The Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen (German: Fürsterzbistum Bremen) was an ecclesiastical principality (787–1566/1648) of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church that after its definitive secularization in 1648 became the hereditary Duchy of Bremen (German: Herzogtum Bremen). The prince-archbishopric, which was under the secular rule of the archbishop, consisted of about a third of the diocesan territory. The city of Bremen was de facto (since 1186) and de jure (since 1646) not part of the prince-archbishopric. Most of the prince-archbishopric lay rather in the area to the north of the city of Bremen, between the Weser and Elbe rivers. Even more confusingly, parts of the prince-archbishopric belonged in religious respect to the neighbouring Diocese of Verden, making up 10% of its diocesan territory.
History
Early diocese of Bremen
The foundation of the diocese belongs to the period of the missionary activity of Willehad on the lower Weser. It was erected on 15 July 787 at Worms, on Charlemagne's initiative, his jurisdiction being assigned to cover the Saxon territory on both sides of the Weser from the mouth of the Aller, northwards to the Elbe and westwards to the Hunte, and the Frisian territory for a certain distance from the mouth of the Weser.
Willehad fixed his headquarters at Bremen, though the formal constitution of the diocese took place only after the subjugation of the Saxons in 804 or 805, when Willehad's disciple, Willerich, was consecrated bishop of Bremen, with the same territory. The diocese was conceivably at that time a suffragan of the archbishops of Cologne, this is at least how they later corroborated their claim to supremacy over the Bremian see.
Archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen
After the death of Bishop Leuderich (838–45), the see was given to Ansgar, Archbishop of Hamburg. From that time on the see of Bremen was permanently united with the Archdiocese of Hamburg.
The new combined see was regarded as the headquarters for missionary work in the Nordic countries, and new sees to be erected were to be its suffragans, meaning subject to its jurisdiction. Ansgar's successor, Rimbert, the "second apostle of the north", was troubled by onslaughts first by Normans and then by Wends, and by Cologne's renewed claims to supremacy.
At Archbishop Adalgar's (888–909) instigation Pope Sergius III confirmed the amalgamation of the Diocese of Bremen with the Archdiocese of Hamburg to form the Archdiocese of Hamburg and Bremen, colloquially called Hamburg-Bremen, and by so doing he denied Cologne's claim as metropolia over Bremen. Sergius prohibited the chapter at Hamburg's Concathedral to found suffragan dioceses of its own.
After the Obodrite destruction of Hamburg in 983 the Hamburg chapter was dispersed. So Archbishop Unwan appointed a new chapter with twelve canons, with three each taken from Bremen Cathedral chapter, and the three colleges of Bücken, Harsefeld and Ramelsloh. In 1139 Archbishop Adalbero had fled the invasion of Count Rudolph II of Stade and Count Palatine Frederick II of Saxony, who destroyed Bremen, and established in Hamburg also appointing new capitular canons there by 1140.
Bremen's Diocesan Territory and its Suffragans
Hamburg-Bremen's diocesan territory covered about today's following territories: The Bremian cities of Bremen and Bremerhaven, the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (north of Elbe), the Lower Saxon counties of Aurich (northerly), Cuxhaven, Diepholz (northerly), Frisia, Nienburg (westerly), Oldenburg in Oldenburg (easterly), Osterholz, Rotenburg upon Wümme (northerly), Stade (except of an eastern tract of land), Wesermarsch, Wittmund, the Lower Saxon urban counties Delmenhorst and Wilhelmshaven, the Schleswig-Holsteinian counties of Ditmarsh, Pinneberg, Rendsburg-Eckernförde (southerly), Segeberg (easterly), Steinburg, Stormarn (easterly) as well as the Schleswig-Holsteinian urban counties of Kiel and Neumünster.
The see of Hamburg-Bremen attained its greatest prosperity and later had its deepest troubles under Archbishop Adalbert of Hamburg (1043–1072), whose ambitions to become a Patriarch of the North failed. Hamburg stopped being used as part of the diocese's name. The next two archbishops, Liemar and Humbert, were determined opponents of Pope Gregory VII.
Under the latter in 1104 Bremen's suffragan Diocese of Lund (DK) was elevated to an archdiocese supervising all of Bremen's other Nordic former suffragan sees, to wit Århus (DK), Faroe Islands (FO), Gardar (Greenland), Linköping (S), Odense (DK), Orkney (UK), Oslo (N), Ribe (DK), Roskilde (DK), Schleswig (D), Selje (N), Skálholt (IS), Skara (S), Strängnäs (S), Trondheim (N), Uppsala (S), Viborg (DK), Vestervig (DK), Västerås (S) and Växjö (S).
Bremen's remaining suffragan sees at that time were only existing by name, since insurgent Wends had destroyed the so-called Wendish dioceses of Oldenburg-Lübeck, Ratzeburg and Schwerin and they were only to be reestablished later. At the stripping of the Duchy of Saxony (7th century - 1180) in 1180 all of these suffragan bishops achieved for parts of their diocesan territories the status of imperially immediate prince-bishoprics. The Bishopric of Livonia (first at Uexküll then Riga) was a suffragan of Bremen in the years 1186–1255.
Gaining Grounds for a Prince-Archbishopric of Imperial Immediacy
Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa and his allies, many of them vassals and former supporters of his paternal cousin Duke Henry III, the Lion, had defeated the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria. In 1180 Frederick I Barbarossa stripped Henry the Lion of his duchies. In 1182 he and his wife Matilda Plantagenêt, the daughter of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine and sister of Richard Lionheart left from Stade to go into exile from the Holy Roman Empire in order to stay with Henry II of England.
