Peter of Aspelt (aka Peter von Aichspelt, Peter von Basel, Peter von Mainz; born 1240/45, died 5 June 1320 in Mainz) was Archbishop of Mainz from 1306 to 1320, and an influential political figure of the period. He brought the archbishopric to its peak of power.
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Peter of Aspelt in the context of Archbishop of Mainz
The Elector of Mainz was one of the seven Prince-electors of the Holy Roman Empire. As both the Archbishop of Mainz and the ruling prince of the Electorate of Mainz, the Elector of Mainz held a powerful position during the Middle Ages. The Archbishop-Elector was president of the electoral college, archchancellor of the empire, and the Primate of Germany as the papal legate north of the Alps, until the dissolution of the empire in 1806.
The origin of the title dates back to 747, when the city of Mainz was made the seat of an archbishop, and a succession of able and ambitious prelates made the district under their rule a strong and vigorous state. Among these men were important figures in the history of Germany such as Hatto I, Adalbert of Mainz, Siegfried III, Peter of Aspelt and Albert of Brandenburg. There were several violent contests between rivals for the archbishopric, and their power struggles occasionally moved the citizens of Mainz to revolt. The lands of the elector lay around the city of Mainz on both banks of the Rhine; their area reached 3200 sq. miles by the end of the Empire. The last elector was Karl Theodor von Dalberg, who lost his temporal power when the archbishopric was secularized in 1803.
Peter of Aspelt in the context of Archchancellor
An archchancellor (Latin: archicancellarius, German: Erzkanzler) or chief chancellor was a title given to the highest dignitary of the Holy Roman Empire, and also used occasionally during the Middle Ages to denote an official who supervised the work of chancellors or notaries.
The Carolingian successors of Pepin the Short appointed chancellors over the whole Frankish realm in the ninth century. Hincmar refers to this official as a summus cancellarius in De ordine palatii et regni and an 864 charter of King Lothair I refers to Agilmar, Archbishop of Vienne, as archchancellor, a word which also begins appearing in chronicles about that time. The last Carolingian archchancellor in West Francia was Archbishop Adalberon of Reims (969-988), with the accession of Hugh Capet the office was replaced by a Chancelier de France.