WÜRZBURG, City and Bishopric

Arms of the Bishopric of Würzburg during the reign of Julius Echter. The combined arms would typically have the Bishopric's charges in the first and fourth quarters, and the Bishop's personal charge in the second and third.

By 1000 BC a Celtic fortification stood on the site of the present Fortress Marienberg. It was Christianized in 686 by Irish missionaries Kilian, Colman and Totnan. The city is first mentioned as Vurteburch in 704. The first diocese was founded by Saint Boniface in 742. He appointed the first bishop of Würzburg, Saint Burkhard. The bishops eventually created a duchy with its center in the city, which extended in the 12th century to Eastern Franconia. The city was the seat of several Imperial diets, including the one of 1180, in which Henry the Lion was banned from the Empire and his duchy was handed over to Otto of Wittelsbach.

The first church on the site of the present Würzburg Cathedral was built as early as 788, and consecrated that same year by Charlemagne; the current building was constructed from 1040 to 1225 in Romanesque style. The University of Würzburg was founded in 1402 and re-founded in 1582.
Cathedral and city hall

The citizens of the city revolted several times against the prince-bishop, until definitively defeated in 1400. Later, Würzburg was a center of the German Peasants' War; the castle was besieged unsuccessfully. Notable prince-bishops include Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn (1573–1617) and members of the Schönborn family, who commissioned a great number of the monuments of today's city. In 1631, Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus invaded the town and destroyed the castle.

In 1720, the foundations of the Würzburg Residence were laid. The city passed to the Electorate of Bavaria in 1803, but two years later, in the course of the Napoleonic Wars, it became the seat of the Electorate of Würzburg, the later Grand Duchy of Würzburg. In 1814, the town became part of the Kingdom of Bavaria and a new bishopric was created seven years later, as the former one had been secularized in 1803.

The Bishopric of Würzburg was a prince-bishopric in the Holy Roman Empire, located in Lower Franconia, around the city of Würzburg, Germany. Würzburg was a diocese from 743. In the 18th century, its bishop was often also Bishop of Bamberg. The last few prince-bishops resided at the Würzburg Residence, which is one of the grandest baroque palaces in Europe. As a consequence of the 1801 Treaty of Lunéville, the Bishopric of Würzburg was secularized in 1803 and granted to Bavaria. In the same year Ferdinand III, former Grand Duke of Tuscany, was compensated with the Electorate of Salzburg. In the Peace of Pressburg of 26 December 1805, Ferdinand lost Salzburg to the Austrian Empire, but was compensated with the Würzburg territory, Bavaria having relinquished it in return for the Tyrol. Ferdinand's state was briefly known as the Electorate of Würzburg (Kurfürstentum Würzburg), but it ceased to be an electorate with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire on 6 August 1806. As the Grand Duchy of Würzburg, it joined the Confederation of the Rhine on 30 September 1806. In 1810 it acquired Schweinfurt.

After Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Leipzig, Ferdinand dissolved his alliance with the First French Empire on 26 October 1813. Through an Austrian-Bavarian treaty of 3 June 1814, Ferdinand lost his possessions to the Kingdom of Bavaria and the grand duchy was dissolved. Ferdinand was restored to a reconstituted Grand Duchy of Tuscany by the Congress of Vienna. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Würzburg was reestablished in 1821 without temporal power.

Key identification notes: On the most frequently seen display of Würzburg's arms, the mountain peak-like first-quarter charge is very distinctive (they actually are said to represent the heavens and the earth). The fourth quarter charge is a small flag that can appear with the staff tilted either to the right or left. On occasion these charges may be shown reversed as on the 1659 1/28 thaler coin below. These various charges are shown on the coins in a variety of ways, but the mountains and the flag are on virtually every coin with arms. The patron saint of Würzburg is St. Kilianus, and he frequently appears as a reverse device.

5 Kreuzer

1/28 Thaler

1/84 Thaler

Schillings

¼ Kreuzer (post-secularization)