John was the sixth son of Count
Henry II of Nassau and
Matilda of Guelders and Zutphen, the youngest daughter of Count
Otto I of Guelders and Zutphen and
Richardis of Bavaria. As
Pope Clement IV (at the instigation of the
Archbishop of
Cologne) disagreed with this choice, John was never
ordained a Bishop and remained Bishop-Elect. For this reason he joined Otto II of Guelders at his war against the Archbishop of Cologne, but John could not offer his cousin essential help. For a year after his election, marauding gangs of insurgents from North-Holland, who furiously resisted their nobles, destroyed many castles and finally appeared before the city
Utrecht, which they obtained with the help of the
poorters, so that John first had to flee to
Guelders and then to the
Oversticht. When the marauders withdrew from Utrecht in 1268, the townspeople, whom he besieged with assistance of Guelders, refused him entrance, so that he was forced to move his seat to Deventer until 1270. With the help of Otto II of Guelders and Zweder of Beusichem, he again took possession of
Amersfoort and Utrecht, but in order to restore order he needed the help of Count
Floris V of Holland, who took this opportunity to create a decisive influence on the Bishopric from that moment on. John had fled to Deventer and could return to Utrecht. This made the Bishop-Elect powerless and he urgently needed money. In 1278 he therefore seized the proceeds of the
tithes for the
crusade from the
Dominican convent in Utrecht, which earned him the everlasting hatred of the ecclesiastical authorities. In 1290 John was deposed by
Pope Nicholas IV on the basis of a whole list of allegations; they do not seem to have been of a moral nature. John settled in Deventer, where he died on 13 July 1309. He was buried in the
Lebuinus Church there. == Descendants ==