The transient authority of
archbishops was not gained without opposition. The
German kings
Otto IV and
Conrad IV in 1308 granted charters to the city of
Trier, authorizing the jurisdiction of its archbishop,
Baldwin of Luxembourg. This prince, brother of
Emperor Henry VII, who ruled from 1307 to 1354, was the real founder of the power of Trier. Although his predecessor, Diether III of Nassau, had left the electorate heavily encumbered with debt, Baldwin raised it to great prosperity with the help of the emperors Henry VII, Louis the Bavarian and Charles IV, to whom he had rendered active political and military support. He enlarged his territory almost to its ultimate extent. He assumed the title of arch-chancellor of Gaul and Aries (or Burgundy). In 1315 he accepted the claim of the archbishop of Cologne to hold the highest rank among the spiritual princes of the Empire after the archbishop of Mainz, with the elector of Trier holding third place in the electoral college. After Baldwin's death the prosperity of Trier was reduced by wars and disputes between rival claimants. In 1456, the estates united for the purpose of restoring order and secured the right to elect their archbishop. Throughout the Middle Ages, the
Sancta Civitas Trevirorum [Latin, “Holy City of Trier”] was a flourishing site of religious foundations and became a great center of monastic learning. In the latter half of the 16th century the supervision of the electorate's educational system was taken over by the Jesuits. The university, founded in 1473, continued in operation until 1797. Archbishop-Elector
Richard von Greiffenklau (1467–1531) successfully opposed the Reformation. One of his acts was the exhibition to the public of the
Seamless Robe of Jesus, which is believed to have been worn by
Jesus before
his crucifixion. Trier thereafter became one of the major destinations of Christian pilgrims. and
County of Sponheim During the
Thirty Years' War, Archbishop-Elector
Philip Christopher von Sotern favored France and accepted its protection in 1631. The following year, the French army drove all the Spanish and Swedish troops from the electorate, but in March 1635 the Spaniards returned, recaptured Trier and took the archbishop-elector prisoner. He remained in captivity for ten years, but in 1645 was reinstated by the French and confirmed in his authority by the
Treaty of Westphalia. The French occupied Trier in 1674 and 1688, but each time their occupation was brief. The last archbishop-elector, Clement Wenceslaus (1768-1802), granted toleration to the Protestants in 1782. He established his seat of power at
Coblenz in 1786, but in 1794 he was forced to flee
Napoleon and his
Grand Army. Under the
Peace of Luneville in 1801 France annexed all the territories of the Electorate of Trier to the west of the Rhine and, in 1802, the archbishop-elector abdicated. A new diocese was created for the French department of the Sarre with Trier as its seat. The electorate’s territories on the east side of the Rhine were secularized and given to Nassau-Weilburg in 1803. In 1814, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, almost all the former lands of the electorate were allotted to
Prussia together with the archdiocese. Another was founded in 1821 with virtually the same boundaries, but it was put under the control of the archbishop of Cologne. ==Archbishops of Trier==