Wilhelm von Reichenau

This article deals with the bishop, for the natural scientist see Wilhelm von Reichenau (natural scientist)

Wilhelm von Reichenau (* 1426 in Burggriesbach ; † November 18, 1496 in Obermässing ) was a reform and humanist-oriented Prince-Bishop of Eichstätt in the pre-Reformation period .

Life

Wilhelm von Reichenau in the Pontifical Gundekarianum

Reichenau memorial in the mortuary of Eichstätt Cathedral, commissioned by Wilhelm von Reichenau

The Franconian knightly family of the von Reichenau family, which died out in 1508, had the - defunct - Castle Reichenau near Herrieden , but had been in Burggriesbach since 1375 at the latest , whereby the majority of the village belonged to the Jettenhofen Castle . Wilhelm's father, his two brothers Ulrich († 1464) and Leonhard († 1470) and his sister Ursula, 1475–1486 Abbess of the Eichstätter Monastery of St. Walburg, was either Erkinger von Reichenau or Leonhard von Reichenau, who in 1408 was the caretaker of Kipfenberg appears. Wilhelm, born around 1425, studied law at the Universities of Erfurt (1445) and Vienna (1449) and at the University of Padua (1456/58); at the latter he received his doctorate “decretorum”. His teachers introduced him to humanism .

Spiritual and spiritual creation

Ribbed vault with branches in the Willibald Choir of Eichstätter Dom, 1471

Mortuarium at Eichstätt Cathedral

In Eichstätt, Wilhelm von Reichenau joined a group of humanistic personalities who dealt with questions of spiritual and secular reform and were integrated into a supraregional intellectual network.

Wilhelm owned Eichstätter canon patrons since 1452. After his studies, the Eichstätter Bishop Johann III. von Eych made the learned canon his vicar general in 1459 ; at the same time he became provost of the cathedral. The Eichstätter cathedral chapter elected him unanimously on January 16, 1464 as the 51st Bishop of Eichstätt. After obtaining papal confirmation ( Pius II. ) And the imperial enfeoffment, he was ordained a priest on May 23, 1464 and bishop on May 27, 1464 in Eichstätter Cathedral.

The new bishop continued the reform policy of his predecessor in matters of clergy and monasteries, albeit a little more subdued. In 1480 he had his vicar general Johannes Vogt take stock of the living and working conditions of his clergy as part of a visitation trip and record it. Two new foundations of women's monasteries, the Augustinian women's choir foundations Marienstein between Eichstätt and Rebdorf and Marienburg near the Abenberger Peterskapelle, were supposed to serve his religious reform work. The former was created from 1469, the latter from 1488 by means of Mariensteiner and Königshofener choir women . The bishop had the latter in 1478 as regulated women choirs of St. Augustine confirmed.

As the builder, Wilhelm von Reichenau had the Willibald choir in the west of Eichstätter Domes vaulted in 1464 and in 1471 extended the choir by a yoke with the famous branch vault ; he was also (still as provost) the client for the vaulting of the chapter sacristy and the mortuary. On the south side of the cathedral he redesigned the so-called Old Courtyard, the former episcopal city residence, into an administrative building and a prince-bishop's guest house “at considerable expense”. Under him, the Eichstätter parish church "Collegiata zu UL Frau" was built in 1472, which was completed in 1515 and demolished in 1818. Within the diocese he promoted the construction of numerous churches and secular buildings. Under Bishop Wilhelm the church of Wasserzell and the church of Grösdorf near Kipfenberg were built until 1483 . For the castle complex of Nassenfels he got a St. Wolfgang chapel. The church in Ochsenfeld probably goes back to him. He donated an altar for the church of Burggriesbach.

In 1470 he commissioned a missal painted on parchment with miniature paintings as large as a sheet. In 1486 he issued an "Edictum de celebratione missae", an edict on how the clergy should celebrate Holy Mass. “In honor of the unharmed Virgin Mary” and in memory of his relatives, the canons Udalricus (Ulrich) and Heinricus (Heinrich) “de Reichenawe”, the so-called Reichenau memorial was installed in the Mortuarium in 1491 on his order in relief, partly in full plastic, on the base of which the bishop himself and the two canons have been depicted.

As a great admirer of Mary, he introduced the feast of the Sacrifice of Mary as a further component of his reforms in his diocese and added a silver statue of the Virgin Mary to the cathedral treasure - which has been in the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth since 2002. In the Pontifical Gundekarianum he is depicted as a praying bishop in front of an altar of Mary - a miniature Swabian provenance executed in bright colors on behalf of his successor . In 1492 he let the canon Bernhard Adelmann relics of the founder of the Eichstatt diocese, St. Willibald , the English King Henry VII .

