Richard von Greiffenklau zu Vollrads

Richard von Greiffenklau zu Vollrads
Richard von Greiffenklau zu Vollrads
	Archbishop of Trier
Church	Catholic Church
Diocese	Electorate of Trier
In office	1511–1531
Personal details
Born	1467
Died	13 March 1531

Richard von Greiffenklau zu Vollrads (also spelled Greiffenclau and Vollraths) (1467–1531) was the Archbishop-Elector of Trier from 1511 to 1531.

Richard's arms, from his tomb in the Cathedral of Trier.

Biography

Richard von Greiffenklau zu Vollrads was born in Schloss Vollrads in 1467, the son of Johann von Greiffenklau and Klara von Ratsamhausen. As the family's fourth son, Richard was groomed for a career in the church from a young age.

In 1487, he became a canon of the Cathedral of Trier. He began studies in Paris in 1488. In 1503, he was made cantor of the Cathedral of Trier and also became a canon of Mainz Cathedral.

Richard was elected Archbishop of Trier on 15 May 1511. Pope Julius II confirmed his appointment on 26 April 1512, and on 30 May 1512 Archbishop of Mainz Uriel von Gemmingen consecrated Richard as a bishop.

Only 23 days after his installation as Archbishop, Richard opened the altar that had enshrined a relic believed to be the seamless robe of Jesus since the building of the Dome in the presence of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor and exhibited it.

In 1515, Richard completed judicial reforms and allowed Jews to re-enter the Archbishopric of Trier. During the imperial election of 1519, Richard was bribed by Francis I of France and subsequently voted for Francis, although Francis lost the election to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. This did not prevent Charles V from inviting Richard to the Diet of Worms in 1521 where, at Charles' behest, Richard unsuccessfully attempted to convince Martin Luther to recant the views that had resulted in Pope Leo X issuing the papal bull Exsurge Domine, which had excommunicated Luther in 1520. In 1522, during the Knights' Revolt, Franz von Sickingen declared war on the Archbishopric of Trier but he failed in his efforts to take Trier. Richard sided with the coalition of princes that ultimately defeated the Knights' Revolt in 1523.

The Kanone Greif commissioned by Richard in 1524.

The next year, he commissioned additions to the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress, including the large cannon known as the Kanone Greif, the largest siege gun of its time. Richard attended the Second Diet of Speyer in 1529, but did not attend the 1530 Diet of Augsburg (probably due to illness), instead sending Johann von Metzenhausen as his representative.

Richard died at the Schloss Ottenstein in Wittlich on 13 March 1531. He is buried in the Cathedral of Trier, and has a large Renaissance funerary monument.

gollark: I can't actually buy 10 trillion multi-terabyte hard disks and ship them to every user, you see.

gollark: I have enough storage capacity available to hold maybe 1e13 bits at home.

gollark: Even if I'm off by 6 OOM, 3.7e26 bits is *not tractable*.

gollark: The board state can be encoded in 101.4 bits. The optimal position for that board state can be encoded in a further 6 bits. This gives us 107.4 bits per state.

gollark: Interesting.

References

This page is based on this page on German Wikipedia.

Catholic Church titles
Richard von Greiffenklau zu Vollrads Born: 1467 on Vollrads Castle near Oestrich-Winkel Died: 13 March 1531 on Ottenstein castle near Wittlich
Regnal titles
Preceded by James of Baden	Archbishop-Elector of Trier 1511–1531	Succeeded by John III

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.