Werner de Habsbourg

Werner de Habsbourg is attached to the family of the Habsbourg. Relative agnatic or cognatic of Habsbourg, the History is not able to slice. Certain sources claim that it belongs to the family of the dukes of High-Lorraine, others affirm that it kills from Guntram the Rich person, the ancestor of Habsbourg. Werner, man of very field crop, in his youth, had perhaps attended the school of the cathedral of Hildesheim. Named bishop of Strasbourg by the emperor Otton III, Werner was crowned in 1001 or at the beginning of 1002. He rebuilds, in 1015, the cathedral, predecessor ottonien of the current building.

Its life

historical context

the time

At the beginning of the 11th century, yielding to a panic fear caused by the proliferation of signs and prophecies indicator boards of the end of time, the peasants of Western Europe give up their ploughings and leave their hearths, to make penitence in the shade of the Cross, by beseeching the grace of the Almighty. “The belief in the end of the world, belief which seemed justified by the plagues, the famines, the calamities of any kind whose Europe was sorry, spread a universal lifelessness. All was frozen of fear to waiting of the fatal day, very undertaken had ceased, any movement was stopped; there was neither hope no more, nor future. One redoubled religious enthusiasm, one pressed oneself in the convents, one gave his goods to the Church and of all shares one heard this lugubrious cry: “The end of the world approaches! ”. Here what Theophilus Lavallée wrote at one time, disciple of Jules Michelet. Reading of " the Apocalypse " said holy Jean, a supposed bulky text to contain revelations on the future of the world, seems to confirm to us in our opinion. We easily imagine the horror of people of the end of the 10th century when they took note of chapter XX, 1-8: “Then, it is written there, I live an Angel to go down from the sky, having in hand the key of the Abyss, as well as an enormous chain. It controlled the Dragon, the Serpent antique, - it is the Devil, Satan, - and connected it for thousand years. It threw it in the Abyss, drew on him the bolts, affixed sealed, so that it ceased misleading the nations until the thousand years completion. After which, it must be slackened for a little time (...) the thousand passed years, Satan, slackened its prison, from there will allure the nations of the four corners of the ground, Gog and Magog, and will gather them for the war, as many as the sand of the sea”. In the Year Millet, thousand years were past, the announced punishment was to take place. And then what a panic, in Christendom! Since more than one half-century, research (in particular those of Edmond Dough) however showed that these scenes of collective terrors to the approach of millénium never existed. Georges Duby spoke about them about " mirage historique". Their reports in terms melodramatic, where insane preachers and human masses hustle themselves howling with death, are founded only on calculations. Calculations of the writers of certain documents, initially; calculations of the historians who read these documents, then.

Strasbourg at the beginning of XIe century

The Alsace was attached to the kingdom of Francie Orientale (Germanic) in 870 following the Treaty of Mersen. The Alsatian city most important was then the antique Roman city of Argentoratum, which very quickly took the name of Strateburg: “the city of the roads”. It is estimated that at the 11th century the city counts approximately 5000 inhabitants.

Strasbourg is traversed North in the South by inland waterways (Ill) and is near the Rhine on which it has a port. The city is crossed of Is in West by extremely old roads. Strasbourg saw very early developing the commercial exchanges and, with them, the diffusion of the ideas, in particular Christianity. As of the 4th century, Strasbourg is the seat of one évêché. All these factors make of Strasbourg a powerful and rich city.

Among the provinces of the Saint Worsens Roman Germanic, Alsace occupied a central place and its elites were cherished by the sovereigns. The Werner bishop was a friend of the Emperor Henri II (1002-1024). Under the reigns of Conrad II Salic the and of Henri III, thanks to the bonds which linked the political officials of Alsace to the imperial family, the harmony reigned not only in the field of the public relations between our province and the sovereigns saliens, but also in the religious field: the bishops of Strasbourg were the right-hand men of the emperors, and those were shown increasingly favorable to the cause of the reform of the Church.

Its origins and its life

The determination of the family origins of the bishop of Strasbourg Werner 1st constitutes a complex question prone to controversy. Werner belongs to the family, in the broad sense, of Proto- Habsbourg. The history is unaware of on the other hand if the bishop is agnat or cognate of the line. Certain sources, the such Will of Werner (an act apocryphal book of the end of the XI {{E}} or beginning of the 12th century), affirm the consanguinity of Werner with Rodolphe and Radbot, the first historically attested members of the family of Habsbourg. Others, like the Acta Murensia (an account probably written in the middle of the 12th century), attach Werner to the ducal chalk-lining of High-Lorraine. Following the example Eduard Hlawitschka, good number of contemporary historians plead however in favor of the origin habsbourgeoise of the prelate.

