Confessional conflict and cooperation in early modern Germany: The Catholic Prince -Bishopric of Bamberg and its Protestant aristocracy (1555–1619)

This study explores the relationship in the Holy Roman Empire between an ecclesiastical principality, the Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg, and the nobles of this region during the Reformation. Located in the southwest of the Holy Roman Empire, the prince-bishop had a population of about 150,000. In 1007, an emperor founded Bamberg to be a center of royal power at the crossroads of the Empire. At the time of the Reformation, Bamberg was no longer a center of royal power, but it still belonged to the heartland of the Holy Roman Empire with the imperial city of Nuremberg under its ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Families of nobles monopolized the most important ecclesiastical and secular positions in the Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg. With the coming of the Reformation, although many of these nobles converted to Protestantism, they continued to view office-holding within the prince-bishopric as their birthright, and as something apart from any adherence to the Catholic faith. Where earlier historiography emphasizes the polarization of Protestants and Catholics during the Reformation, the Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg in the period from 1555-1619 provides an extensive record of attempts at cooperation and accommodation between the Catholic state and the Protestant nobles who, in large part, controlled it. These attempts at cooperation and accommodation happened because confession was only one of several important competing loyalties motivating these nobles: just as powerful were family ties, their belief in their traditional right to run Bamberg, and their solidarity as imperial knights of the Holy Roman Empire directly subject to the emperor