Werner II of Achalm

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Early coat of arms of the bishops of Strasbourg
Achalm coat of arms

Werner von Achalm (as Bishop Werner II. ) (* Around 1048/49; † November 14, 1079 ) was Bishop of Strasbourg between 1065 and 1079 . Installed by King Henry IV and therefore accused of simony by the Pope , he was personally affected by the investiture controversy and accompanied Henry IV to Canossa in 1077 . His name is missing from the necrology of the high convent of Strasbourg because he died without having been reconciled with the Holy See. Werner's term of office ran during the pontificates of Alexander II and Gregory VII.

Origin and family

Achalm castle ruins

Werner is a grandson of Egino I, the elder , von Dettingen , Count von Achalm and Urach, who built Achalm Castle , and a son of Count Rudolf I von Achalm and Adelheid von Wülflingen , daughter of Count Liutold von Mömpelgard , sister of Archbishop Hunfried of Ravenna . Werner had nine siblings. Two of them died as children. Kuno von Achalm-Wülflingen and Liutold von Achalm took over parental positions as counts of Achalm and Wülflingen and jointly founded the Zwiefalten monastery .

Werner II was not the only member of the Achalm family who was supposed to have an influence on secular or spiritual events in Alsace : his sister Beatrix von Achalm became Abbess von Eschau and his other sister, Mathilde von Achalm or Mechthild von Horburg, married Graf Kuno I of Lechsgemünd . Their son Otto founded the line of the Alsatian Counts of Horburg . Her son Burkhard von Lechsgemünd became bishop of Utrecht .

Werner's brother-in-law, Werner III. von Grüningen , who was killed shortly after Werner von Achalm's investiture, and his son, Count Werner IV. von Grüningen , also owned Alsatian property and, as imperial ensigns, were also part of Henry IV's immediate circle.

According to the sources, Werner von Achalm was only 16 years old when he was installed as Bishop of Strasbourg in January 1065, to the astonishment of the pontiff . So he must have been born in 1048 or early 1049. During a campaign against the Hirsau Monastery, which stood for the Cluniac reform movement , he fell at the age of 30 or 31.

Act as a bishop

An abbot practicing simony , Douai, France
Pope Gregory VII
Ideal distribution of power, image of the Heidelberg Sachsenspiegel

Zealous partisan of King Henry IV.

King Heinrich IV appointed Werner von Achalm bishop of Strasbourg in 1065 , although he was only 16 years old. He campaigned politically for the king and against the papal highness. In this way, the young bishop of Strasbourg actively contributed to the investiture controversy. For the first time he was provisionally relieved of all episcopal duties because of his immoral behavior by Pope Alexander II . He then made a pilgrimage to Rome as a penitent, reconciled with his successor, Pope Gregory VII , and received probationary forgiveness on the condition that he improved. Pope Gregory wrote to Countess Mathilde to stop bothering the Bishop of Strasbourg.

But Werner II secretly persisted in his aversion to papal politics, especially when it came to celibacy . Soon he again openly rebelled against Gregorian reform and encouraged his consecrated brothers to marry a woman like himself. Since Werner deliberately did not keep celibacy, Pope Gregory IV decided in 1074 to dismiss him from his bishopric and priesthood.

Before Werner's appointment in 1065, Pope Nicholas II had already described the simony at the synod of 1059/1060 as a "triple simonistic heresy". Any purchase of office, let alone high ordained office, should inevitably be punished with the incumbent's dismissal from office. This had led to a first schism. Several simonist bishops, especially from Lombardy, gathered in Basel. Immediately after the death of Pope Nicholas and while Alexander II was being elected in Rome , in 1061 they elected Bishop Pietro Cadalus of Parma, who took the name Honorius II . The bishop of Cologne was able to suppress the schism in a council in Mantua .