At the beginning of the 11th century, Proto-Habsbourg occupied an important position in Alsace. Whereas Rodolphe set up with the edge of the large forest of Hardt the church of Ottmarsheim, splendid counterpart of the palatine vault of Aachen, Radbot and Werner built the fortress of Habsburg, the Habichtsburg , fortress éponyme in Argovie (Suisse), and founded the monastery of Muri, also in Argovie.

Little information concerning the beginning of the life of Werner reached us. He would have been born between 970 and 980. The duke Henri of Bavaria, the future emperor Henri II, would have been one of his friends of childhood. The emperor Otton III appointed it bishop of Strasbourg in 1001 or 1002. Werner probably went to Rome in 1027 to assist with the imperial sacring of Conrad II Salic the by the pope Jean XIX. On his return, the prelate took part in a synod held with Frankfurt during which the emperor charged Werner with a mission of the more high importance. The emperor sent the bishop from Strasbourg to Constantinople in order to establish bonds with the Byzantine emperor Constantin VIII in order to marry Henri III, his son, with one of the two girls nubiles of the basileus. Death carried Werner, on October 28th, 1028, on banks of the Bosphorus, reducing to nothing the project of matrimonial alliance, and therefore, the attempt at bringing together of the two components of the Empire.

Its work

Displacement of the oecumenical center (archbishop's palace) of the city:

Crowned bishop in 1001, Werner transfers the episcopal see which was undoubtedly located at Saint Etienne in the center of the city by the meeting of Etienne Saint in 1003.

Saint Etienne was at the time an abbey of moniales and the seat of the Catholic religion in Strasbourg This abbey of noble women is rich and prosperous… The abbey was granted to évêché of Strasbourg by Henri II (who was, do not forget it, very near to Werner). The transfer of the abbey to the bishop caused some changes very badly accommodated; The transfer of the money and gold crosses and of the relics of Saint-Etienne to évêché marked the new superiority of Werner on the abbey of moniales. The amount of the gifts granted to the chanoinesses was reduced; the economy thus carried out was supposed being assigned partly to the maintenance of the residence of the moniales; but front, it was to contribute to the rebuilding of the episcopal church destroyed by the Ost of the Duke Hermann, to even finance the construction of a new cathedral, a project which started to germinate in the entourage of Werner.

Why the site with the angle of the Cardo and Decumanus (plane Roman):

The cathedral is in the center of the Roman castrum what is typical Romaine urbanization of the time. This position with the cardo décumanus gives to the Church a great capacity symbolic system on the city. Today the cardo and décumanus are still symbolized:

Rue de la Nuée Bleue, street of the Dome Main street -----------|-------- Street of the Jews Pont Sainte-Madeleine

Constraints of construction:

Several constraints rise; the ground is gorged with water, the dream of cathedral is one forgotten moment. There also would have been other problems like fires, which would actually not have taken place; indeed, how to explain that the moutier (the cathedral) started to only rise on new foundations in 1015, 13 or eight years after the alleged fires?

the cathedral today:

Nowadays, there does not remain any more that the parts is crypt which are those of Werner, nevertheless, the cathedral as a whole wife the layout of the church of Werner. The construction of the transept and the chorus reveals various influences, sometimes abrupt competitions and changes. Here the late Romanesque art is confronted with the Gothic art which will override the traditional Romanesque art. Many Masters followed one another Strasbourg to work under the aegis of this institution called “Notre Dame Work” which has its seat in a building on other side of the place of the castle (southern part of the cathedral). A work whose activity remained indissolubly dependant since the Middle Ages until our days, with the restoration, the construction and the embellishment of the building thanks to the gifts that it knew to collect. We owe him all the great achievements and in particular that of the nave of 1235 to 1275. Its width of 16 meters and its 32 meters height were to some extent given in advance, since they respect the provision of the old foundations of the basilica of Werner.

Conclusion

If the major work of Werner obviously remains to have posed the bases of what will become the cathedral of Strasbourg, it does not remain about it less than its role passes in the second plan compared to the construction of the cathedral itself. Everyone knows the cathedral of Strasbourg but we let us know only very little of it about its creator. All this can lead us to question us on the perenniality of the work of Werner, because, even the museum of Notre-Dame Work is not able to provide us information on the important bishop that it was.

Random links: