LUPOLD OF BEBENBURG

Canon lawyer and political theorist, bishop of Bamberg (1353–63); b. of a Swabian-Franconian ministerial family, c. 1297; d. Bamberg, Oct. 28, 1363. Lupold matriculated in Canon Law at Bologna in 1316, earning the degree of doctor decretorum and returning to Germany c. 1324. After holding several canonries he was elected bishop of Bamberg in 1353.

Although an imperial protagonist in the struggle between the avignon papacy and Emperor louis iv (1314–47), Lupold never assumed an extreme antipapal position. His most important work, Tractatus de iuribus regni et imperii (1340), dealt with the relationship between German kingship and imperial dignity, and attempted to define the roles of spiritual and secular powers in Christian society. During the following year, he expressed the same ideas in verse form in his Ritmaticum querulosum et lamentosum dictamen de modernis cursibus et defectibus regni ac imperil Romanorum. Lupold's third work, Libellus de zelo christianae religionis veterum principum Germanorum (1342), emphasizing the prominence of Germany and the Empire in Christendom, and their ancient and close connection with the faith, is a plea for a modus vivendi between papacy and Empire.

Lupold served Emperor Charles IV (1347–78) in an advisory capacity. The ideas and some of the phraseology of Lupold's Tractatus appear in the golden bull of 1356, the constitutional law that, in its broad outlines, regulated the relations between the emperor and the German princes until 1806.

Bibliography: a. senger, Lupold von Bebenburg (Bamberg 1905). h. meyer, Lupold von Bebenburg: Studien zu seinen Schriften (Freiburg 1909). r. most, "Der Reichsgedanke des Lupold von Bebenburg," Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 4 (1941) 444–485. j. kist, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. j. hofer and k. rahner (Freiburg 1957–65) 6:1218.

[w. a. ernest]