On August 15, 1071 Werner von Achalm attended a synod in Mainz in which Karl , the canon of Magdeburg , who had acquired the bishopric of Constance through simony , was forced to resign. Werner therefore knew about the increasingly negative reaction of the popes to the purchase of clerical offices. The simony had spread particularly under the government of the young ruler Henry IV, who gave bishoprics or abbeys to loyal companions or bequeathed the highest bidders to gain money.

After Cardinal Hildebrand had succeeded Pope Alexander II under the name of Gregory VII , he held a council in Rome on March 9, 1074, which was supposed to sharply criticize and condemn the simony and the violation of celibacy among clerical dignitaries. Werner von Achalm and Bishop Heinrich von Speyer, who was also a minor in 1067, were released from their offices by a Roman synod . Werner ignored it. Instead of Heinrich von Scharfenberg, Bishop Rüdiger Huzmann was installed in Speyer in 1074 , who was also king.

Werner was to travel to Rome for the second time to justify himself before the council that met from February 24th to 28th, 1075. Because he did not come, the angry pontiff wrote a letter on September 3rd to Siegfried , Archbishop of Mainz, to inform him of Werner's heresy and to induce the metropolitan to take appropriate action: “So that we can remove the church from this rotting member, the dishonor them, purify them ”. The Pope also tried in vain to oblige the king to give emphasis to the church decrees and to refrain from investiture in future.

Then the Pope sent his legates to Germany and asked King Heinrich zu Goslar to travel to Rome to justify himself in a church meeting. This rejected the papal legates. According to the advice of several Simonist bishops, he assembled the German bishops at Worms on January 23, 1076 . Cardinal Hugo the Wise presided over the assembly (a Conciliabulum) in which Bishop Werner of Strasbourg occupied tenth place. Pope Gregory was declared deposed and a cleric from Parma named Roland was commissioned to convey the Worms resolutions to the Pope.

Gregory VII again gathered the bishops who were loyal to him in the Lateran Church to hear the emperor's envoy. When the Romans heard that they should elect a new Pope to replace Gregory, who was a wolf in Christ's sheepfold , the Pope had to intervene personally to protect the imperial envoy Roland. Thereupon 110 bishops gathered, to whom Gregory VII first described what he had previously done to teach the king wrong. . Since Henry IV did not comply, which imposed Pontifex the excommunication on him and explained his decision as follows:

  1. Instead of removing the bishops punished by the Holy See for waste and simony from his court, he supported them.
  2. The king tears up the mystical body of Christ ( Corpus Christi mysticum ) through a schism .
  3. The king does not want to regret his mistakes and is therefore guilty of himself.

At the same time , the Pope excommunicated the Archbishop of Mainz , Siegfried I , and several other renegade bishops, including Werner von Achalm.

went to Canossa

Henry IV before Gregory VII in Canossa
Altar of the St. Lawrence Chapel, where Werner was buried

Opposition princes gathered on October 16, 1076 at the Prince's Day in Trebur and threatened to depose the king if he did not have his case examined and decided at the Diet of Augsburg in February 1077 in order to settle his conflict with the Pope. Heinrich preferred to make personal reconciliations with the Pope instead of confessing his sins at a diet. He set off around Christmas and, accompanied by his wife Berta, his little son and friends like Werner II, went through Burgundy and Savoy across the Alps to Canossa in Italy. Perhaps he wanted to befriend his master in his act of penance and submit to the relentless Pope Gregory together with him. Gregory VII, who was in this castle at the time, made Heinrich in the penitent's robe (also called siliconium ) and bared feet wait three days in front of the walls until he removed the excommunication from the King, who promised to reform. But the king soon broke his solemn oath in the midst of his supporters and began to fight Gregor's supporters.

