Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg

Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg
Elector-Archbishop of Cologne
Portrait by Hermann tom Ring, 1579
Prince-Elector-Archbishop of Cologne
Reign	3 October 1577 – 1588
Predecessor	Salentin VII of Isenburg-Grenzau
Successor	Ernst of Bavaria
Dean, Strasbourg Cathedral
Tenure	1574
Provost, Augsburg Cathedral
Tenure	1576
Born	10 November 1547 Heiligenberg
Died	31 May 1601(1601-05-31) (aged 53) Strasbourg
Burial	Strasbourg Cathedral
House	House of Waldburg
Father	William Seneschal of Waldburg
Mother	Johanna von Fürstenberg
Religion	Roman Catholic (until 1582) Calvinist (from 1582)

Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg (10 November 1547 – 31 May 1601^[1]) was the archbishop-elector of Cologne from 1577 to 1588. After pursuing an ecclesiastical career, he won a close election in the cathedral chapter of Cologne over Ernst of Bavaria. After his election, he fell in love with and later married Agnes von Mansfeld-Eisleben, a Protestant canoness at the Abbey of Gerresheim. His conversion to Calvinism and announcement of religious parity in the electorate triggered the Cologne War.

On 19 December 1582, a proclamation in his name established parity for Catholics and Calvinists in the Electorate of Cologne, causing a scandal in the Roman Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire, and after his marriage in February 1583, he sought to convert the electorate into a dynastic dignity. For the next six years, his supporters fought those of the Roman Catholic dominated cathedral chapter for the right to hold the electorship and the archdiocese in the so-called Cologne War or Seneschal War. After brutal fighting, and the plundering of villages, cities, and abbeys throughout the electorate, Gebhard surrendered his claim and retired to Strasbourg. He died there in 1601 and was buried in the Cathedral.

Gebhard's conversion and marriage was the first major test of the principle of ecclesiastical reservation established in the Peace of Augsburg, 1555. His loss of the electorate strengthened the Catholic Counter-Reformation in the northern German states, gave the Jesuits a stronghold in Cologne, and expanded the Wittelsbach family influence in imperial politics.