Wilhelm also used the invention of the printing press for his reforms; so in 1479 he procured a printer's citizenship in his royal seat of Eichstätt. With him, Georg Reyser, he had a breviary , a ritual , synodal statutes and three editions of the " Missale Eystettense" printed and distributed at reasonable prices. In 1494 the printing works, which was one of the earliest Franconian printing works, closed. His fellow student councilor and secretary was his fellow student from Padua, the great legal scholar and humanist Johannes Pirckheimer (* around 1440, in Eichstätt since 1466), father of Willibald Pirckheimer , who was born in Eichstätt in 1470 and whom the prince-bishop worked on during his knightly training and learning of courtly customs Took court into personal care.

The project of the Bavarian Duke Ludwig IX. von Niederbayern, to found a state university in Ingolstadt, was a pleasure. In support of this, in 1471 he approved the re-establishment of the Ingolstadt Reformed Minorite Monastery by contract with the Wittelsbacher. He became the first chancellor of Ingolstadt University in 1472 and took part in the opening ceremony.

Political and economic activity

Grave plaque next to his epitaph in Eichstätter Cathedral: WILHELMO EPISCOPO EYSTETTENSI ... QUEM FEDERICUS CESAR ET MAXIMILIANUS REX NON MODO IN CONSILIUM DE MAXIMIS IMPERII REBUS PRECIPUUM ASCIVERUNT, SED ETIAM REGUMOLUM, ALTER AD MATHIAM, HUNUM CARUNT ... Cutout)

Wilhelm von Reichenau enlarged the bishopric with the acquisition of Arnsberg (1473/75), Unterstall , Hofstetten Castle (1466), Raitenbuch , Mettendorf (1470), Stossenburg / Rundeck (1481) and Pfünz Castle (1475) and thus brought about the expansion of the Hochstift territory essentially at the end. He acquired jurisdictions and goods in Obermässing (1465 from the hands of the Teutonic Order ) and Euerwang . He also secured hunting rights and had the court mill built below the Willibaldsburg with canal drainage from the Altmühl and Tafernen around 1490/92 . Repairs or reinforcements or new installations were carried out on fortifications in the Hochstift, e.g. B. in Ornbau , Herrieden , Greding (double gates, towers), Sandsee (1467), Beilngries , Dollnstein (walling and towers, 1490/91), Nassenfels and Mörnsheim (1494) and on the Willibaldsburg , where a high round tower below it, the later "Dirlitzturm" was erected. With handicraft regulations he strengthened the handicrafts in his dominion and ensured the settlement of new trades, e.g. B. in Eichstätt gold embroidery , for which he had the gold beater Ludwig von Venice come in 1482, and silk weaving. At his instigation, a tree nursery was set up at Arberg Castle in order to improve the tree population in the Hochstift. In 1483/86 he gave Pleinfeld the market and Beilngries in 1485 the town charter.

Epitaph for Wilhelm von Reichenau in Eichstätter Cathedral

Wilhelm successfully continued the tradition of the Eichstatt prince-bishops of serving the Habsburgs . In 1487 he married the daughter of Emperor Friedrich III. Kunigunde and Duke Albrecht IV in the Innsbruck palace chapel. Both Emperor Friedrich III. and King Maximilian I made use of his negotiating skills. Wilhelm von Reichenau was often on diplomatic missions, for example to Hungary and France, to the Senlis peace negotiations in 1493, where Burgundy was divided between Maximilian and the French king. Two years later he took part in the Worms Reform Reichstag. Also in 1495 he acted as an intermediary in the debenture of the king and his son, Archduke Philip , to Duke Albrecht of Saxony . Maximilian for his part confirmed all previous royal and imperial freedoms as well as all rights and privileges to the Eichstätter Hochstift.

End of life

Wilhelm von Reichenau died at the age of 70 in the 32nd year of his service in the Obermässing hunting lodge on the Hofberg, where he stayed with his court master Heinrich von Schaumberg and his chancellor Wilbolt Fischl. After the election of his successor (December 5, 1496), he was buried on December 19 in Eichstätter Dom, where a historically valuable epitaph made of red marble in the Willibald Choir commemorates him, one of the most mature works of the Augsburg master Hans Peuerlin (also: Beierlein, Peuerlein). Willibald Pirckheimer wrote the epitaph; his own (funeral) chapel at the Willibald Choir, which he wanted with his last will, was not built. According to the old tradition, Wilhelm's court clothes were distributed to various court officials by his successor.

coat of arms

Coat of arms of Wilhelm von Reichenau at the city gate in Dollnstein in the Eichstätt district (Upper Bavaria)

