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

TL;DRAbstract

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 histori

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