Body snatching and episcopal power: Archbishop Anno II of Cologne (1056–1075), burials in St Mary's ad gradus, and the minority of King Henry IV

Abstract

This paper examines one method employed by Anno of Cologne (1056–1075) to assert power during Henry IV's minority: the confiscation of the bodies of well-known individuals, and their subsequent interment in Anno's own foundation of St Mary's ad gradus in Cologne. Sited immediately east of the cathedral ‘on the steps’ leading up from the Rhine, St Mary's functioned as a ceremonial reception church. Its prototype was Santa Maria in turri, part of the east atrium complex of Old St Peter's in Rome. The burial of notable remains in St Mary's ad gradus was part of Anno's intent to make the see of Cologne supreme over all rivals. After coercing interments in the early 1060s, Anno in 1064 ordered that the body of Duke Konrad of Bavaria (†1055) be exhumed in Hungary—where Konrad had died in exile after being accused of treason against Henry III—and translated to Cologne for burial in St Mary's ad gradus. The reinterment of Konrad was a statement of spite directed towards Henry IV, no longer under the control of Anno, who provoked the young king by burying a traitor to Henry's father in Cologne's reception church ‘on the steps’.

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