Archdiocese of Paderborn
archdiocese of the Catholic Church in Germany
The Metropolitan Archdiocese of Paderborn (Latin: Archidioecesis Metropolitae Paderbornensis) is a Latin Church archdiocese of the Catholic Church in Germany; its seat is Paderborn. It was a diocese from its foundation in 799 until 1802, and again from 1821 until 1930. In 1930, it was promoted to an archdiocese. From 1281 until 1802, the Bishopric of Paderborn (German: Fürstbistum Paderborn) was also a state of the Holy Roman Empire.
History
The diocese of Paderborn was founded in 799 by Pope Leo III. In the early years it was subordinated to the bishop of Würzburg. Since 855 the clergy had the right to elect the bishop. The diocese included the larger part of Lippe, Waldeck, and nearly half of the County of Ravensberg.
History of the bishopric
Restoration and later history
While the bishopric as a state had been permanently dissolved in 1802, the Diocese of Paderborn, originally suffragan to Mainz Archdiocese (till 1805), was recreated by Pope Pius VII as a suffragan to Cologne Archdiocese in 1821. Through the Prussian Concordate, it was promoted to an archdiocese in 1930, heading the new Middle German Ecclesiastical Province; at the same time, Paderborn lost its districts around Erfurt and Heiligenstadt to the Diocese of Fulda, and two small areas to the Archdiocese of Cologne. The dioceses of Hildesheim and Fulda were made its suffragans.
“Archdiocese of Paderborn” enters the record as archdiocese of the Catholic Church in Germany. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Archdiocese, Paderborn and archdiocese can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Archdiocese of Paderborn” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Archdiocese, Paderborn and archdiocese provides the most credible route into that argument.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q253765. VIAF identifies the subject as 133174054. The Library of Congress control number is n81032232. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1802, 1821, 1930 and 1281.
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How to read it
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Archdiocese of Paderborn” 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.