Liemar

Liemar (unknown – 16 May 1101, in Bremen) was archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen from 1072 to 1101, and an important figure of the early Investiture Contest.

He was a supporter of Emperor Henry IV from 1073.[1] In 1074 the papal legates Gerald of Ostia and Hubert of Palestrina put pressure on him to hold a local synod; he resisted, was suspended, and by 1075 his views against papal interference with bishops had hardened.[2] In 1080, he attended the Synod of Brixen that condemned Pope Gregory VII.[3] With Benno II of Osnabrück he commissioned the anti-papal polemic of Wido of Osnabrück around 1085.[4] Liemar was one of many bishops who was irked by Gregory VII's encroachment of episcopal autonomy. In a letter to Bishop Hezilo of Hildesheim, Liemar complained that Gregory VII was ordering his bishops about 'as though they were his bailiffs'.[5]

  1. ^ Uta-Renate Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century (1988), p. 111.
  2. ^ I. S. Robinson, Authority and Resistance in the Investiture Contest: The Polemical Literature of the Late Eleventh Century, pp. 126, 169.
  3. ^ H. E. J. Cowdrey (1998), Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085 (Clarendon Press), p. 201ff.
  4. ^ Robinson, p. 152, 159.
  5. ^ I.S. Robinson, Gregory VII and episcopal authority.