Archbishopric of Magdeburg

After the wars of the years 940 and 954, when the Polabian Slavs, as far as the Oder, the Magyars had advanced so far into Germany, that Augsburg was threatened. At the Battle of Lechfeld in 955 they were defeated and repelled. Immediately in 955 Otto the Great 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. 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 convents mentioned above (founded in 937) were converted into a mensa for the new archbishopric, and the monks transferred to the Berge Convent. The archiepiscopal church made St. Maurice its patron, and in addition received new donations and grants from Otto.

Cathedral of Magdeburg

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. Then, 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, afterwards 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 by bribery and fraud obtained possession of the See of Magdeburg, and also succeeded temporarily in grasping the Bishopric of Merseburg (until 1004). Among successors worthy of mention are the zealous Gero (1012–23); Werner (1063–78), who was killed in battle with Henry IV; St. Norbert, prominent in the 12th century (1126–34), the founder of the Premonstratensian order.

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.

The remaining Catholics in the area were under the jurisdiction of the Apostolic Vicariate of the Northern Missions between 1670 and 1709, and again from 1780 to 1821. Between 1709 and 1780 the Apostolic Vicariate of Upper and Lower Saxony was the competent Catholic jurisdiction. In 1821, the area was transferred in Catholic respect to the Diocese of Paderborn. In 1994, the Diocese of Magdeburg was founded in the area.

Ecclesiastical Province of Magdeburg (in green) amidst other provinces in Central Europe.

The archbishop of Magdeburg was the metropolitan of the Ecclesiastical Province of Magdeburg (de facto dissolved in 1648), with the archbishops also holding – besides the archbishop-elector of Mainz – the honorary title Primas Germaniae. The suffragans of Magdeburg were:

• Diocese of Brandenburg, Lutheran since 1539, the pertaining prince-bishopric secularised and merged into the Electorate of Brandenburg in 1571.
• 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 Merseburg, Lutheran since 1544, the pertaining prince-bishopric secularised and merged into the Electorate of Saxony in 1565
• 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

Residences of the Archbishops of Magdeburg were:

• 
  Giebichenstein Castle in Halle (Saale)
• 
  Moritzburg in Halle
• 
  The New Residence in Halle
• 
  Calbe Castle (secondary residence)
• 
  The Archbishop's Palace in Magdeburg

• Bull of Gniezno

• Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Magdeburg" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Magdeburg". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.