Frederick I Barbarossa partitioned Saxony in some dozens of territories of Imperial Immediate status allotting each territory to that one of his allies who had conquered them before from Henry the Lion and his remaining supporters. In 1168 the Saxon clan of the Ascanians, allies of Frederick I Barbarossa, had failed to install their family member Count Siegfried of Anhalt, on the see of Bremen.
But in 1180 the Ascanians prevailed twofoldly. The chief of the House of Ascania, Margrave Otto I of Brandenburg, son of Albert the Bear, a maternal cousin of Henry the Lion, provided his sixth brother Bernhard, Count of Anhalt, from then on Bernhard III, Duke of Saxony, with the later on so-called younger Duchy of Saxony (1180 - 1296), a radically belittled territory consisting of three unconnected territories along the river Elbe, from north west to south east, (1) Hadeln around Otterndorf, (2) around Lauenburg upon Elbe and (3) around Wittenberg upon Elbe. Except of the title, Duke of Saxony, Angria and Westphalia, which this younger Duchy of Saxony granted its rulers, even after its dynastic partition in 1296, this territory, consisting only of territorial fringes of the old Duchy of Saxony, had little in common with the latter. In 1260, with effect from 1296 on, its rulers split the younger Duchy into the Duchies of Saxe-Wittenberg (German: Herzogtum Sachsen-Wittenberg) and Saxe-Lauenburg (German: Herzogtum Sachsen-Lauenburg), the latter holding the unconnected two northern territories, belonging both to the archdiocese of Bremen.
Otto and Bernhard helped their second brother Siegfried, who since 1168 had called himself the Bishop Elect of Bremen, to gain the see of Bremen, with part of the diocesan territory being upgraded to form the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen (German: Erzstift Bremen). Thus the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen became one of the successor states of the old Duchy of Saxony, holding only a small part of its former territory.
In 1186 Frederick I Barbarossa recognised the city of Bremen as a political body by the Gelnhausen Privilege. With the consent of Prince-Archbishop Hartwig II, of Uthlede the emperor declared the city to be governed by its burghers and the emperor, with the Prince-Archbishop waiving his say. The city of Bremen regarded and still regards this privilege to be constitutive for its status as a Free imperial city of imperial immediacy.
Through the history the respective rulers of the Prince-Archbishopric and its successor state Bremen-Verden often denied the city's status. And also the city could and did not always cling to its claim of imperial immediacy, which made the city's status somewhat ambiguous. Through most of the history the city participated in the Prince-Archbishopric's Diets as part of the Estates (see below) and paid its share in the taxes, at least when it had consented to the levying before. Since the city was the major taxpayer, its consent was mostly searched for. Like this the city wielded fiscal and political power within the Prince-Archbishopric, while the city would rather not allow the Prince-Archbishop or his representatives to rule in the city against its consent.
After the Bremen Cathedral chapter, overlooking the three enfranchised Hamburg capitulars, had elected Valdemar of Denmark, the deposed Bishop of Schleswig, archbishop in 1207, Bremen's cathedral dean Burchard of Stumpenhusen, who had opposed this election, fled to Hamburg, then under Danish influence. King Valdemar II of Denmark, in enmity with his father's cousin Archbishop Valdemar, gained the Hamburg chapter to elect Burchard as anti-archbishop in early 1208. Lacking papal support, King Valdemar II himself invested him as Archbishop Burchard I, however, only accepted in North Elbia.
In 1219 the Bremen Chapter again ignored the Hamburg capitulars, fearing their Danish partisanship and elected Gebhard of Lippe archbishop. In 1223 Archbishop Gebhard reconciled the Hamburg chapter and confirmed that three of its capitulars were enfranchised to elect with the Bremen chapter, to wit the provost, presiding the chapter, the dean (Domdechant) and the scholaster, in charge of the education at the cathedral school. Pope Honorius III confirmed this settlement in 1224, also affirming the continued existence of both chapters.
The fortified city of Bremen held its own guards, not allowing prince-archiepiscopal soldiers to enter it. The city reserved an extra very narrow gate, the so-called Bishop's Needle (Latin: Acus episcopi, first mentioned in 1274), for all clergy including the Prince-Archbishop. The narrowness of the gate made it technically impossible to come accompanied by knights. Therefore, the Prince-Archbishops rather preferred to reside outside of the city, first in Bücken and later in the Vörde Castle, which became the principal fortress of Prince-Archbishop Gerhard II, Edelherr zur Lippe in 1219.
The Chapters of Bremen Cathedral (see below) and part of the administration were located within the city boundary in a district of immunity and extraterritorial status (German: Domfreiheit, literally: Cathedral Liberty) around the Cathedral of St. Peter, where the city council would refrain to interfere. The Hamburg Concathedral with chapterhouse and capitular residential courts formed a Cathedral Immunity District of the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen too.
The key, the epithet symbol of the Saint Simon Petrus, has become the symbol of the city of Bremen (see Coat of arms of Bremen), the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen (two criss-crossed argent (silver) keys on a gules (red) background, see in the left part of the Bremen-Verden's seal) and of the Bremian city of Stade.
The territory of the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen consisted of a number of sub-entities. The only thing they all had in common was, that the prior archbishops or capitulars or the Chapter as a collective obtained some secular power in them by way of purchase, application of force, usurpation, commendation, pledge, donation etc. The prior archiepiscopal authorities didn't have succeeded in almost any of the sub-entities to gain all the power, be it judicial, patrimonial, parochial, fiscal, feudal or else what. Almost everywhere the rule was to be shared with one or more competing bearers of authority, e.g. aristocrats, outside ecclesiastical dignitaries, autonomous corporations of free peasants (German: Landsgemeinden) or chartered towns and the like. Therefore, the archiepiscopal authority used to refer to each sub-entity by different terms like county, parish, shire, bailiwick or patrimonial district, each according to the particular power, which the archiepiscopal authority had achieved in them.