The Diocese of Bamberg was established at the 1007 synod in Frankfurt, at the behest of Henry II, to further expand the spread of Christianity in the Franconian lands. Henry became king of Germany in 1002 and Holy Roman emperor in 1014. He wanted the celebrated monkish rigour and studiousness of the Hildesheim cathedral chapter, where Henry himself was educated, linked together with the churches under his control, including his favourite bishopric of Bamberg.
The next seven bishops were appointed by the Holy Roman Emperors, after which election by the cathedral chapter became the rule, as in all the German prince-bishoprics.
Bishop Suidger of Morsleben, became pope in 1046 as Clement II. He was the only pope to be interred north of the Alps at the Bamberg Cathedral.
Bishop Otto of Bamberg (d. 1139) became known as the “Apostle of the Pomeranians”.
The bishops obtained the status of Imperial immediacy about 1245 and ruled their estates as Prince-bishops until they were subsumed to the Kingdom of Bavaria in the course of the German Mediatisation in 1802.
The 39th bishop, Georg Schenk von Limpurg had a procedure for the judgment of capital crimes (Halsgerichtsordnung) drawn up by Johann of Schwarzenberg in 1507, which later became a model for the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina agreed at the 1530 Diet of Augsburg. Bishop Georg, though a confidant of Emperor Maximilian I, was inclined toward the Reformation movement of Martin Luther.
During the Peasants’ War over 70 manors and several monasteries were destroyed. When the troubles began, the chapter had more rights than ever before, but now existential questions about their position were being posed. Although some of the canons may have sympathized with the Protestant faith, the demands of the peasant, which implied disempowering the canons, met with fierce resistance.
The city suffered severely in the Second Margrave War (1552–54), when large parts of the bishopric were occupied. After the war, the bishop had the Forchheim Fortress erected.
From 1609 onwards Prince-Bishop Johann Gottfried von Aschhausen, also elected Bishop of Würzuburg in 1617, and his successor Johann Georg Fuchs von Dornheim enacted stern Counter-Reformation measures.
The Bamberg estates were devastated in the Thirty Years’ War. Bishop Johann Georg fled to his remote Carinthian esates in 1631. His successor Franz von Hatzfeld was likewise expelled, when the Bamberg and Würzburg bishoprics was placed under the jurisdiction of Prince Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, who obtained the title of a “Duke of Franconia” from the hands of the Swedish chancellor Axel Oxenstierna in 1633.
At the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the prince-bishops recovered their possessions.
From 1500 onwards, the Bamberg territory was bordered, among others, by the Prince-Bishopric of Würzburg to the west, by the Hohenzollern margraviate of Brandenburg-Ansbach and the Free Imperial City of Nuremberg to the south, by the margraviate of Brandenburg-Bayreuth to the east and by the Wettin duchy of Saxe-Coburg to the north. During the 18th century, it was often held in conjunction with the neighbouring Diocese of Würzburg, whose rulers since 1168 claimed the archaic title of a “Duke of Franconia”.
The Prince-bishopric was also vested with large possessions within the Duchy of Carinthia that were strategically important for crossing the Eastern Alps, including the towns of Villach, Feldkirchen, Wolfsberg and Tarvis, located at the trade route to Venice, as well as Kirchdorf an der Krems in the Archduchy of Austria. Highly indebted by the burdens of the Seven Years’ War, the prince-bishops sold the Carinthian estates to their Habsburg allies in 1759.