Bishop of Lavant

The Diocese of Lavant(tal) (Latin: Lavantina) was a suffragan bishopric of the Archdiocese of Salzburg, established 1228 in the Lavant Valley of Carinthia. In 1859 the episcopal see was re-assigned to Maribor (Marburg an der Drau) in present-day Slovenia, while the Carinthian parishes passed to the Diocese of Gurk. The Diocese of Maribor (Marburg, in Slovenia) was later separated from the Salzburg ecclesiastical province and became a suffragan of the Archbishop of Ljubljana on 5 March 1962. On 7 April 2006 the diocese was elevated to the Archdiocese of Maribor.

While the bishops of Lavant bore the title of prince (Fürst), this was purely honorary and they never became full-fledged prince-bishops with secular power over an independent prince-bishopric (Hochstift), unlike as the ruling Prince-Bishops of Passau or Freising or the Prince-Archbishops of Salzburg. They only exercised pastoral authority over their diocese like other ordinary bishops and for that reason, they did not have seat and voice in the Imperial Diet.

The original seat of the bishopric lay in the eastern part of Carinthia in the valley of the Lavant River. It was here, in the parish of Sankt Andrä, that Archbishop Eberhard II of Salzburg had established, on 20 August 1212, with the consent of Pope Innocent III and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, a collegiate chapter, the regular canons of which followed the Rule of St. Augustine; its members were chosen from the cathedral chapter of Salzburg. On account of the great remoteness and the difficulty of travelling, the Salzburg Archbishop, about the year 1223, asked Pope Honorius III to allow him to found a bishopric at Sankt Andrä. After the pope had had the archbishop's request examined by commissioners, and had given his consent, Eberhard drew up the deed of foundation, on 10 May 1228, wherein he secured the possession of the episcopal chair for himself and his successors in perpetuity. He named as first suffragan bishop his court chaplain Ulrich (died 1257), who had formerly been priest of Haus im Ennstal, in the Duchy of Styria.

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