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Bishopric of Hildesheim
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The Bishopric of Hildesheim is a Roman Catholic diocese in Lower Saxony; it was founded in 815. The Bishopric of Hildesheim was also a state of the Holy Roman Empire from the Middle Ages until 1803. It is named after its capital, Hildesheim.
After the Duchy of Saxony had been conquered by the Frankish Kingdom, Hildesheim was founded as a missionary diocese by King Louis the Pious in 815. His son Louis the German appointed the famous former archbishop of Rheims, Ebbo, as bishop between 845 and 847.
In the 16th century, most of the diocese as well as most of the state of Hildesheim switched to protestantism. But the Bishopric managed to retain its independence from the surrounding Protestant states of Brunswick-Lüneburg, mostly because its bishops were members of the powerful House of Wittelsbach from 1573 until 1761. Among them was Klemens August of Bavaria, who was bishop from 1723 until 1761.
During the German Mediatisation of 1803, Hildesheim lost its statehood, and the territory was given to Prussia. Prussia lost it soon thereafter to the Kingdom of Westphalia. The Congress of Vienna of 1815 gave the territory to the Kingdom of Hanover.
The Diocese of Hildesheim continues to exist; today, it covers those parts of the State of Lower Saxony that are east of the River Weser. Only 11% of the population of this area are members of the Roman Catholic Church, however. Norbert Trelle is since 2006 the bishop of the Diocese. The diocese is subordinate to the Archdiocese of Hamburg.
Bishops of Hildesheim include:
- Gunthar (815-834)
- Ebbo (835-847)
- Saint Altfrid (847-874)
- Saint Bernward (993-1022)
- Saint Godehard (1022-1038)
- Maximilian Henry of Bavaria (1650-1688)
- Klemens August of Bavaria (1723-1761)
- Adolf Bertram (1906-1914)
- Official site
- At Catholic-Hierarchy.org
- Map of Lower Saxony in 1789
- Hildesheim. Catholic Encyclopedia. Retrieved on 2007-02-18.
 Holy Roman Empire – Lower Saxon Circle (1500–1806) |
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| Ecclesiastical princes | Bremen* | Halberstadt* | Hildesheim | Lübeck | Magdeburg* | Ratzeburg (until 1701) | Schwerin* |
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| Secular princes | Bremen† | Brunswick: Blankenburg (until 1731), Calenberg‡, Celle, Grubenhagen‡, Lüneburg‡, Wolfenbüttel | Holstein: Glückstadt, Gottorp | Mecklenburg: Güstrow (until 1695), Schwerin, Strelitz | Rantzau (until 1734) | Regenstein | Saxe-Lauenburg‡ | |
| Imperial cities | Bremen | Goslar | Hamburg | Lübeck | Mühlhausen | Nordhausen | |
| * until 1648 † from 1648 ‡ until 1705 | ||
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| (Archdioceses in bold) Aachen | Augsburg | Bamberg | Berlin | Cologne | Dresden-Meissen | Eichstätt | Erfurt | Essen | Freiburg | Fulda | Görlitz | Hamburg | Hildesheim | Limburg | Magdeburg | Mainz | Munich and Freising | Münster | Osnabrück | Paderborn | Passau | Regensburg | Rottenburg-Stuttgart | Speyer | Trier | Würzburg |