Burchard, born into a wealthy family in…
1000 CE
Burchard, born into a wealthy family in the Rhenish Hesse region of the German Empire bordering Lotharingia, had been sent as a young boy to the town of Koblenz, where he was entered into the monastic school of either St. Florin or St. Kastor to be raised a canon.
He was later ordained as a deacon by Archbishop Willigis of Mainz, and was eventually elevated to primate of Mainz.
He has two siblings; an older brother, Franco, who had been the Bishop of Worms from 989–999, and a sister, Mathilda, who at some point around 1010 to 1015 will become the Abbess of an unknown monastery close to Worms.
Upon the death of Burchard's brother Franco in 999, Emperor Otto III appoints Burchard as the bishop of Worms in the year 1000, an elevation confirmed by Willigis at Kirchberg within days.
In the Vita Burchardi by Ebbo/Ebberhard of Worms, written around 1025, we are told that, initially, Otto had sought to elevate one of his two chaplains, Herpo of Halberstadt and Rako of Bremen to the episcopate, going so far as to give each of them ‘the pastoral staff as they lay in bed gravely ill’.
But both of them died before they could be anointed.
Otto had also offered Worms to the renowned pastor simply known as Erpho.
But within three days of becoming bishop, Erpho was dead from unknown causes and was quickly replaced by a man called Razo, who killed himself at Chur in Switzerland within a short period of time.
The same account also indicates that Worms was in disrepair, and regularly attacked by both wolves and robbers.
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Central Europe
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