BAMBERG
During the post-Roman
centuries of Germanic migration and settlement, the region afterwards included
in the Diocese of Bamberg was inhabited for the most part by Slavs. The town,
first mentioned in 902, grew up by the castle (Babenberch) which gave its name
to the Babenberg family. On their extinction it passed to the Saxon house. The
area was Christianized chiefly by the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of Fulda,
and the land was under the spiritual authority of the Diocese of Würzburg.
In 1007, Henry II, King of the Romans, made Bamberg, a family
inheritance, the seat of a separate diocese. The emperor's purpose in this was
to make the Diocese of Würzburg less unwieldy in size and to give Christianity
a firmer footing in the districts of Franconia, east of Bamberg. In 1008, after
long negotiations with the Bishops of Würzburg and Eichstätt, who
were to cede portions of their dioceses, the boundaries of the new diocese were
defined, and Pope John XVIII granted the papal confirmation in the same year.
The new cathedral was consecrated May 6, 1012, and in 1017 Henry II founded
on Mount St. Michael, near Bamberg, a Benedictine abbey for the training of
the clergy. The emperor and his wife Cunigunde gave large temporal possessions
to the new diocese, and it received many privileges out of which grew the secular
power of the bishop. Pope Benedict VIII during his visit to Bamberg (1020) placed
the diocese in direct dependence on the Holy See. For a short time Bamberg was
the centre of the Holy Roman Empire. Henry and Cunigunde were both buried in
the cathedral.
From the middle of the 13th century onward the bishops were
princes of the Empire and ruled Bamberg, forcing the construction of monumental
buildings. In 1248 and 1260 the see obtained large portions of the estates of
the Counts of Meran, partly through purchase and partly through the appropriation
of extinguished fiefs. The old Bishopric of Bamberg was composed of an unbroken
territory extending from Schlüsselfeld in a northeasterly direction to
the Franconian Forest, and possessed in addition estates in the Duchies of Carinthia
and Salzburg, in the Nordgau (the present Upper Palatinate), in Thuringia, and
on the Danube. By the changes resulting from the Reformation the territory of
this see was reduced nearly one half in extent.
The witch trials of the 17th century claimed hundreds of victims
in Bamberg and reached a climax between 1626 and 1631 under the rule of Prince-Bishop
Johann Georg II. Fuchs von Dornheim. The famous Drudenhaus (witch prison), built
in 1627, is no longer standing today, however, detailed accounts of some cases,
like that of Johannes Junius, remain.
In 1647, the University of Bamberg was founded as "Academia
Bambergensis". In 1759 the possessions and jurisdictions
of the diocese situated in Austria were sold to that State. When the secularization
of church lands took place (1802) the diocese covered 3,305 km² and had
a population of 207,000. Bamberg thus lost its independence in 1802, and in
1803, it became a part of Bavaria.
Key Identification Notes: Arms with a twin-tailed lion behind a bend or a bend
sinister
1/24 Thaler
1/84 Thaler (Körtling / Dreier)
1 Heller
