Henry of Saxe-Lauenburg

Henry of Saxe-Lauenburg (; 1 November 1550 – 22 April 1585, Vörde) was a Prince-Archbishop of Bremen (as Henry III), then Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück (as Henry II), then Prince-Bishop of Paderborn (as Henry IV).

Life

Early years Henry was a member of the House of Ascania, Saxe-Lauenburg line. He was the third son of Duke Francis I of Saxe-Lauenburg (1543–1581) and his wife Sibylle of Saxony, who had both converted to Lutheranism. Henry was raised Lutheran. At the age of ten, he was promised a prebend as canon at the cathedral chapter at Cologne. Since 1564 he studied at the University of Cologne under law professor Dr. Conrad Betzdorf, who housed him and his brother Frederick and was their mentor.

While his youth is recorded as wild, he is recalled as a quiet student. So the enfranchised capitular canons, which were mostly Lutherans since the Reformation, of Bremen Cathedral and Hamburg Cathedral chapter (with only three votes) elected Henry of Saxe-Lauenburg archbishop on 17 February 1567. Since his predecessor Prince-Archbishop George had no coadjutor, an office usually entailing the succession to the see, several dynasts applied for sons of their houses. Henry's election included a deal stipulated with Henry's father Francis I, who waived any Saxe-Lauenburgian claim to the Land of Wursten, earlier raised by his father Magnus I, as well as to the bailiwick of Bederkesa and Elmlohe, de facto held by Bremen city and abandoned the lawsuit, which Francis had brought to the Imperial Chamber Court to this end. For the time being Henry was supposed to work towards his papal confirmation as archbishop.

Administrator of Bremen Henry de facto assumed regency in 1569, lacking any papal confirmation. Henry continued George's financial assanation and developed for a better financial control the budgeting for the prince-archiepicopal expenditures. Through all his episcopate the Popes Pius V and Gregory XIII as well as the Emperors Maximilian II and Rudolph II tested Henry's obedience once in a while, demanding the succession of Catholic candidates for vacancies in the Bremian Cathedral Chapter - which it sometimes accepted, sometimes denied. In 1567 the Holy See failed to replace the late Canon Christoph of East Frisia with the Catholic Wilhelm Quadt of Landskorn. She was supposedly the biological daughter of his mentor, professor Betzdorf in Cologne. Bremen's cathedral chapter approved the wedding, violating Henry's election capitulation, but ordered that future administrators were not to marry. His brother Francis II disputed Henry as heir, but could not prevail. The emperor esteemed his skills and thus charged Henry with arbitrations in lawsuits at the Imperial Chamber Court and the Aulic Council. In reaction to this development the Holy See founded the Roman Catholic Nordic Missions, an endeavour for pastoral care and mission in the area of the de facto ceased archdioceses of Bremen and of Lund. In 1581 Henry prompted a new Court Procedures Code for the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen.

Henry had consulted his brother Francis II in developing the Church Order for the Lutheran church of Saxe-Lauenburg, which Francis decreed in 1585. In 1581 his father died in Buxtehude, a town under Henry's prince-archiepiscopal rule, also his mother and brother Maurice settled and later died there in 1592 and 1612, respectively. On Palm Sunday, 8 April 1585, after a Lutheran church service in Vörde, riding home Henry met with an equestrian accident, his horse baulked and pitched him. In his residence Vörde Castle he died of his injuries on April 22.

Ancestry