Christoph Bernhard von Galen

Christoph Bernhard Freiherr von Galen (12 October 160619 September 1678) was Prince-bishop of Münster. He was born into a noble Westphalian family.

Background, education and conversion to Roman Catholicism

Christoph Bernhard von Galen was born on 12 October 1606 to Lutheran parents of the aristocratic von Galen family. His father, Dietrich von Galen, had estates in the Baltic region and bore the title of Marshal of Courland. During a state assembly in Münster, Dietrich von Galen killed the Münster hereditary marshal, Gerd Morrien zu Nordkirchen, on 15 February 1607, and consequently had to spend twelve years in detention at Bevergern Castle. Because his wife accompanied him voluntarily, in 1616 the young Christoph Bernhard was placed under the care of his uncle, the Canon of Münster, Heinrich von Galen. He gave him a Catholic education by Jesuits at the Paulinum in Münster.

In 1619, at 13, he took his first job working for the cathedral chapter in Münster. In 1626, when he had reached the required age, he moved to Cologne and Mainz, to complete his education at a Jesuit school. An educational journey took him to Bourges and Bordeaux in France, from where he returned to Münster in July 1627. The time of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) affected him. In 1630 he became treasurer of the cathedral and in 1634 a spiritual advisor (Geistlicher Rat). At that time, not many canons were active politically. Von Galen was given numerous diplomatic missions. He repeatedly took part in negotiations with the imperial generals in Westphalia.

Biography

Reduced to poverty through the loss of his paternal inheritance, he took holy orders; but this did not prevent him from fighting on the side of Emperor Ferdinand III during the concluding stages of the Thirty Years' War. In 1650 he was elected prince-bishop of Münster, succeeding Ferdinand of Bavaria.

After restoring a degree of peace and prosperity in his principality, Galen had to contend with a formidable insurrection on the part of the citizens of Münster; but in 1661 this was solved by the occupation of the city. At the head of the largest ecclesiastical principality of the Holy Roman Empire, the prince-bishop, who maintained a strong army, became an important personage in Europe. In 1664, he was chosen one of the directors of the imperial army raised to fight the Turks, but his troops came too late to fight; after the peace which followed the Christian victory at the Battle of St. Gotthard in August 1664, he aided Charles II of England in his Second Anglo-Dutch War with the Dutch, until the intervention of Louis XIV and Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg compelled him to make a disadvantageous peace in 1666 in Cleve.