Willibert

This article deals with the Archbishop of Cologne. For other bearers of this first name, see Willibert (first name) .

Willibert († September 11, 889 ) was Archbishop of Cologne from 870 to 889 .

At the instigation of King Ludwig the German , the Archbishop of Mainz invited Liutbert , the people and clergy of Cologne to elect a bishop in Deutz. Here he announced to them that they should elect a cleric from among themselves as archbishop, whom he would also consecrate immediately. If they refused, the king would give them a bishop at his own discretion within three days. So Willibert, who was a priest at Cologne Cathedral, was elected archbishop on January 7th, 870 and presumably consecrated immediately afterwards . He was considered a man from a good family, a good preacher and a strict clergyman.

The first official act he inaugurated on the occasion of a synod in September of the same year 870 was the Carolingian new building of the cathedral, to which Hildebold is ascribed and which was largely built in Gunthar's time. Since Pope Hadrian II had contested the election, the award of the pallium was delayed until 874/875. In 875 he consecrated the Stephanus Church of Essen-Werden Abbey together with Halberstadt Bishop Hildegrim II , who was also the abbot of the monastery.

The Pope demanded that the predecessor Archbishop Gunthars renounce Cologne, which he then made. For his part, Willibert reminded the Pope that he had not rushed to the archbishopric of Cologne and assured him of his allegiance. As the legal basis for his election, he presented the Pope that Pope Nicholas I had declared in two letters that Archbishop Gunthar was not allowed to return to the office of Archbishop of Cologne and that a new bishop was to be elected. On April 1, 887, he held the first formal provincial synod in Cologne.

Willibert was a loyal supporter of his king, even after his death. When Charles the Bald tried to annex various areas of Ludwig the Younger, he was the only one who held the new king in the wrong. The chronicler Regino von Prüm praises Willibert as " very holy and very clever in divine and human matters ". During his tenure, Cologne was destroyed by the Normans (881–882). In 887 he held the first official provincial synod in Cologne.

According to tradition, he built the monasteries of St. Cecilia and St. Matthew. Willibert was the first Archbishop of Cologne to be buried in the Old Cathedral .

literature

• Hubertus Seibert : Willibert, Ebf. v. Cologne. In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 9, LexMA-Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-89659-909-7 , column 212 f.
• History of the Archdiocese of Cologne. Vol. 1: The Diocese of Cologne from the beginning to the end of the 12th century, ed. by Eduard Hegel, 2nd edition, revised by Friedrich Wilhelm Oediger, Bachem Cologne 1971, pp. 89–94
• Hermann Keussen :  Willibert . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 43, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1898, p. 275 f.

Web links

• Internet presence of the Archdiocese of Cologne: The Cologne Church in the Carolingian Period (751 - 911) ( Memento from October 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hermann Keussen :  Willibert . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 43, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1898, p. 275 f.
2. ↑ Website of the Essen-Werder Abbey ( Memento from April 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
3. ^ History of the Archdiocese of Cologne. Vol. 1: The Diocese of Cologne from the beginning to the end of the 12th century, ed. by Eduard Hegel, 2nd edition, revised by Friedrich Wilhelm Oediger, Bachem Cologne 1971, p. 95.
4. ^ Archbishop Willibert on the website of the Archdiocese of Cologne
5. ↑ Willibert (Wilbert) von Köln , in: Joachim Schäfer: Ökumenisches Heiligenlexikon , 2008, online at www.heiligenlexikon.de, viewed August 20, 2010

predecessor	Office	successor
Gunthar	Archbishop of Cologne 870–889	Hermann I.