Schönborn is a noble and mediatised former sovereign princely family from the former Holy Roman Empire. Several members of the family have held high offices of the Roman Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire over the course of centuries, including as Bishops, Prince-Bishops, Cardinals and Prince-Electors. In addition to several family members having been elected monarchs of ecclesiastical principalities—the Electorate of Mainz, the Prince-Bishopric of Würzburg, the Prince-Bishopric of Worms, the Prince-Bishopric of Speyer, the Electorate of Trier, and the Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg—the family possessed a fiefdom in Franconia that held imperial immediacy, and was thus a principality of the Holy Roman Empire, the state of Schönborn.
Schönborn appeared first in the County of Katzenelnbogen in 1373 when Gilbrecht of Schönborn, a vassal, served Eberhard V of Katzenelnbogen. Later it was a German statelet ruled by the Schönborn family located in Franconia and areas at the Main River in Germany, located to the south of Bamberg and to the southeast of Würzburg.