Planned since 955 and established in 967, the archdiocese had de facto turned void since 1557, when the last papally confirmed prince-archbishop, the Lutheran Sigismund of Brandenburg came of age and ascended to the see. All his successors were only administrators of the prince-archbishopric and Lutheran too, except the Catholic layman Leopold William of Austria (1631–1635). In ecclesiastical respect the remaining Catholics and their parishes and abbeys in the former archdiocese were put under supervision of the Archdiocese of Cologne in 1648 and under the jurisdiction of the Apostolic Vicariate of the Northern Missions in 1670.
The town was one of the oldest emporia of the German trade for the Wends who dwelt on the right bank of the Elbe. In 805 it is first mentioned in history. In 806 Charlemagne built a fortress on the eastern bank of the river opposite Magdeburg. The oldest church is also credited to this time.[1]
Magdeburg first played an important part in the history of Germany during the reign of Otto the Great (936-73). In 929 King Otto I granted the city to his English-born wife Edith as dower. She had a particular love for the town and often lived there. The emperor also continually returned to it. In September 937, Otto and his wife founded a Benedictine monastery at Magdeburg, which was dedicated to Sts. Peter, Maurice, and the Holy Innocents. The first abbots and monks came from St. Maximin's Abbey, Trier.[1]
After the wars of the years 940 and 954, the Polabian Slavs as far as the Oder, had been brought into subjection to German rule. However, the Magyars had advanced so far into Germany, that Augsburg was threatened. At the Battle of Lechfeld in 955 they were defeated and repelled.[2] Otto immediately set to work to establish an archbishopric in Magdeburg, for the stabilisation through Christianisation of the eastern territories. He wished to transfer the capital of the diocese from Halberstadt to Magdeburg, and make it an archdiocese. But this was strenuously opposed by the Archbishop of Mainz, who was the metropolitan of Halberstadt.[1]
When, in 962, Pope John XII sanctioned the establishment of an archbishopric, Otto seemed to have abandoned his plan of a transfer. The estates belonging to the convent founded in 937 were converted into a mense for the new archbishopric, and the monks transferred to the Berge Convent. The abbey church became the Cathedral of St. Maurice.
Its ecclesiastical province included the existing dioceses of Brandenburg and Havelberg and the newly founded dioceses of Merseburg, Zeitz, and Meißen. (Lebus was added in 1424.) The new archdiocese was close to the unsecured border regions of the Holy Roman Empire and Slavic tribes, and was meant to promote Christianity among the many Slavs and others. On 20 April 967, the archbishopric was solemnly established at the Synod of Ravenna in the presence of the pope and the emperor. The first archbishop was Adelbert, a former monk of St. Maximin's at Trier,[3] afterwards a missionary bishop to the Ruthenians (Ruthenia), and Abbot of Weissenburg in Alsace. He was elected in the autumn of 968, received the pallium at Rome, and at the end of the year was solemnly enthroned in Magdeburg.
The archdiocesan area of Magdeburg was rather small; it comprised the Slavonic districts of Serimunt, Nudizi, Neletici, Nizizi, and half of northern Thuringia, which Halberstadt resigned. The cathedral school especially gained in importance under Adalbert's efficient administration. The scholastic Othrich was considered the most learned man of his times. Many eminent men were educated at Magdeburg.
Othrich was chosen archbishop after Adalbert's death (981). Gisiler of Merseburg obtained possession of the See of Magdeburg by bribery and fraud. Upon his death in 1004, there followed a brief conflict between King Henry II and the cathedral canons before Tagino was installed as archbishop.[4] Tagino and his suffragans were relied upon heavily for military service in the eastern marches.[5]
Among successors worthy of mention are the zealous Gero (1012–23) and St. Norbert, prominent in the 12th century (1126–34), the founder of the Premonstratensian order.[6]
Political territory of the Prince-Archbishopric (lacking Jüterbog exclave) by 1648, over present-day Saxony-Anhalt
Archbishop Wichmann (1152–92) was more important as a sovereign and prince of the Holy Roman Empire than as a bishop. Wichmann sided with the emperor in the Great Saxon Revolt and was rewarded by recognising the archepiscopal and the cathedral capitular temporalities as a state of imperial immediacy within the Holy Roman Empire, thus Wichmann was the first to add the title secular prince to his ecclesiastical archbishop. Albrecht II (1205–32) quarrelled with Otto II, Margrave of Brandenburg (1198–1215), because he had pronounced the pope's ban against the latter and this war greatly damaged the archbishopric. In 1208 he began to build the present Cathedral of Magdeburg, which was only consecrated in 1263, and never entirely finished; Günther I (1277–79) hardly escaped a serious war with the Margrave Otto IV, who was incensed because his brother Eric of Brandenburg had not been elected archbishop. The Brandenburgers succeeded in forcing Günther I and Bernard III (1279–1281) to resign and in making Eric archbishop (1283–1295).
Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg (1513–45), on account of his insecure position, as well as being crippled by a perpetual lack of funds, gave some occasion for the spread of Lutheranism in his diocese, although himself opposing the Reformation. It is not true that he became a Lutheran and wished to retain his see as a secular principality, and just as untrue that in the Kalbe Parliament in 1541 he consented to the introduction of the Reformation in order to have his debts paid. His successors were the zealous Catholics John Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1545–1550), who however could accomplish very little, and Frederick IV of Brandenburg, who died in 1552.
Administrators who were secular princes now took the place of the archbishop, and they, as well as the majority of the cathedral chapter and the inhabitants of the archdiocese, were usually Protestant. They belonged to the Hohenzollern House of Brandenburg, which had adopted Calvinism in 1613. Christian William was taken prisoner in 1631, and went over to the Catholic Church in Vienna. At the time of the Peace of Prague (1635), the Archbishopric of Magdeburg fell to August, Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels. In the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), the expectancy to the archbishopric was promised to Brandenburg-Prussia upon the death of August. When the Saxon prince died in 1680, the archbishopric was secularised by Brandenburg and transformed into the Duchy of Magdeburg.
Sigismund of Brandenburg 1552–1566; papally confirmed as archbishop although Lutheran, since the Holy See still expected the new schism to be a temporary phenomenon
1566: Archdiocese ruled by Lutheran administrators
Diocese of Havelberg, Lutheran since 1558, the pertaining prince-bishopric secularised and merged into the Electorate of Brandenburg in 1598.
Diocese of Lebus since 1424 (before suffragan to Gniezno), Lutheran since 1555, pertaining temporalities (County of Beeskow) secularised and merged into the Electorate of Brandenburg in 1598.
Diocese of Naumburg-Zeitz, Lutheran between 1542 and 1547 and from 1562 on, the pertaining prince-bishopric secularised and merged into the Electorate of Saxony in 1615
^Bowlus, Charles R., The Battle of Lechfeld and its Aftermath, August 955: The End of the Age of Migrations in the Latin West. London: Routledge. 2016, p. 181 ISBN9781351894173
^Reuter, Timothy (1991). Germany in the Early Middle Ages 800–1056. Longman History of Germany. New York: Longman. p. 195. ISBN9780582490345.
^Thompson, James Westfall. Feudal Germany, Volume II. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1928, p. 644
^Kunkel, Thomas (11 May 2019). Man on Fire: The Life and Spirit of Norbert of Xanten. US: St. Norbert College Press. ISBN978-0-9851080-7-6.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Magdeburg". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
1 until 1648.2 until 1701.3 from 1648.4 until 1731.5 until 1705.6 until 1596.7 from 1708.8 until 1773.9 until 1640.10 until 1695.11 from 1701.12 until 1734.
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