Sigehard / Singifrédo von Beilstein (31 dic 1068 año – 12 agos 1077 año)

Descripción:

Belonged to one of the most important families of the Bavarian high nobility, that of the Sigardinghi, and bore a name that characterized this family for centuries. His family was of Frankish origin, however from the end of the ninth century he had attested his authority, acquiring a series of possessions, especially in the vast territory of Salzburg, where its members, between 1035 and 1218, also held the office of hereditary lawyers of the Salzburg Church. For two centuries, the Sigardinghi were counts of Chiemgau, subsequently of Salzburg, of Pongau, of Pinzgau, as well as in territories in the Inn, Isarco and Val Pusteria valleys. The family also had possessions in Carinthia and in the Margraviate of Austria and then became extinct by male line in 1218 with the death of Count Friderico VI (IX) of Peilstein.

The patriarch of Aquileia S., also mentioned in the sources as Syrius , was the son of Sigeardo IV (Sizo), count of Pongau, and of Pilihilde, descendant of an equally important family of the Bavarian high nobility, that of the Andechs.

He is mentioned for the first time in 1048, that is after the death of his father who, in 1044, had fallen in the battle of Menfö, near the Rába river, during the military expedition of King Henry III against the Hungarians. Then, in 1048, Henry III, with the consent of the widow Pilihilde and his two sons S. and Friderico, donated a vast forest east of the Traun river to the Church of Salzburg. The fact that in that document S. was indicated before his elder brother Friderico suggests that at that time he had already been consecrated a priest. It can also be assumed that his position as a priest, as well as the loyalty of the Sigardinghi towards the Salic dynasty (Sigeardo's father had died in the service of Henry III) had opened the doors of the king's court chapel to him and consequently had allowed to join the circle of people close to the ruler.

Henry IV appointed him chancellor, a position that allowed him to effectively lead the royal chancellery. Sources attest that S. held this important role from February 24, 1064 until August 1067, when Henry IV, after the death of the patriarch Rabenger († February 18, 1068), appointed him patriarch of Aquileia. His appointment took place according to the tradition of the "Ottonian-Salic state church", when the sovereign, on the eve of the investiture struggle, he could still boast the right to appoint bishops whom, in most cases, he recruited directly from his court chapel and who represented one of the pillars of his authority. S. probably took office as early as April 1068, but there is little information about the activity of his first years of patriarchy.

In the summer of 1072, assisted by the archbishop of Salzburg Cheetah and the bishop of Concordia Dietvino, he consecrated Michaelbeuern(north of Salzburg) the convent church of S. Michele which was part of the newly established Benedictine convent "of the family" of the Sigardinghi. On that occasion S., with the consent of his mother Pilihilde, donated all the hereditary possessions he had in Michaelbeuern to the convent. The consecration ceremony of the new convent, which was obviously a social and political event of great resonance, was attended by a whole host of personalities belonging to the high nobility who then ruled the Alpine-Adriatic area among which, to mention just a few, were: Sigeardo, the nephew of the patriarch subsequently appointed as Count of Tengling and lawyer of Michaelbeuern, the Margrave Leopoldo (II of Austria), the Count of Friuli Ludovico, the lawyer of the Aquileian Church Marquardo IV of Eppenstein with his namesake son,It was also attended by Bernardo, son of Count Otto of Scheyern-Wittelsbach, Count William who, first of his lineage, would later take his name from Heunburg in Carinthia, and Count Rapoto IV of Cham in Bavaria, a descendant of the Vohburg family as well as lawyer of the convent of St. Emmeram in Regensburg, which had a vast estate in the south of Carniola in the outskirts of Ljubljana.

Around the same time, S. consecrated abbess of the important Benedictine convent of S. Maria in Aquileiahis sister Fredegonda and, for her soul, donated the three Friulian villages of Zompicchia, Pantianicco and Beano, near Codroipo, to the convent. He then had further possessions in other areas of Friuli, including the town of Rive which, it is not known exactly in what period, he donated to the chapter of his church together with the revenues and the related rights for the administration of justice; he also owned ten farms near Flaibano and the right to tithes in Carnia, Lauco, Prences (Preone?) and Mione. His relations with the monks of the Benedictine convent of Sesto were not to be very good: in fact, according to the custom of the convent, he would have imprisoned his abbot and let him die probably because he, on the occasion of a dispute with the patriarch , had sought justice from the emperor.

On 15 June 1074 the patriarch S., supported by his lawyer Marquardo IV of Eppenstein, concluded an agreement in Aquileia with the bishop of Freising, Ellenardo, with the aim of regulating some administrative matters affecting the territory of Carniola. The first concerned the question of the tithes of the land holdings of Freising which, according to the ecclesiastical administration, belonged to Aquileia; the second question concerned the appointment of the priests of the various parishes present in the territory of Freising, as well as the construction of some churches. This agreement, preserved in the original, is part of the tradition of another agreement of a similar nature that the patriarch Rabenger, predecessor of S., and Altuino, bishop of Bressanone, had stipulated between 1063 and 1068 in Tolmin to regulate, in the same way , the question of the tithes of the possessions that Bressanone had within the Aquileian diocese.