Death during the campaign against Hirsau

When Bishop Werner II learned that opposition princes were meeting again in Forchheim to elect the Swabian Duke Rudolf von Rheinfelden as the opposing king at the suggestion of Hugo VIII von Egisheim , Werner I von Habsburg and Berthold I von Zähringen , he allied met up with the Basel bishop Burchard von Hasenburg to attack the Ortenau in the Berthold von Zähringen area. The Zähringer forced the episcopal army to flee. Werner then received the order from Heinrich IV to destroy the reformed monastery in Hirsau , which was very fond of the Roman chair. When Werner von Achalm tried to spur his warriors on to plunder the abbey on November 14, 1079, he is said to have fallen dead from his horse. The body of the excommunicated bishop was buried in the Strasbourg Cathedral in the crypt in front of the St. Lawrence Altar.

Werner's brothers Kuno and Liutold von Achalm and their nephew Werner IV von Grüningen then supported the reconstruction of Hirsau Monastery through foundations - possibly as reparation.

literature

  • Base numérique du patrimoine d'Alsace (BNPA), Histoire de Strasbourg, Center régional et départemental de pédagogie (CRDP), article: Werner von Achalm. Digitized version , accessed on July 27, 2014.
  • Ludwig Gabriel Glöckler: History of the diocese of Strasbourg. Printed by Le Roux, Strasbourg, 1879, 484 pages.
  • Francis Rapp: Le Diocèse de Strasbourg. Editions Beauchesne, 1982, Histoire des diocèses de France collection , number 14, 352 pages.
  • Johannes Christophorus Schmidlin: Attempt a short history of the former Counts of Urach and Achalm. In: Contributions to the history of the Duchy of Wirtenberg , Volume 1. Mezler, Stuttgart 1780, digitized
  • Strasbourg - la ville au Moyen Age (Alsace), chap. 2.1: La ville sous l'épiscopat de Wernher and chap. 2.2: Strasbourg et la querelle des investitures . Digitized version , accessed on July 28, 2014 (French).

Web links

Commons : Achalm  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Commons : Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Strasbourg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ludwig G. Glöckler, History of the Diocese of Strasbourg , printed by Le Roux, Strasbourg, 1879, page 171
  2. ^ Johannes Christophorus Schmidlin: Attempt of a short history of the former counts of Urach and Achalm . In: Contributions to the history of the Duchy Wirtenberg, Volume 1. Mezler, Stuttgart 1780, pp. 46ff and 109–196, digitized .
  3. Histoire de Strasbourg, chap. 2.1 La ville sous l'épiscopat de Wernher, encyclopédie bseditions
  4. a b Glöckler, p. 168.
  5. ^ Base numérique du patrimoine d'Alsace (BNPA) in collaboration with the regional and departmental pedagogical center - entry Werner von Achalm
  6. Not to be confused with the later Honorius II .
  7. See WRI III, 2,3 n. 778, in Regesta Imperii Online (accessed July 28, 2014).
  8. ^ Francis Rapp, Le Diocèse de Strasbourg , Editions Beauchesne, 1982, Collection histoire des diocèses de France , p. 37
  9. History of the city and the diocese of Strasbourg , chapter 2.2: Strasbourg et la querelle des investitures Encyclopedia BSeditions online (French)
  10. Eugen Schneider : Codex Hirsaugiensis , Stuttgart 1887, p. 35 [in the original fol. 39a] and p. 54 [in the original fol. 65a].

Remarks

  1. Egino's descendants included, in addition to the Achalm line, which died out after two generations, the Counts of Urach , one of which led to the Fürstenberg dynasty.
  2. Le cours des événements change brusquement lorsque le fils de Henri III, le futur empereur Henri IV (1056-1106), à peine âgé de seize ans, nomme au siège de Strasbourg, en mars 1065, un adversaire acharné de la cause grégorienne, Werner d'Achalm (1065-1077)
  3. The presence of Werner von Achalm in Canossa is mentioned again in the online edition of the Alsatian regional newspaper DNA [1] (accessed on July 27, 2014): “Le 14 novembre 1077 mourut Werner II von Achalm. il fut present à Canossa en 1077 aux côtés de Henri IV opposé à Grégoire VII ”.