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[German Version] I. Terminology Today we limit the term Reformation (from Lat. reformatio) exclusively to the events set in motion by M. Luther, ¶ U. Zwingli, and other Reformers, which led in the course of the 16th century to a cleavage within Western Christendom that has lasted to this day. Until well into the 19th century, however, the term still had its original, broader sense of reform (Reform, Idea of), under which the event we call the Reformation was subsumed. It was the appearance of the French word réforme in the 17th century, borrowed into German in the course of the 19t…

[German Version] (Mar 11, 1485, Cles – Jul 30, 1539, Brixen). After studies in Verona and Bologna, he received the Dr. utriusque iuris in 1511; he became canon of the Cathedral in Trent in 1512, and bishop there in 1514/15. From 1514, as adviser to Maximilian I, he mediated between the emperor and the regime in Innsbruck and upper Italy. After collaborating in the election of Charles V in 1519, he became an adviser to Ferdinand I, in 1522 his chancellor and repre…

[German Version] (c. 1185, Hales, England – Aug 21, 1245, Paris). After studying the arts and theology, Alexander taught in the Parisian theological faculty from the early 1220s, but maintained close relations with home. In 1229, he moved with the striking Parisian professors and students to Angers and brought forward their demands to the Roman Curia in 1230/1231. When …

[German Version] (Valdez; died c. 1205/1218). The scanty tradition concerning Waldo permits only a few safe statements about him. A baptismal name ( Petrus) is first mentioned in the second half of the 14th century. A prosperous citizen of Lyon, around 1176/1177 he appears to have been converted to an apostolic life by the legend of Alexius or biblical texts translated into the vernacular. Whether he was attracted primarily by the ideal of poverty or a desire to preach is disputed. After making provision for his wife …

[German Version] Academic degrees came into existence in the context of medieval education. Even before universities were established, teachers were generally given the title Magister; while the usual title in the stronghold of legal studies at Bologna was Doctor, which also was often applied to the teachers of the Early Church ( Doctores ecclesiae ). At the universities, which arose c. 1200, the master's degree was the highest degree granted by all the faculties, with a distinction between someone who was merely qualified to teach and a Magister actu regens (a professor engaged in …

[German Version] The mendicant orders are religious communities in the West in which not only do the individual members live without personal possessions, but the community itself also forgoes ownership of property and regular income (Poverty). They sustain themselves on what they get from simple work, contributions, and begging. The mendicant orders originated in the early 13th century in conjunction with the religious poverty movement: the Dominicans, a clerical order of priests engaged in preac…

[German Version] (Éon d'Étoile; died after 1148), possibly of noble birth, was a charismatic hermit and itinerant preacher of little education. After several years of preaching in Brittany and Gascony, where he attracted many followers, he was arraigned before the Council of Reims in 1148 and condemned to seclusion in the monastery of St. Denis in Paris. It is unclear what led him to assert that he was God's son, the future judge of the living and dead. Ulrich Köpf Bibliography J.C. Cassard, “Eon d'Étoile, ermite et hérésiarque breton,” MSHAB 57, 1980, 171–198.

[German Version] (1129/1130 – Aug 6, 1195, Braunschweig), duke of Saxony and Bavaria, son of the Guelph Henry X the Proud, and Gertrud, daughter of Emperor Lothar III, cousin of Frederick Barbarossa. His second marriage was with Mathilde, daughter of King Henry II of England. Henry the Lion was a ruler with great self-confidence and a pronounced drive toward power and possessions. Conquests in the Slavic northeast, territorial expansion, and the founding of dioceses (Oldenburg/Lübeck, Ratzeburg, S…

[German Version] 1. Those who belong to a convent (Lat. conventus), i.e. all the full members of a religious community at a specific location. 2. In the context of a particular monastic way of life, and especially among the mendicant orders, “conventuals” refers to that group or tendency within the order which continues to follow the “old observance” (usually in a previously mitigated form) in the midst of internal disputes over the proper observance of the rule, and which accordingly …

[German Version] (Gottfried of Clairvaux; c. 1114/20, Auxerre – after 1188, Hautecombe). As a student of Abelard, attracted to the Cistercians in ¶ 1140 by the Paris sermon of Bernard of Clairvaux, De conversione. He was a monk in Clairvaux, Bernard's secretary until his death in 1153, abbot of Igny from 1156 and of Clairvaux from 1162 to 1165. After his forced resignation, he was a monk in Cîteaux, abbot of Fossanova near Rome beginning in 1170 and of Hautecombe (Savoie) from 1176 to 1188. Gottfried collected Bernard's letters and material for his Vita prima, which he initiated and book…

