Friedrich III. von Saarwerden

Frederick found the archbishopric completely plundered by his two predecessors of the County of Mark, Adolf and Engelbert, and had himself promised high payments to the Curia on the occasion of his election.

Right at the beginning of his term of office, he successfully suppressed hereditary conflicts among the landed nobility as well as autonomy efforts in the towns of the archdiocese, thus asserting his sovereign supremacy, which was not challenged again until the end of his reign.

When Frederick III von Saarwerden died in 1414, he left a rich and well-ordered archbishopric and lordship to his nephew and successor, Dietrich II of Moers.

[3] Kuno von Falkenstein initially continued to administer the archbishopric, because the cathedral chapter appointed him already on August 28 as momper or administrator for the time of the sede vacante.

Pope Urban V at the Avignon Papacy, however, rejected this request on November 7, 1368: Frederick was too young - he had not yet reached the canonical age of 30 -, was inexperienced in ecclesiastical matters, and his person and way of life were still completely unknown to the Curia.

According to the Pope's will, the bishopric rotation was supposed to satisfy the claims of all parties involved, but Kuno refused the translation despite imploring pleas from the Curia[6] and also from the Cologne Cathedral Chapter.

For the Curia, this solution was the most elegant: John of Luxembourg-Ligny, who according to other sources was quite incompetent, was left in the not so politically exposed bishopric of Strasbourg, Kuno was bound more closely to the Pope by leaving this second electorate in revocation, and the archbishopric of Cologne retained a capable administrator.

[13] Because he is referred to as archbishop in seven documents dated February 1371,[14] Heinrich Volbert Sauerland assumes that he received the ordination as deacon and presbyter as well as the consecration as bishop still in Avignon in the meantime.

While the first two candidates sought confirmation from the Pope in Avignon, Johann was able to win over the majority of the cathedral chapter in a turbulent election[22] - a minority pleaded for Florenz von Wevelinghoven.

He was helped in this by the fact that Adolf could not take over the county of Cleves unchallenged after the death of the last count from the House of Flamenses Johann von Kleve in 1368, despite the extensive preparations since his resignation as elector of Cologne in 1366.

However, this step was not considered out of sheer necessity, but in order to achieve an early redemption - after all, Kuno could count on more than 40,000 gold florins annually from the Rhine customs duties.

Finally, in February 1377, Gregory XI offered Frederick a contract to waive further claims upon immediate payment of 30,000 florins and to lift the excommunication altogether.

On February 27, 1379, Frederick, together with King Wenceslaus and the Rhenish electors, confessed to Pope Urban VI in Rome, who had been quarreling with the antipope Clement VII in Avignon since September 1378.

[47] With the help of his relative Kuno as an inexhaustible source of - interest-free - loans, Frederick succeeded within half a decade in paying off the debts of his archdiocese and in the process recovering estates that were still alienated.

In 1449, John of Cleve retrospectively called him: "superhabundans et in redditibus adeo locuplex existens"[49] - a man who was "exceedingly wealthy and richly endowed with means".

After a judicial vicar was initially appointed in the 13th century as an official for spiritual affairs, by 1320 an authority of 40 persons, including more than 20 notaries, had developed with its own organizational statute and bylaws to regulate routine business.

In doing so, he took up essential innovations of his predecessor Walram of Jülich from the 1340s, namely the territorial fixation of the offices, the introduction of the rentmaster as the central financial official and the establishment of the council as the political governing body of the archdiocese.

Nevertheless, this duplication could not exist in the long term, and so the itinerant court was abandoned in favor of a locally bound central administration, first in Brühl, then finally in Bonn in the 16th century.

Both Frederick and Duke Wilhelm had confirmed Johann von Saffenberg as the new count, but he was unable to hold his own in the feud that broke out and lost the castles of Neuenahr and Merzenich as well as two-thirds of the county by mid-1372.

[57] The Duke of Jülich, as the other feudal lord, had been completely tied up in the First War of the Guelderian Succession against Mechthild of Cleves since 1371 as regent for his minor son, and thus had to leave the field to Archbishop Frederick.

Frederick therefore sought to preserve this agreement in perpetuity, firstly by only slightly amended treaties in 1388 and 1393, and secondly by renewing the city's fortifications and building a defensible castle.

[68] In addition, he placed Cologne under imperial guard[69] and revoked all privileges for the city,[70] probably to be sure of Frederick's vote in the upcoming election of his son Wenceslaus as King.

According to Wilhelm Janssen: "Because it was the enforcement or at least the recognition of his heerlicheit that mattered to the archbishop in his relationship with Cologne, he accepted an event that was drastic for the constitution of the city, such as the overthrow of the dynastic rule in 1396, without any recognizable reaction.

In addition, Frederick, as Duke of Westphalia, claimed protection of escort rights and, as archbishop, ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the County of Mark, which Engelbert wanted to evade.

Engelbert of the Mark had thus achieved his territorial political goals in the southern Sauerland, but unexpectedly a situation arose that made the acquisition of the entire county of Arnsberg possible.

Why the archbishop had waited three years for the transfer of possession and just now alienated Adolf of the Marck, when he was at war with his brother Engelbert against Dortmund, cannot be inferred conclusively from the sources.

In the course of this feud, the citizens of Rees captured Count Adolf of Cleves in a spectacular action on February 5, 1391, when he crossed the Rhine in a barge at night with only one companion after a tryst with his mistress, the Abbess of Marienbaum.

Charles IV also had an interest, after his brother's defeat at Baesweiler, in building up the archbishop of Cologne as a powerful aide to imperial politics and winning him as a constituent of his son.

[118] Frederick succeeded in maintaining an independent position during the schism by allowing the publication of papal letters only after a review of his chancery, thus making direct communication with the clergy as well as the laity impossible for the pope.

Frederick had his own son Henry, whom he had fathered with a Benedictine nun, dispensed from his birth defect on November 13, 1409, by Pope Alexander V, proclaimed at the Council of Pisa-who is now considered the antipope-so that he could receive ecclesiastical ordinations as well as benefices, canonries, and dignities.