CHAPTER SIX CONFESSION AND THE LIMITS OF COOPERATION In 1625, the widow Margaretha von Würtzburg remembered a Sunday in 1608 when the prince-bishop of Bamberg and his retinue came to the family’s church in Rothenkirchen. Th ere, Prince-Bishop Johann Philipp von Gebsattel even attended a Lutheran church service. Aft er- ward, over dinner, the company discussed the pastor’s sermon, even praising it.1 Margaretha, thinking of that day, remarked how strange everything seemed seventeen years later, when she was desperately fi ghting to keep Rothenkirchen Protestant. As in earlier times, mem- bers of the Würtzburg family held infl uential positions in the prince- bishopric, but during the Th irty Years War these kinship ties did not save Rothenkirchen from an attack from Bamberg that permanently forced Catholicism on the Würtzburg family’s subjects and cost the family its church, which Bamberg never returned. Relations had not always been bad. For many years, the Prince- Bishopric of Bamberg was a model of how the imperial knights could negotiate political and religious crises aft er the breakup of the Latin Church in a way that challenges the conventional modern views that Catholics and Protestants engaged in a fi erce struggle over religion. Th ere was no such development in Bamberg until 1594, when the prince-bishop made confession a more important factor in the rela- tions between his government and the imperial knights. During the period from 1609 to 1619, the imperial knights associated with Bamberg found it increasingly diffi cult to remain neutral and to protect their rights against the prince-bishop. Under Johann Gottfried von Aschhausen, Bamberg aggressively combated Protestantism, making confl ict with the imperial knights unavoidable. His policies included seizing the churches of the imperial knights and converting their sub- jects to Catholicism. In the years leading up to the Th irty Years War, however, the part- nership between Bamberg and the imperial knights remained intact. Imperial knights continued to serve as offi ceholders, had fi efs from the 1 StAB, Schloßarchiv Mitwitz, H-I, 442, letter no. 3. 164 chapter six prince-bishopric, and sent their sons into the cathedral chapter. As a corporation, the imperial knights strove to overlook confessional dif- ferences. Furthermore, the Franconian imperial knights were still will- ing to consider alliances that ran against the confession of the majority of their membership, such as when they discussed joining forces with the Franconian prince-bishoprics in 1616. Th is attempt at an alliance failed because it would have required the prince-bishoprics to address the grievances of the imperial knights, one of the most important being their claim to the ius reformandi. Instead, Johann Gottfried remained at odds with imperial knights and employed violent means to purge their churches and their subjects of Protestantism. Internal confl ict between the imperial knights and the prince-bishop of Bamberg became embedded in larger issues in the Holy Roman Empire. By 1619, the Th irty Years War had succeeded in dividing the imperial knights and the prince-bishopric into two camps divided by confession. When Johann Philipp von Gebsattel was elected prince-bishop aft er Neithard von Th üngen’s death in 1599, good relations between the prince-bishopric and the imperial knights were restored. His easygoing relations with the imperial knights meant that his Counter-Reformation policies were limited to Bamberg’s subjects.2 Aft er Johann Philipp’s death and the election of another reform-minded prince-bishop in 1609, Bamberg and the imperial knights associated with it were drawn into the greater religious struggles within the Holy Roman Empire. Rome and the Catholic League—most prominently Bavaria—took spe- cial care to see to it that a reform-oriented prince-bishop succeeded Johann Philipp in Bamberg. Johann Philipp’s successor, Johann Gottfried von Aschhausen, did not disappoint their expectations. In 1610, Johann Gottfried saw to it that the Jesuits were invited to Bamberg and that Bamberg joined the Catholic League. Th e prince-bishop ordered visitations of the prince-bishopric in 1611 and 1616. Although scholars see his reign as a victory for a more aggressive Catholicism in Bamberg,3 the visitations demonstrated that there were still unworthy priests, churches in poor condition, and indiff erent parishioners who 2 Weiss, “Gegenreformation,” 13; StAB, Hochstift Bamberg Neuverzeichnis Akten 485, Jnstruction Bischofs Johann Philipps zu Bamberg wegen der Religionsreformation, Aug. 26, 1600. 3 Weiss, “Reform und Modernisierung,” 185; Wurm, “Bischöfe und Kapitel,” 89. Th is attitude among scholars is infl uenced by the opinion of seventeenth-century con- temporaries of Aschhausen. Weiss, Exemte Bistum Bamberg, 394–97..