Rainald of Dassel

Rainald of Dassel (c. 1120 – 14 August 1167 near Rome) was archbishop of Cologne from 1159 to 1167 and archchancellor of Italy. He was preceded as archbishop by Friedrich II of Berg and succeeded by Philip I von Heinsberg.

A younger son of a rich Saxon count, Reinold I, Count of Dassel, and destined as such to be an ecclesiastic, he was sent to the cathedral school at Hildesheim in 1146, where he started working as subdeacon. At a later date he probably went to Paris. As early as 1130 he is said to have had a high reputation for classical learning, and to have been a member of the cathedral chapter of Hildesheim. According to documentary evidence he was provost in 1148, and in 1154 received the provostship of Petersberg at Goslar and of St. Moritz at Hildesheim. Soon after 1154 he was also provost of the cathedral chapter at Münster but declined the See of Hildesheim where he was a provost as well. He ordered the first stone bridge above the river Innerste to be built in Hildesheim.

In 1148, he attended the Council of Rheims where he opposed a canon concerned with clerical dress.

As a member of the embassy sent by Frederick I in 1153 to Pope Eugene III at Rome he first revealed his political ability, and in 1156 the emperor appointed him chancellor of the empire. The Diet of Besançon (October 1157) left no doubt as to the drift of his policy. He inaugurated a German policy which insisted upon the rights and the power of the German kings, the strengthening of the Catholic Church in the German Empire, the lordship of Italy, and the humiliation of the papacy. Full of life, at times rough and blunt and again careful and calculating, Rainald, who, in spite of his ecclesiastical dignities, knew how to wield the sword, henceforth influenced the policy of his imperial masters.

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