The bishop's coat of arms has been preserved in the bishopric at many of those places where construction activities took place under the prince-bishop. The coat of arms of 1495 preserved inside the Gemmingen building of Willibaldsburg shows fields 1 and 4 divided by red, silver, black and silver, in fields 2 and 3 a silver bishop's staff on a red field, above the shield two helmets with ornaments, the right one with two horns in shield colors, the one on the left with a hand holding a bishop's staff pointing from top right to bottom left.

literature

• Theodor Neuhofer: The death of Wilhelm von Reichenau . In: Collective sheet of the Historisches Verein Eichstätt, 48 (1933), pp. 68–78
• Klaus Kreitmeir: The bishops of Eichstätt . Eichstätt 1992: Verlag der Kirchenzeitung, pp. 64–66
• Bertram Blum: reformer, sovereign and imperial politician. On the 500th anniversary of the death of Eichstatt Prince-Bishop Wilhelm von Reichenau (1464–1496). In: Der Sonntag , supplement to the Donau-Kurier Ingolstadt from 16./17. November 1996
• Maximilian Schuh: Between Erfurt, Vienna and Padua. Ways of Wilhelm von Reichenau in the educational landscape of the late Middle Ages . In: Jürgen Nowak Dendorfer (ed.), Reform and early humanism in Eichstätt Bishop Johann von Eych (1445–1464). Regensburg 2015, pp. 163–179.
• Monika Fink-Lang: Investigations into the Eichstätter intellectual life in the age of humanism . Regensburg 1985.
• Enno Bünz : Johannes Vogt and his visitation protocol from 1480 . In the S. u. Klaus Walter Littger (Ed.): Clergy, Church and Piety in the Late Medieval Diocese of Eichstätt , St. Ottilien 1997: EOS Verlag, ISBN 3-88096-882-9 , pp. 41-48
• Franz Xaver Buchner: Building activity under the government of Wilhelm von Reichenau (1464–1496) in the Eichstätter diocese . In: Enno Bünz u. Klaus Walter Littger (Ed.): Clergy, Church and Piety in the Late Medieval Diocese of Eichstätt , St. Ottilien 1997: EOS Verlag, ISBN 3-88096-882-9 , pp. 196-198, 245-250 (reprint of a work from 1902 ).
• Felix Mader: The art monuments of Bavaria. Middle Franconia. I. City of Eichstätt . Munich 1924, reprint Munich / Vienna 1981
• Jeffrey Chipps Smith: The art of the goldsmith in late fifteenth-century Germany. The Kimbell Virgin and her bishop . New Haven et al. a. 2006.
• Alfred Wendehorst : The diocese of Eichstätt. Volume 1: The row of bishops until 1535 . Series: Germania Sacra - New Episode 45 . Berlin 2006. ISBN 978-3-11-018971-1 . Pp. 220–241, The Diocese of Eichstätt. 1: The series of bishops up to 1535 (= Germania Sacra. New series 45: The dioceses of the ecclesiastical province of Mainz. Vol. 1). De Gruyter, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-11-018971-2 , digitized. http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001S-0000-0003-1704-2
• Benno Baumbauer: On the Silver Madonna of Eichstätt Prince-Bishop Wilhelm von Reichenau (1464–1496) in the Kimbell Art Museum: Function and stylistic classification. In: DITTSCHEID, Hans-Christoph / GERSTL, Doris / HESPERS, Simone (eds.): Art contexts. Festschrift for Heidrun Stein-Kecks . (Series of publications by the Erlangen Institute for Art History 3). Petersberg 2016, 51–65.
• Johannes Madey :  Wilhelm von Reichenau. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 17, Bautz, Herzberg 2000, ISBN 3-88309-080-8 , Sp. 1556-1557.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ compare list of Frankish knight families # R
2. ↑ Wendehorst, p. 221
3. ↑ Fink-Lang: Eichstätter Geistesleben 1985. Jürgen Nowak Dendorfer (ed.): Reform and early humanism in Eichstätt Bishop Johann von Eych (1445–1464). Regensburg 2015.
4. ↑ Blum, Reformer ...
5. ↑ Wendehorst, p. 221
6. ↑ Wendehorst, p. 222
7. ↑ Franz Xaver Buchner: Bauthätigkeit under the reign of Wilhelm von Reichenau (1464-1496) in the Diocese of Eichstatt 1902 (1997)
8. ^ Virgin and Child , at www.kimbellart.com , accessed October 6, 2017

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm von Reichenau  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Illustration from the Gundekarianum (only b / w): Bishop Wilhelm von Reichenau

predecessor	Office	successor
Johann III. by Eych	Bishop of Eichstätt 1464 - 1496	Gabriel from Eyb