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36-727: Their progenitor was Louis the Bearded who was descended from a noble family whose genealogy cannot be precisely determined. Like the related Reginbodo family, they had a close relationship with the Archbishopric of Mainz and also had estates on the Middle Main . The male line of Ludovingians was extinguished on the death of Henry Raspe in 1247, leading to the War of the Thuringian Succession . Around 1040 Louis

72-523: A constitutionally unique form of territorial authority known as "territorial superiority" ( Landeshoheit ) which had nearly all the attributes of sovereignty, but fell short of true sovereignty since the rulers of the Empire remained answerable to the Empire's institutions and basic laws. In the early modern period , the Empire consisted of over 1,800 immediate territories, ranging in size from quite large such as Austria, Bavaria, Saxony, and Brandenburg, down to

108-672: A deed dated 1100 the brothers are named as the counts of Schauenburg. In the period that followed, the Ludovingians expanded their possessions in Thuringia, for example around Sangerhausen, the estate of Cecilia, wife of Louis the Bearded (who died around 1080), and around estates on the River Unstrut , that Adelheid, that the widow of Count Palatine Frederick III , had left to Louis the Springer in her will. The latter built

144-693: A single collective vote ( votum curiatum ). Further immediate estates not represented in the Reichstag were the Imperial Knights as well as several abbeys and minor localities , the remains of those territories which in the High Middle Ages had been under the direct authority of the Emperor and since then had mostly been given in pledge to the princes. At the same time, there were classes of "princes" with titular immediacy to

180-672: A stronger negotiating position, for example giving the province the ability to appeal to the Imperial Diet in any debate with Charles. For that reason, the Emperor strongly rejected and blocked Overijssel's attempt. Disadvantages might include direct intervention by imperial commissions, as happened in several of the southwestern cities after the Schmalkaldic War , and the potential restriction or outright loss of previously held legal patents. Immediate rights might be lost if

216-525: The Electorate of Trier . The Archbishop-Elector of Mainz was also archchancellor of Germany (one of the three component titular kingdoms of the Holy Roman Empire, the other two being Italy and Burgundy ) and, as such, ranked first among all ecclesiastical and secular princes of the Empire, and was second only to the Emperor . His political role, particularly as an intermediary between

252-467: The Estates of the Empire and the Emperor, was considerable. The episcopal see was established in ancient Roman times in the city of Mainz, which had been a Roman provincial capital, Moguntiacum. The first bishops before the 4th century have legendary names, beginning with Crescens . The first verifiable Bishop of Mainz was Martinus in 343. The ecclesiastical and secular importance of Mainz dates from

288-495: The Holy Roman Empire , imperial immediacy ( German : Reichsunmittelbarkeit or Reichsfreiheit ) was the status of an individual or a territory which was defined as 'immediate' ( unmittelbar ) to Emperor and Empire ( Kaiser und Reich ) and not to any other intermediate authorities, while one that did not possess that status was defined as 'mediate' ( mittelbar ). The possession of this imperial immediacy granted

324-572: The March of Meissen . In 1226 he was indeed promised the enfeoffment of the March, but died the same year before he was able to actually acquire it. In 1241, following the death of Louis IV's son, the only 19-year-old Hermann II , Louis' brother, Henry Raspe , inherited the Landgraviate, which he had already ruled as regent during the minority of his nephew. A second brother, Conrad Raspe , ruled

360-579: The Bearded received a fief north of the Thuringian Forest and had the (now ruined) castle of Schauenburg near Friedrichroda . However these origins are legendary and based solely on unverifiable Reinhardsbrunn sources. Around 1080, Louis' sons, Louis the Springer and Beringer of Sangerhausen , founded the Abbey of Kloster Schönrain in the land of their ancestors, Main Franconia . In

396-661: The Emperor and/or the Imperial Diet could not defend them against external aggression, as occurred in the French Revolutionary wars and the Napoleonic Wars . The Treaty of Lunéville in 1801 required the emperor to renounce all claims to the portions of the Holy Roman Empire west of the Rhine . At the last meeting of the Imperial Diet ( German : Reichsdeputationshauptschluss ) in 1802–03, also called

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432-482: The Emperor which they exercised rarely, if at all. For example, the Bishops of Chiemsee , Gurk , and Seckau (Sacken) were practically subordinate to the prince-bishop of Salzburg, but were formally princes of the Empire. Additional advantages might include the rights to collect taxes and tolls , to hold a market , to mint coins , to bear arms , and to conduct legal proceedings . The last of these might include

