ABSTRACT
Although his episcopacy is well documented in a number of sources, Siegfried I of Mainz (1060-1084) remains one of the more enigmatic figures in German politics in the latter half of the eleventh century. His career has been assessed variously as a mixture of traditional episcopal conservatism, ambitious reformism, striking ineptitude, calculated partisanship, and deep, if quirky, piety.1 A former abbot of Fulda, he rose to the episcopacy in 1060 during the regency of Henry IV under the Empress Agnes, joined the ill-fated pilgrimage of the German bishops to Jerusalem in 1064, attempted on at least one occasion to abdicate and enter the monastery of Cluny, supported Henry IV in calling for the resignation of Gregory VII at Worms in 1076, but then threw his support the following year behind Rudolf of Swabia and the anti-Henrician insurgency. While doing all this, he also promoted monastic and clerical reform, fought to recoup diocesan tithes in Thuringia and from the monks of Fulda and Hersfeld, and engaged in a bitter dispute with Gregory VII over his rights as a metropolitan to decide a dispute between two Bohemian bishops. This essay will examine three key aspects of his tenure as archbishop and their conceptual
1 Some of the more recent treatments of Siegfried’s episcopacy, generally without clear consensus about his qualities or legacy, include: Franz Staab, “Reform und Reformgruppen im Erzbistum Mainz. Vom ‘Libellus de Willigisi consuetudinibus’ zur ‘Vita domnae Juttae inclusae,’” in Reformidee und Reformpolitik im spätsalisch-frühstaufischen Reich: Vorträge der Tagung der Gesellschaft für Mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte vom 11. bis 13. September 1991 in Trier, ed. Stefan Weinfurter (Mainz, 1992), pp. 119-87; idem, “Die Mainzer Kirche. Konzeption und Verwirklichung in der Bonifatius-und Theonesttradition,” in Die Salier und das Reich, ed. Stefan Weinfurter, 3 vols (Sigmaringen, 1992), 2:31-63; Rainer Rudolph, “Erzbischof Siegfried von Mainz (1060-1084). Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Mainzer Erzbischöfe im Investiturstreit” (Ph.D. diss., Erlangen, 1973); Heinz Thomas, “Erzbischof Siegfried von Mainz und die Tradition seiner Kirche: Ein Beitrag zur Wahl Rudolfs von Rheinfelden,” Deutsches Archiv 26 (1970), 368-99; Heinrich Büttner, “Das Erzstift Mainz und die Klosterreform im 11. Jahrhundert,” Archiv für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte 1 (1949), 30-64.
