Emperors and The Cathedral
When Mainz was an archbishopric, the cathedral was the official seat of the archdiocese. It was from this cathedral that Frederick Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor of the time, officially announced his support for the Third Crusade on 27 March 1188.
During the Middle Ages, the right to crown German kings (and queens) was given to the Archbishop of Mainz. The crowning in Mainz awarded the monarch the kingdom of Germany, and a subsequent in Rome granted him the Holy Roman Empire (a nominal difference only). Because the cathedral was damaged several times, many crownings were not held there.
The following monarchs were crowned in the Mainz Cathedral:
- Agnes de Poitou in 1043 by Archbishop Bardo
- Rudolf von Rheinfeld (also known as Rudolf of Swabia; oppositional king to Henry IV) on 26 March or 7 April 1077 by Siegfried I of Eppstein
- Matilda (later wife of Henry V), on 25 July 1110 by the Frederick I, Archbishop of Cologne
- Philip of Swabia on 8 September 1198 by Bishop Aimo of Tarantaise
- Frederick II on 9 December 1212 by Siegfried II of Eppstein
- Heinrich Raspe on 22 May 1246 by Siegfried III of Eppstein
Read more about this topic: Mainz Cathedral
Famous quotes containing the words emperors and/or cathedral:
“How does Nature deify us with a few and cheap elements! Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria; the sun-set and moon-rise my Paphos, and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding; the night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The charm, one might say the genius of memory, is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)