Prince-Bishopric of Montenegro

The Prince-Bishopric of Montenegro (Serbian: Митрополство Црногорско / Mitropolstvo Crnogorsko, lit. 'Metropolitanate of the Black Mountain') was a Serbian Orthodox ecclesiastical principality that existed from 1516 until 1852. The principality was located around modern-day Montenegro. It emerged from the Eparchy of Cetinje, later known as the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral, whose bishops defied the Ottoman Empire overlordship and transformed the parish of Cetinje into a de facto theocracy, ruling it as Metropolitans (Vladike, also known as prince-bishops).

The first prince-bishop was Vavila. The system was transformed into a hereditary one by Danilo Šćepčević, a bishop of Cetinje who united the several tribes of Montenegro into fighting the Ottoman Empire that had occupied all of Montenegro (as the Sanjak of Montenegro and Montenegro Vilayet) and most of southeastern Europe at the time. Danilo was the first in the House of Petrović-Njegoš to occupy the position as the Metropolitan of Cetinje in 1851, when Montenegro became a secular state (principality) under Danilo I Petrović-Njegoš. The Prince-Bishopric of Montenegro also briefly became a monarchy when it was temporarily abolished in 1767–1773: this happened when the impostor Little Stephen posed as the Russian Emperor and crowned himself the Tsar of Montenegro.

Name

The state was virtually the Metropolitanate of Zeta under the supervision of the Petrović-Njegoš family. The name mostly used in historiography is "Metropolitanate of Cetinje" or "Cetinje Metropolitanate" (Цетињска митрополија). The highest office-holder of the polity was the Metropolitan (vladika, also rendered "prince-bishop").