MEINRAD(MEGINHARD),ST. See Einsiedeln.

MEINWERK, main'v6rk: Bishop of Paderbom, 1009-1036. He was related to the royal family and received his education in the ecclesiastical schools of Halberstadt and Hildesheim. He was made a canon of Halberstadt; later, in the time of Otto III., court chaplain, and in 1009 Heinrich II. made him bishop of Paderborn. He served faithfully in internal and external affairs the emperor and his country, and was able with great cleverness to assert his influence among kings and nobles, among wealthy clergymen and laymen, obtaining endowments for his diocese or for the monastery of Abdinghofen, built between 1015 and 1031 in the western suburb of Paderborn.

Franz Görres.

Bibliography: The basal source is an anonymous life written about 1150, ed. G. H. Perta in MGFi, Script., u (1854), 104-161, and in ASB, June, i 511-553. A very useful bibliography is given in Potthast, Wepweiser, pp. 1478-79. Consult: F. X. Sohrader, Leben and Wirken des . . . Meinwsrks, . , 1009-56, Paderborn, 1895; H. Breselau, Jahrtaclaer des deutschen Reichs unter Kon. rad 11., ii. 460 sqq., Leipsic, 1884.

MEISNER, mais'ner, BALTHAZAR: German the ologian; b. at Dresden Feb. 3, 1587; d. at Wittenberg Dec. 29, 1626; belonged to that circle of theolo gians in the first decades of the seventeenth century who did not lose sight of the needs of the church. He studied at Wittenberg, Giessen, Strasburg, and Tübingen; was appointed professor in Wittenberg, 1613. He was on intimate terms with B. Mentzer in Giessen and J. Gerhard in Jena, but among them it was he who had the sharpest eye for the deficien cies of the church and made effectual efforts to remedy them. These attempts are evidenced in his publication, B. Meisneri Pia Desideria, dictated shortly before his death and published anony mously (Frankfort, 1679). His Philosophia Sobria (3 vols., Wittenberg, 1614-23) opposed the prevailing tendencies of logical studies and established his literary fame.

(A. Hauck.)

MEISSEN, mais'sen, BISHOPRIC OF: An ancient episcopal see in Germany, founded by the Emperor Henry I. in the sense that it grew out of the fortress which he built at the confluence of the Elbe and the Triebisch. The erection of the bishopric was decided at a synod held at St. Severus in Classe near Ravenna in 972. The first bishop, Burchard, was consecrated at Christmas, 968, and received the largest territory of any of the sees subject to the archbishop of Magdeburg. (A. HAuCg.)

The bishops received the dignity of princes of

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the empire, with the right of coinage from the thirteenth century. In the first half of the fifteenth century the Hussites were very strong here, and in the sixteenth Duke Henry of Saxony established Protestantism, the last bishop, John IX. von Haugwitz, resigning the ecclesiastical jurisdiction into the hands of the chapter; his predecessor John VII. von Schleinitz (d. 1537) had already abandoned to the duke all claim to secular jurisdiction. The town of Meissen is fifteen miles northwest of Dresden.

Bibliography: Codex diplomaticus Saxonitv, ed. E. G. Gersdorf, TI., i.-iii., Leipsic, 1883 sqq.; E. Machatschek, Geschichte der B%acht Dresden, 1884; E. O. Schultze, Die Kolon%aiemng . . . der Gebiete zurischen Basle and Elbe, Leipsic, 1886; Der Papal, die RegLrung und die Verwaltung der heiligen Kirche in Rom, p. 199 Munich 1904; J. P. Kirsch, Illuetrierts Geschichte der katholischen Kirche, p. 262, ib. 1905; KL, viii. 1196-1198; Hauck, KD, iii. 625-627 et passim.