468-627: The Hessian estates of the family, but entered the Teutonic Order in 1234, soon becoming its Hochmeister . Henry Raspe, who in 1246 was elected as the German antiking , died in 1247. On his death the male line of the Ludovingians died out. In 1243, Henry Raspe had already arranged for his nephew, Henry, the Margrave of Meissen, to be enfeoffed with the Landgraviate of Thuringia. In 1249, Henry

504-489: The Ludovingians took on a ducal-like status in Thuringia. Around the middle of the 12th century, the landgravial minting capital of Eisenach was established and, somewhat later, the Gotha Mint as the second mint owned by the Ludovingians. Under Louis II and Louis III the territory of the landgraviate was further expanded, whilst Hermann I sought to strengthen the position of his family politically, for example, through

540-509: The Rhine River became a mere diocese within the territory of France . In 1814 its jurisdiction was extended over the territory of Hesse-Darmstadt. Since then it has had two cardinals and via various concordats was allowed to retain the medieval tradition of the cathedral chapter electing a successor to the bishop. 50°0′N 8°16′E  /  50.000°N 8.267°E  / 50.000; 8.267 Imperial immediacy In

576-508: The accession of St. Boniface to the see in 747. Boniface was previously an archbishop though without an assigned see, but that ecclesiastical status did not immediately devolve upon the see itself until his successor Lullus ; during his reign Mainz became an archdiocese, in 781. Another early bishop of Mainz was Aureus of Mainz . The territory of the Electorate included several non-contiguous blocks of territory: lands near Mainz on both

612-519: The basis of which, after the death of Giso V in 1137, the vast inheritance of the House of Giso ( Gisonen ) and the counts of Werner in North Hesse was added to their domain. The link thus established between Thuringia and large parts of Hesse was not severed until the War of the Thuringian Succession . Until 1247, the Hessian estate of the Ludovingians was largely ruled by the younger brothers of

648-552: The castle of Wartburg (first mentioned in 1080) above Eisenach as his new seat of residence and in 1085 founded Reinhardsbrunn, henceforth the house monastery of the family. In the stormy period of the Investiture Controversy , Louis the Springer was one of the leading opponents of Emperor Henry V . The distinct anti-imperial stance of the Ludovingians, their prominent political position and other factors led Wolfgang Hartmann vertretene to propose that, amongst

684-438: The crown. During the High Middle Ages , and for those bishops, abbots, and cities then the main beneficiaries of that status, immediacy could be exacting and often meant subjection to the fiscal, military, and hospitality demands of their overlord, the Emperor. However, from the mid-13th century onwards, with the gradually diminishing importance of the Emperor, whose authority to exercise power became increasingly limited to

720-623: The enforcement of legislative acts promulgated by the Imperial Diet , entities privileged by imperial immediacy eventually found themselves vested with considerable rights and powers previously exercised by the emperor. Several immediate estates held the privilege of attending meetings of the Reichstag in person, including an individual vote ( votum virile ): They formed the Imperial Estates , together with 99 immediate counts, 40 Imperial prelates (abbots and abbesses), and 50 Imperial Cities, each of whose "banks" only enjoyed

756-554: The famous benefactors portrayed in Naumburg Cathedral , were the statues of the founder of the Wartburg, Louis and his wife Adelheid. Even before 1122 the family's territory expanded under Louis' sons, Louis and Henry, acquiring estates near Marburg and Kassel , especially through the marriage of Louis I (d 1140) to Hedwig of Gudensberg , the daughter and heiress of the Hessian gaugrave ("gau count"), Giso IV , on

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792-575: The imperial tax register of 1241. In the case of the nobility, the enfeoffment with an imperial fief and high aristocratic lineage was regarded as decisive criteria for immediacy. However, towards the end of the Middle Ages, the counts were generally considered to be immediate to the Empire, although they often had obtained their fiefs from neighboring princes. The imperial immediacy of bishops was acquired automatically when they were enfeoffed with their hochstift and granted immunities. The situation for

828-528: The landgraves, who bore the title of Count of Gudensberg and of Hesse and in resided in Gudensberg and Marburg; they included Henry Raspe I , Henry Raspe II , Henry Raspe III and Conrad Raspe . In 1131, Louis was elevated by Emperor Lothair (of Supplinburg) to the rank of landgrave and became Louis I. As a consequence, Thuringia, as an imperially immediate territory, left the Duchy of Saxony , and

864-640: The left and right banks of the Rhine; territory along the Main River above Frankfurt (including the district of Aschaffenburg ); the Eichsfeld region in Lower Saxony and Thuringia ; and the territory around Erfurt in Thuringia. As was generally the case in the Holy Roman Empire, the territory of a prince-bishopric or archbishopric differed from that of the corresponding diocese or archdiocese, which