[German Version] The Ambrosians are a religious community first mentioned in 1375 in a bull of Gregory XI; they are traced to three nobles from Milan. The monasteries they established lived independently according to the Augustinian rule (Augustine, Rule of) and followed the Ambrosian rite in worship; they were united by Eugene IV with other groups as the Congregatio fratrum S. Ambrosii ad nemus Mediolanensis in 1441. After varying fortunes – especially in the schism of monasteries which adopted the Roman rite, which associated in 1496 with the Apostolic Brothers as the Congregatio S. …

[German Version] (Fratres Pontis). Brotherhoods for building and maintaining bridges over rivers and the hospitals, chapels and cemeteries associated with them. Active from the 12th on into the 15th cen-turies, especially in southern France (Rhône valley); supposedly founded here by St. Bénézet (1184/ 85), to whom the bridge of Avignon is attributed. Ulrich Köpf Bibliography P. Péano, “Pontieri,” DIP VII, 1983, 85–92 idem, “Benedetto di Hermillon,” DIP I, 1974, 1359f.

[German Version] (died c. 617 [?]) is said to have lived as a hermit in the hill country between the Hunsrück and the Palatine Forest in the time of Bishop Magnerich of Trier (died after 587). The 10th-century calendar of Stavelot Abbey is the earliest evidence of cultic veneration of his grave at the site later named Sankt Wendel; its late Gothic hall church (consecrated in 1360) was built to enshrine his relics. Wendelin has been venerated since the late Middle Ages as the patron saint of herdsmen and cattle. Ulrich Köpf Bibliography A. Selzer, St. Wendelin, 1936, 21962 (Ger.).

[German Version] (602, Tarsus – Sep 19, 690, Canterbury [?]). When Wighard, who had been appointed to succeed Archbishop Deusdedit of Canterbury, died in Rome in 667, Abbot Hadrian of Hiridanum Abbey near Naples suggested the learned Greek monk Theodore of Tarsus; Pope Vitalinus consecrated him as archbishop in 668. He was living at the time in a community of Cilician monks in the Roman abbey of St. Anastasius ad Aquas Salvias (later Tre Fontane) on the southern edge of the city. There is no relia…

[German Version] The concept of a théologie monastique was introduced by J. Leclercq, in a monograph on Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny ( Pierre le Vénérable, 1946); he subsequently developed it in studies of the monastic literature of the High Middle Ages, especially the work of Bernard of Clairvaux ( L'amour des lettres et le désir de Dieu, 1957; ET: The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, 1961). Since then it has proved its value as a key concept for understanding the theology of Bernard and medieval theology in general. It has long since been accepte…

[German Version] The Wilhelmite order goes back to a hermitage (Monasticism: III) founded in Tuscany in the mid-12th century. Its founder is said to have been a French noble named Wilhelm, a former soldier who settled near Pisa in 1145 after several pilgrimages; later he moved to the mountain valley of Malavalle, near Siena, where he lived a strictly ascetic life as a hermit with a single companion (later joined by a second). After his death on Feb 10, 1157, a hermitage grew up at his burial site;…

[German Version] I. History of the Discipline – II. Church History I. History of the Discipline Geography has come a long way from its beginnings in the mythical worldview (ANE creation accounts, early Greek philosophical speculation) and in the pragmatic exploration of the world (travel reports of merchants) to its development as an exact science. In antiquity, it was understood as a comprehensive lore of the earth and its inhabitants. The earliest accounts took the form of descriptions of coasts (Periplus et al.), which were soon joined by geographic and ethnographic excu…

[German Version] A lay abbot in the narrow sense, is a layman who is entrusted with the conduct and use of a monastery without being a member of its convent or even a monk. In the Frankish Empire of the 9th and 10th centuries and its successor states, members of the nobility were particularly frequently vested with this function. In a secondary meaning, lay abbot also designates the clerical holder of a commendam, who does not have the status of a monk (frequent from the High Middle Ages to the early modern period). Ulrich Köpf Bibliography F.J. Felten, Äbte und Laienäbte im Frankenreich, 1980.

[German Version] (Oct 19, 1433, Figline Valdarno, Italy – Oct 1, 1499, Careggi, Italy). Ficino was the son of the personal physician of Cosimo de' Medici; the latter supported Ficino and prompted him to change his course of studies from medicine to philosophy. He acquired an extremely thorough knowledge of Greek and produced annotated translations of esp. Plato (1463–1469), Plotinus (1484–1486), and a series of other neo-Platonic authors. In Florence he founded a Platonic Academy (I, 5) in which h…

[German Version] The principality of Liechtenstein is a microstate (160 km2) between the Swiss cantons of Sankt Gallen and Grisons (Graubünden) to the west and the Austrian state of Vorarlberg to the east. It is a hereditary constitutional monarchy with a population of 35,300 (2007), 80% Catholic, 7.4% Protestant (1996). Rulers of Liechtenstein are first mentioned in the 12th century, with two lines possessing lands in Styria and Moravia. When the Styrian line died out in 1619, the Moravian lord of Nikols…