Würzburg Documents

These documents, dating from 4 September 1711 to 22 December 1726, originate from the diocese of Würzburg. The time span covers three different Prince-Bishops: Johann Philipp von Greiffenclau zu Vollraths, Johann Philipp Franz von Schönborn, and Christoph Franz von Hutten. As Prince-Bishops, these leaders were responsible not only for the religious concerns of the community, but also for the social, economic, and political welfare of the state. While the documents are, at this point, uncataloged, you can search them by subject and number.

Johann Philipp von Greiffenclau was born on 13 February 1652. Upon the death of Johann Gottfried von Guttenberg (1645-1698), there ensued a brief struggle for the bishopric. The Viennese court favored a union between the dioceses of Bamburg and Würzburg by the appointment of Lothar Franz von Schönborn, then bishop of Bamberg, as the new bishop of Würzburg. Instead, on 9 February 1699, Greiffenclau became Bishop of Würzburg. Major topics in the documents from his reign include disease and agriculture. After a long illness, he passed away on 3 August 1719 (see doc. 315).

Johann Philipp Franz von Schönborn, born 15 January 1673, became Bishop of Würzburg on 18 September 1719. Under his reign, the castle Schloß Mariaberg was built, and the city thrived. While returning from Mergentheim, Schönborn died suddenly on 18 August 1724 (see doc. 421o).

Christoph Franz von Hutten, born 19 May 1673, succeeded Schönborn as Bishop on 2 October 1724. Hutten's reign continued until 25 March 1729, just over two years beyond the end of this set of documents.

It would appear that these documents were originally issued individually. Relatively near to the time of issue, it seems these documents were bound together chronologically in one or more books. Instead of numbering each page, however, each document was given one number, regardless of the number of pages it contained. Before the collection was received by the library here, most of the documents had been separated back into single issues. The numbering system used in the presumed book format has been retained here as the item number for each document. The numbers range from 250 to 497.

Regretably, the following three numbers are missing from this collection: 363, 374, 449.

The documents appear in four basic sizes. The standard size is a half sheet of paper, 21 cm x 34 cm. (Sometimes this is a folded full sheet of paper.) Letters are used to indicate the other three sizes. A full sheet of paper, 42 cm x 34 cm, is indicated by a single letter o (ex. 409o). Those few documents that are larger than a full sheet are indicated by a double letter o (ex. 426oo). The letter m is used to designate those documents smaller than the standard half sheet, approx. one quarter page in size, 16.5 cm x 19.5 cm (ex. 366m). The one document marked with an h (461h) was originally a standard half sheet; it was folded in half at some point, split into two parts, and is now only a quarter page (missing the left half page).