Matthäus Schiner
Catholic cardinal (1465-1522)
Matthäus Schiner (or Schinner; c. 1465 – 1 October 1522) was a bishop of Sion, Cardinal and diplomat. He was a military commander in several battles in northern Italy.
Biography
He was born in Mühlebach (in what is now the Swiss canton of Valais), the son of the farmer and carpenter Peter Schiner and Anna Welschen; his uncle Nicholas Schiner, later Bishop of Sion (Sitten), gave him his early instruction. He embraced the ecclesiastical career and eventually became parish priest of Aernen (1496), and canon and dean of the cathedral of Sion. When his uncle resigned, he was made Bishop of Sion (20 September 1499). Schinner's diplomatic skill and his influence on the allied Swiss Confederacy made him the right hand of Pope Julius II and Pope Leo X in their efforts to unite Italy and expel the French.
In 1511, as a result of an alliance brought about by Schiner, the Swiss made two unsuccessful campaigns against Milan. As a reward for securing this alliance, he was made Bishop of Novara and also cardinal in 1511. In 1512, as papal legate for Italy and Germany, he was appointed commander of a Swiss and Venetian army, drove the French from Milan and established Maximilian Sforza as duke. However, as Louis XII again captured Milan after the death of Julius II, Schiner once more took the field at the head of the Swiss Confederates, and defeated the French in the battle of Novara (1513).
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This entry incorporates text from “Matthäus Schiner” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.