S. therefore worked to protect and, if possible, to broaden the rights of his Church, implementing various strategic moves: in 1074, for example, he concluded with Giovanni, bishop of Ceneda, an agreement according to which he recognized the rights of the patriarch on some parishes and places located within the diocese of Ceneda. At the beginning of 1074 a letter is also documented with which the reformist Pope Gregory VII expressed his intention to convene, during the period of Lent of the same year, an extraordinary synod of a reformist nature, in which S. was also invited to participate. simony, and Gregory VII then ordered the patriarch of Aquileia to act decisively, in his diocese, against the Simoniacs. Among the urgent questions that pressed the Reformed Church, that concerning simony was closely linked to the problem of investitures (lay bishops) which would soon culminate in an epochal conflict between the Empire and the papacy.

The investiture fight broke out in 1075, when King Henry IV appointed the royal chaplain Tedaldo archbishop of Milan and was therefore excommunicated by Pope Gregory VII during the Lenten synod of February 14, 1076. The patriarch of Aquileia S., despite the political tradition of his family, closely linked to the dynasty salica, and his loyalty to the sovereign and contrary to what the majority of the German episcopates did, sided with Gregory VII. As papal legate he took part in the diet of the German princes, which he met in Tribur in October 1076, in which they decided that they would refuse to recognize Henry IV as their king if he, by February of the following year, did not reconcile with the pope, obtaining the lifting of the excommunication. This was followed by the dramatic expedition of Henry IV to Italy, where he, at the end of January 1077, obtained the lifting of the excommunication in Canossa, thus reversing the situation.

The sovereign managed not only to survive politically, but also to bring the Aquileian patriarch S. to his side, who, in the spring of the same year, accompanied Henry IV on his return trip to Germany. Most likely at the beginning of April 1077 , S. received in Pavia a privilege of Henry IV with which the king, to thank him for his "loyal service", gave him and the Aquileian Church the county of Friuli ("comitatus Fori Iulii)", together with the relative fief ("beneficeum quod Ludovicus comes habebat "), Gifts (" regalia "), rights and income of the county (" ducatus "). The donation of the county of Friuli was not only the compensation that S. had received for returning to the side of the king again, but also meant the conclusion of a long process of redefinition of the position of authority of the Aquileian Church in Friuli that had been initiated and facilitated by a series of documents issued by the sovereign, starting with Charlemagne onwards.

The Aquileian Church, thanks to the deeds of donation and royal privileges, was then the largest landowner in Friuli, also enjoying immunity and other rights; moreover, all his properties, according to the sentence pronounced in 1027 by the Emperor Conrad II in Verona, had been totally subtracted from the authority of the Duke of Carinthia who, in that territory, represented the state authority. Despite this, the donation of Friuli in the year 1077 also meant that the Aquileian Church and therefore its patriarch now enjoyed the rights of count and authority (especially of a judicial, military and fiscal nature) over the possessions of the other landowners in Friuli. The donation of 1077 was therefore of crucial importance for the affirmation of the power of the patriarchs of Aquileia in Friuli and therefore for the constitution of Friuli as the state of the patriarchs of Aquileia, the so-called “Patria”.

After the donation of Friuli, S. accompanied Henry IV on his return trip to Germany. The king, after having crossed the territory of the diocese of Aquileia, where, on April 16, 1077 he celebrated Easter together with S., then that of Carinthia, which in that period he donated to his faithful follower Liutoldo di Eppenstein, arrived in May in Regensburg in Bavaria. There he called an assembly in which, besides S., the princes of Bavaria, Carinthia and Bohemia took part. Always accompanied by the patriarch, he continued his journey to Ulmwhere at the end of May 1077, the Reichstag reunited, he had the Swabian Duke Rudolph of Rheinfelden condemned for high treason, guilty of having sided against the sovereign, and his followers. In this process S. played an important role.

Then Henry IV continued his journey to Nuremberg where, on 11 June, he granted two other very important privileges to the Church of Aquileia and to its patriarch. Similarly to what had happened with Friuli, he also donated the county of Istria (“comitatus Histria”) and the Margraviate of Carniola (“marcha Carniola”) to the patriarch and the Aquileian Church. In the hands of Sigeardo the three counties that, to the east, controlled all the access routes to Italy were then reunited; their union formed a single vast territory that was very reminiscent of the great Friulian Carolingian brand of the early 9th century. S. nevertheless did not manage to enjoy this success for very long. In fact, on 12 August 1077 , during the return trip from Germany, he suddenly died near Regensburg. His body was transported to Aquileia where she was buried in the cathedral, near the Holy Sepulcher. The date of her death is recorded in the obituaries of Aquileia, Rosazzo, Salzburg, Freising and in that of the family convent of Michaelbeuern. As successor of S., Henry IV appointed his chaplain as patriarch of Aquileia, as well as canon of Augusta, Heinrich.

Añadido al timeline:

fecha: