Munich > München Bayern Germany

Benedictine monks establish a monastery in Bavaria on the Isar River about thirty miles (forty-eight kilometers) north of the Alps. (The town that eventually grows up around this “home of the monks,” or “Munichen,” will come to be called Munich, or Munchen.)

Cities, states and duchies along the salt roads exact heavy duties and taxes for the salt passing through their territories.

This practice even causes the formation of cities, such as the city of Munich in 1158, when the Duke of Bavaria, Henry the Lion, decides that the bishops of Freising no longer needs their salt revenue.

The city of Munich, or München, whose name is derived from “Munichen,” which means "home of the monks," is established in 1158 when Henry the Lion, duke of Bavaria, grants trade, coinage, and customs privileges to the market center established by monks near their monastery.

...Louis II obtains the western part of the duchy, afterwards called Upper Bavaria; he also receives the Electoral Palatinate.

Louis, in Donauwörth in 1256, orders the execution of his wife Marie of Brabant—a daughter of Henry II, Duke of Brabant and Marie of Hohenstaufen—due to mistaken suspicion of adultery, although any actual guilt on her part could never be validated.

As expiation, Louis founds a Cistercian friary, Fürstenfeld Abbey (Fürstenfeldbruck), near Munich.

Louis supports Richard of Cornwall during the German interregnum that follows King William's death in 1256.

Louis, Duke of Bavaria, (later to become Emperor Louis IV) was born in Munich, the son of Louis II, Duke of Upper Bavaria and Count Palatine of the Rhine, and Matilda, a daughter of King Rudolph I.

Though Louis had been partly educated in Vienna and had become co-regent of his brother Rudolf I in Upper Bavaria in 1301 with the support of his Habsburg mother and her brother, King Albert I, he has quarreled with the Habsburgs from 1307 over possessions in Lower Bavaria.

A civil war against his brother Rudolf due to new disputes on the partition of their lands had been ended on June 13, 1313, when peace was made at Munich.

While Rudolf retains the Electoral Palatinate, the treaty provides Louis with the opportunity to secure his election as German king when Henry of Luxembourg dies on August 24.

William of Ockham employs his powerful logical faculty to elaborate an influential theology in his Quodlibeta septem (“Seven Miscellaneous Questions”) and his Summa totius logicae (“Sum of All Logic”).

Adopting a nominalist solution to the problem of universals, William maintains that all existing things are individuals and that universality exists only in concepts or names.

It logically follows, therefore, that God, unhampered by any universal essences, is free to create every individual unconnected with every other, and that subsequent causal connections among such individuals are unnecessary.

Accepting the Aristotelian dictum that science is demonstration based on certain, secure premises, William rejects the Thomistic view that theology is a proper science and therefore rejects rational demonstrations of God's existence, of divine attributes, and of the immortality of the soul.

He counters the philosophical explanations of others with the logical principle of parsimony, sometimes called Occam's razor (but used by some scholastic philosophers before him): "A plurality (of reasons) should not be posited without necessity."

Ockham, whose nominalist views in law and ethics lead him to voluntarism and emphasis on the divine command, concludes that the ultimate source of value and obligation lies not in any "natures" of things but in the free will of God.

He views the rightness or wrongness of human acts as a function of their being commanded or forbidden by divine authority.

Avignonese Pope John XXII, denied the right to veto the election of German king Ludwig (Louis) IV, excommunicates him in 1324.

Louis releases his Habsburg rival Frederick the Fair in 1325 and makes him co-ruler of Germany, but limits Frederick’s authority to Austria.

In defiance of the pope, Louis declares that he does not require papal confirmation to rule, just majority approval.

Marsilius, taking refuge at Ludwig’s Munich court in 1326, is in 1327 also excommunicated by the pope for his pro-imperial political philosophy.

Along with fellow philosopher John of Jandun and several disaffected Franciscan friars, Marsilius accompanies Ludwig on his march to Rome in 1327-28.

Following Ludwig’s imperial coronation by lay officials and his installation of Nicholas V as antipope, Marsilius returns with Ludwig to Germany the following year and lives at Ludwig's court.

In this year, Louis also welcomes William of Occam and Michael of Cesena, the Franciscan minister-general, despite their also being under a ban of excommunication.

William, in flight from a protracted heresy trial in Avignon, reportedly says to Louis: "Defend me with your sword and I will defend you with my pen."

Most of the German princes come to back Ludwig’s political camp against increasingly fierce papal denunciation.

...a younger branch, which receives Bavaria proper.

William of Ockham, whose nominalist views in law and ethics lead him to voluntarism and emphasis on the divine command, concludes that the ultimate source of value and obligation lies not in any "natures" of things but in the free will of God.

He views the rightness or wrongness of human acts as a function of their being commanded or forbidden by divine authority.

Ockham probably dies in Munich in 1347, a victim of the Black Death.

Construction begins on the Munich Frauenkirche (full name Dom zu Unserer Lieben Frau, "Cathedral of Our Dear Lady"), designed by Jörg von Halsbach, in 1468.

A romanesque church had been added in the twelfth century right next to the town's first ring of walls, serving as a second city parish following the Alter Peter church (nicknamed 'Ole Pete'), which is the oldest.

The current construction, meant to replace this older church, is commissioned by Duke Sigismund and the people of Munich.

For financial reasons and due to the lack of a nearby stone pit, brick had been chosen as building material.

As the cash resources are exhausted in 1479, Pope Sixtus IV grants an indulgence.

Jörg von Halsbach will complete the cathedral in only twenty years.

Halsbach, who had begun a redesign of the Old Town Hall in Munich in the late Gothic style, had begun construction of the Munich Kreuzkirche in 1478.

He also works for the Bishops of Freising.