[Papal provisions for lesser benefices in the diocese of Breslau 1447-1471].
During the fifteenth century the popes were severely criticized for problems allegedly created by their provisions for benefices: prolonged law-suits, immense costs, and absenteeism of priests. Papal provisions for higher benefices, bishoprics and monasteries, were usually a political compromise. For lesser benefices, i.e. canonries or vicaries in cathedral or collegiate churches, parishes or altars in towns or villages, the background is seldom clear. Sometimes influential people at the papal curia strove to secure their livings, sometimes local princes, lords or towns provided their servants with incomes, sometimes ambitious clerics sought papal protection against local rivals. The extent to which the papacy was involved in appointments to lesser benefices varied throughout Europe and can only be studied in the regional archives. For the diocese of Breslau this has not been done so far, but the Repertorium Germanicum published by the German Historical Institute in Rome provides the data extant in the papal registers and account-books. The present study sums up these sources from the accession of Nicholas V in 1447 to the death of Paul II in 1471, a period, during which Silesia and especially its capital Breslau held close contact with Rome in order to fight the heretic Bohemian king George of Podiebrad. Nevertheless, the proportions of papal involvement in appointments for lesser benefices in the dioceses were apparently small. The cathedral of St John at Breslau had to admit papal exspectanices and provisions. But only half of the collegiate churches in Silesia were affected to some degree, especially Holy Cross at Breslau and St Mary at Grob-Glogau. Very few important town parishes were concerned, for example St Mary Magdalene at Breslau, the parishes at Neisse and at Neumarkt. It is not possible to say how many papal provisions were successful; those that were usually favoured men with influential friends in Silesia. If Rome introduced foreigners at all, they came from neighbouring courts (Habsburg, Poland, Brandenburg). Many clerics who sought papal provisions had studied at universities (including three doctors of medicine). ALthough provisions by papal legates in Breslau, whose registers are lost, may slightly alter the picture, it is clear that in general the papacy was not an important factor for the appointment to lesser benefices in late medieval Silesia, despite an impressive number of papal documents concerning Silesia and despite some spectacular cases (e.g. Paul Stange von Legendorf, later bishop of Ermland, and his nephew Adam Stange von Pfeildorf). The local authorities themselves were responsible for obvious deficiencies of the pre-Reformation church owing to bad training of clerics or the accumulation of benefices which led to the installation of badly paid vicars.
Borchardt
Karl
K
D002410:Catholicism / Q000266:history*; D004467:Economics / Q000266:history*; D005858:Germany; D049668:History, 15th Century; D012068:Religion and Medicine