900-403: The marriages of his children. Prior to that, Hermann had to resist attempts by Emperor Henry VI , to turn the Landgraviate of Thuringia into a fiefdom following the death of Hermann's brother, Louis III. Hermann's son, Louis IV , who married the subsequently beatified Elizabeth of Hungary , hoped that, through the guardianship of his nephews, Henry Margrave of Meissen and a minor , to gain

936-632: The new Grand Duchy of Frankfurt in 1810. Dalberg resigned in 1813 and in 1815 the Congress of Vienna divided his territories between the Kingdom of Bavaria , the Electorate of Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel), the Grand Duchy of Hesse and the Free City of Frankfurt . The modern Roman Catholic Diocese of Mainz was founded in 1802 when Mainz lost its archdiocese status and its territory west of

972-442: The prelates (abbots) was not always clear since there were some who, although recognized as immediate, had not been enfeoffed directly by the king. In the end, for the Middle Ages, the formal grant of immediacy was of relative importance; the decisive factor was the capacity to assert and enforce one's claim to immediacy against competing claims. The position of the princes with regard to the crown had strengthened progressively since

1008-456: The reign of Frederick Barbarossa (1152–1190) who restricted the immediate crown vassalage to the archbishops, bishops and imperial abbots, roughly ninety of them, and to distinguish most dukes and a selection of reliable margraves, landgraves and counts as maiores imperii principes . They were intended to be the only direct vassals, apart from the Imperial ministeriales who did homage within

1044-418: The royal household, and the royal towns which offered collective fealty. From the thirteenth century onward, the growing exclusiveness of the princes derived from their determination to enforce their preeminence and make the other lords feudally dependent on themselves, and to incorporate them into their own territorial lordships, thus making them 'mediate' by cutting them off from direct legal relationship with

1080-693: The seat of the elector, Karl Theodor von Dalberg , was moved to Regensburg , and the electorate lost its left bank territories to France , its right bank areas along the Main below Frankfurt to Hesse-Darmstadt and the Nassau princes, and Eichsfeld and Erfurt to the Kingdom of Prussia . Dalberg retained the Aschaffenburg area as the Principality of Aschaffenburg . In 1810 Dalberg merged Aschaffenburg, Frankfurt , Wetzlar , Hanau , and Fulda , to form

1116-476: The several hundred tiny immediate estates of the Imperial knights of only a few square kilometers or less, which were by far the most numerous. The criteria of immediacy varied and classification is difficult especially for the Middle Ages. The situation was relatively clear in the case of the cities: imperial cities were directly subject to the king's jurisdiction and taxation, and a first list can be found in

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1152-536: The so-called Blutgericht ("blood justice") through which capital punishment could be administered. These rights varied according to the legal patents granted by the emperor. As pointed out by Jonathan Israel , the Dutch province of Overijssel in 1528 tried to arrange its submission to Emperor Charles V in his capacity as Holy Roman Emperor rather than as Duke of Burgundy . If successful, that would have evoked Imperial immediacy and would have put Overijssel in

1188-616: Was able to secure his claims in Thuringia after military operations that ended in the Treaty of Weißenfels . These were not initially recognised, however, by his cousin Sophia of Brabant , the daughter of Louis IV. In 1259, she attempted, with the aid of Albert I of Brunswick , ab 1259 to gain a military foothold in Thuringia. After a heavy defeat at Besenstedt near Wettin in October 1263 she finally had to give up all claims to Thuringia in 1264,

1224-664: Was one of the most prestigious and influential states of the Holy Roman Empire . In the hierarchy of the Catholic Church , the Archbishop-Elector of Mainz was also the Primate of Germany ( primas Germaniae ), a purely honorary dignity that was unsuccessfully claimed from time to time by other archbishops. There were only two other ecclesiastical Prince-electors in the Empire: the Electorate of Cologne and

1260-534: Was successful in securing the claims of her son, Henry to the family's Hessian estate, which as the Landgraviate of Hesse became independent and, in 1291, an imperial principality . Archbishopric of Mainz The Electorate of Mainz ( German : Kurfürstentum Mainz or Kurmainz ; Latin : Electoratus Moguntinus ), previously known in English as Mentz and by its French name Mayence ,

1296-487: Was the purely spiritual jurisdiction of the prince-bishop or archbishop. During the early modern age, the archdiocese of Mainz (see map below) was the largest ecclesiastical province of Germany, covering Mainz and 10 suffragant dioceses. In 1802, Mainz lost its archiepiscopal character. In the secularizations that accompanied the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss ( German mediatization ) of 1803,

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