princearchbishop
PrinceArchbishop is a historical term used to describe an archbishop who also held secular, princely authority within a territorial state of the Holy Roman Empire. A prince-archbishop governed both a church jurisdiction and a ruler’s domain, combining spiritual leadership with temporal rule. The position was part of a broader category of ecclesiastical princes in medieval and early modern Europe, where certain archbishoprics were sovereign principalities within the imperial structure. In English-language sources the title is often rendered as prince-archbishop or prince-bishop, reflecting its dual religious and political nature.
In practice, prince-archbishops sat as princes of the empire and often took part in imperial governance, including
The most famous instances were the prince-archbishops of Mainz, Cologne, and Trier, who governed archbishoprics that
The system declined in the wake of secularization and the mediatization of the early 19th century, culminating