergy as asset managers . Also in September 962 a meeting of bishops took place in Pavia, in which Emperor Otto I presumably took part.

In 996, the imperial Pope Gregory V called for a Roman synod to end the Reims schism. It was directed against Archbishop Giselher von Magdeburg , among others , who was accused of having illegally left his previous diocese of Merseburg . If he did not bow to the Pope's judgment, he was threatened with severe church sentences. In February 997 this meeting, which was a pure papal synod without princely participation, took place in Pavia, where Gregory V, who had been expelled from Rome, was staying. The French bishops who had approved the marriage of the French King Robert II were also convicted there .

In 998 Otto III. at a synod in Pavia decide on a provision for the recovery of alienated church property. The emperor accused the high clergy of lending church property not for the benefit of the church, but out of profit, kinship or friendship.

Synods of 1018 and 1022

Questions of church reform had already been discussed in a meeting in Pavia in 1018. In 1022 Henry II and Pope Benedict VIII held a joint church assembly in Pavia, at which the reform efforts were taken up. Among other things, the duty of the clergy up to and including the subdeacon to be celibate was repeated. Negotiations were mainly about the legal status of children who had emerged from the coexistence of an unfree priest and a free woman. The loss of church assets through alienation of property due to priest children entitled to inherit was particularly lamented. Such children, according to the decisions of the congregation, were to become unfree and belong to the Church. The Pope did not want to decide on the children of priests from the union of a free priest and a free woman until one of the upcoming synods.

Synod of 1046

On his first trip to Italy, where he is the Pope to Emperor wanted to be crowned, called King Henry III. in October 1046 a meeting in Pavia, which was attended by bishops, clerics and lay people from Northern Italy, Burgundy and Germany. There were 29 archbishops or bishops from Italy, 2 from Burgundy and 8 from Germany. Among the imperial bishops in Heinrich's entourage were Suitger von Bamberg , Poppo von Brixen and Gebhard von Eichstätt, three future popes. On October 25, the king gave an impressive speech against the simony in front of the assembly and emphasized that he had never accepted money for the granting of a church office. In doing so, the king made a central concern of the church reform movement of the 11th century his own. In contrast to the Synod of Sutri , which was hastily convened in December 1046 because of the unforeseen developments , the question of the legitimacy of the still ruling Pope Gregory VI played out. , with whom Heinrich met a few days later shortly after Pavia, as well as the purchase of offices accused by critics from the reformer camp at the synod in Pavia is not yet relevant.

Synod of 1160

Friedrich Barbarossa had called the meeting in 1159 to remove the schism ( Alexander III , Viktor IV ). The meeting began in January 1160. About 50 bishops were present, mostly from Germany and northern Italy. Envoys from other countries were also present, but the clergy from England and France were not represented. Viktor IV appeared at the meeting, while Alexander III. stayed away. The synod finally recognized Viktor as Pope and banished Alexander. This in turn excommunicated the emperor, his adviser and Viktor. This further hardened the fronts between the two camps and the schism had solidified. Alexander was later recognized by the English, French, Irish, Norwegian and Spanish clergy and finally prevailed in 1176.

Council of Pavia-Siena 1423

Pope Martin V called the council for 1423 to Pavia , which was to be convened according to the decree Frequens of the Council of Constance (1417). The topics that the Pope had left open in his convocation decree of April 19, 1418, contrary to the regulations, were the continuing danger from the Hussites , the ongoing schism with the supporters of the antipope Benedict XIII, who resided in Spain . ("Papa Luna") and the progress of church reform. On April 21, 1423, three of the four council presidents arrived in Pavia; Surprisingly, however, neither the Pope himself nor King Sigismund , who had stayed in Bohemia because of domestic political entanglements and the fighting against the Hussites, and who also did not send any delegates. The meeting was moved to Siena for various reasons. In particular, the division of the council participants according to “ nations ” and their rights of participation were a conflict-prone topic. In addition, there was the dispute between the council majority, which emphasized the precedence of the council over the pope, and the minority, which emphasized papal precedence. The Pope himself also belonged to it, although he did not appear personally in Siena either. Overall, Martin V acted skillfully to preserve his office and its power against conciliarist endeavors. The assembly did not prevent this conflict from escalating a few years later at the Council of Basel and leading to the split between the Pope and the Council. Ultimately, the council was dissolved without any tangible results, also because Alfonso V of Aragon sided with the Spanish antipope and advocated the election of a successor to Benedict, who died in May 1423, instead of joining Martin.

literature

  • Hermann Bannasch: Synods Pavia . In: Gerhard Taddey (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German history . People, events, institutions. From the turn of the times to the end of the 2nd World War. 2nd, revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-520-80002-0 , p. 947.
  • Heinz Wolter: The synods in the imperial territory and in imperial Italy from 916 to 1056 (Council history, edited by Walter Brandmüller, series A: representations). Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 1988. ISBN 3-506-74687-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Szabo: The criticism of the hunt. From antiquity to the Middle Ages. In: Werner Rösener (Hrsg.): Hunting and court culture in the Middle Ages. Göttingen 1997, p. 180
  2. ^ Peter Landau:  Eigenkirchenwesen . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie (TRE). Volume 9, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1982, ISBN 3-11-008573-9 , pp. 399-402. Here: p. 401
  3. ↑ Heinz Wolter: The councils in the imperial territory and in imperial Italy from 916 to 1056. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn a. a. 1988, p. 72f. in Google Book Search
  4. ↑ Heinz Wolter: The councils in the Reich and in Reichsitalien from 916 to 1056. Paderborn 1988, p. 151f. in Google Book Search
  5. ↑ Joachim Ehlers, Heribert Müller, Bernd Schneidmüller : The French kings of the Middle Ages. Munich 1996, p. 95
  6. ^ Heinz Wolter: The councils in the realm and in realm of Italy from 916 to 1056. Paderborn 1988, p. 160 in the Google book search
  7. ^ Gerd Tellenbach : The western church from the 10th to the early 12th century. Göttingen 1988, p. 79
  8. ^ Gerd Tellenbach: The western church from the 10th to the early 12th century. Göttingen 1988, p. 137
  9. ^ Gerd Tellenbach: The western church from the 10th to the early 12th century. Göttingen 1988, p. 52
  10. ^ Gerd Tellenbach: The western church from the 10th to the early 12th century. Göttingen 1988, p. 122
  11. ^ Bernhard Schimmelpfennig : Kings and princes, emperors and popes according to the Worms Concordat. Göttingen 1996, p. 36.
  12. ↑ Klaus Schatz: General Councils. Focal points of church history. Paderborn 1997, p. 147 f.
  13. ^ Jürgen Hoeren : Martin V. Pope of the unity and the religious wars. Constance 2017, p. 70 f.