City and former principality of the Holy Roman Empire. It grew up in the early 10th century around the Castle of Babenburg and was the seat of a bishopric erected by Emperor Henry II (1008) who gave large temporal possessions to the diocese. Gifts from princes and emperors increased the territory until it included many estates in the Duchies of Carinthia, Salzburg, the Upper Palatinate, in Thuringia, and on the Danube and the granting of many privileges established the secular power of the bishops. From the 13th century ruled this principality as princes of the empire, exercising temporal jurisdiction, disturbed at times by revolts in the city, over a territory of about 2000 square miles. In 1802Bavaria seized the prince-bishopric, then measuring 1,276 square miles with a population of 207,000, from the last prince-bishop, Franz von Buseck, and secularization was accomplished in 1803, the territory passing to the Elector of Bavaria. By the terms of the Concordat between Rome and Bavaria, 1817, the present Archdiocese of Bamberg was erected. Besides the cathedral built by Saint Otto and completed in its present Romanesque form in the 13th century, there are the 11th-century basilica of Saint James, the 12th-century abbey-church of Saint Michael, and the palace of the prince-bishops built in 1695 by Lothair Franz.