Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg
Ecclesiastical principality of the Holy Roman Empire (1007–1802)
The Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg (German: Hochstift Bamberg) was an ecclesiastical State of the Holy Roman Empire. It goes back to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bamberg established at the 1007 synod in Frankfurt, at the behest of King Henry II to further expand the spread of Christianity in the Franconian lands. The bishops obtained the status of Imperial immediacy about 1245 and ruled their estates as Prince-bishops until they were subsumed to the Electorate of Bavaria in the course of the German Mediatisation in 1802.
State
The Bishops of Bamberg received the princely title by Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen before his deposition by Pope Innocent IV in 1245, whereby the diocese became an Imperial state, covering large parts of the current Bavarian region of Franconia ("Main Franconia").
Part of the Franconian Circle (territories grouped together within the Holy Roman Empire for defensive purposes) from 1500 onwards, the Bamberg territory was bordered, among others, by the Prince-Bishopric of Würzburg to the west, by the Hohenzollern margraviate of Brandenburg-Ansbach and the Free Imperial City of Nuremberg to the south, by the margraviate of Brandenburg-Bayreuth to the east and by the Wettin duchy of Saxe-Coburg to the north. During the 18th century, it was often held in conjunction with the neighbouring Diocese of Würzburg, whose rulers since 1168 claimed the archaic title of a "Duke of Franconia".
The Prince-bishopric was also vested with large possessions within the Duchy of Carinthia that were strategically important for crossing the Eastern Alps, including the towns of Villach, Feldkirchen, Wolfsberg and Tarvis, located at the trade route to Venice, as well as Kirchdorf an der Krems in the Archduchy of Austria. The Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa purchased these territories in 1759.
In the course of the German Mediatisation of 1802/3 which saw the suppression of virtually all the ecclesiastical principalities, Bamberg was annexed to Bavaria. The former prince-bishopric then had an area of 3,580 km2 and a population of 207,000.
“Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg” enters the record as ecclesiastical principality of the Holy Roman Empire (1007–1802). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Prince-Bishopric, Bamberg and Ecclesiastical can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q561334. VIAF identifies the subject as 138342107. The Library of Congress control number is n50027058. Authority coordinates are 50.031, 10.953. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1007, 1245, 1802 and 1500.
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This entry incorporates text from “Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg” 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.