Bishop of Merseburg
| Prince-Bishopric of Merseburg | ||||||||||
| Hochstift Merseburg | ||||||||||
| State of the Holy Roman Empire | ||||||||||
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 Bishoprics of Merseburg, Naumburg and Zeitz (violet) about 1250
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| Capital | Merseburg | |||||||||
| Languages | Upper Saxon | |||||||||
| Religion | Roman Catholic | |||||||||
| Government | Principality | |||||||||
| Historical era | Middle Ages | |||||||||
| • | Bishopric established | 967 | ||||||||
| • | Prince-bishopric | 1004 | ||||||||
| • | Turned Protestant | 1544 | ||||||||
| • | Incorporated by Saxony | 1565 | ||||||||
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Coat of arms
The Bishopric of Merseburg was an episcopal see on the eastern border of the medieval Duchy of Saxony with its centre in Merseburg, where Merseburg Cathedral was constructed. The see was founded in 967 by Emperor Otto I at the same time in the same manner as those of Meissen and Zeitz (from 1029: Naumburg), all suffragan dioceses of the Archbishopric of Magdeburg as part of a plan to bind the adjacent Slavic ("Wendish") lands in the Saxon Eastern March beyond the Saale River more closely to the Holy Roman Empire.
The prince-bishopric was re-established by King Henry II of Germany in 1004. It then covered a considerable small territory stretching from the Saale up to the Mulde River and the Margraviate of Meissen in the east.
About 919 Otto's father King Henry the Fowler had a Kaiserpfalz erected in Merseburg in the Eastphalian Hassegau, hometown of his first wife Hatheburg. The establishment of the diocese traced back to a vow Otto took before his victory against the Hungarians at the Battle of Lechfeld on Saint Laurence day, 10 August 955. Confirmed by Pope John XIII at the 968 synod in Ravenna, the first Merseburg bishop was Boso, a Bavarian monk descending from St. Emmeram's Abbey in Regensburg (Ratisbon), already distinguished by his missionary labours among the pagan Sorbs.
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