Prince-Bishopric of Warmia - Within The Territory of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Within The Territory of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

The Second Peace of Thorn (1466) removed the bishopric from the protectorate of the Teutonic Knights and the same protector role went to the crown of Poland. So the third of its diocesan territory forming the prince-episcopal temporalities was disentangled from Teutonic Prussia, while the other two thirds of the diocese proper remained within the Order State.

The bishops insisted on keeping their imperial privileges and ruled the territory as de facto prince-bishops although the Polish king did not share this point of view. This led to conflict when the Polish king claimed the right to name the bishops, as he did in the Kingdom of Poland. The chapter did not accept this and elected Nicolaus von Tüngen as bishop, which led to the War of the Priests (1467–1479) between King Casimir IV Jagiellon (1447–1492) and Nikolaus von Tüngen (1467–89) who was supported by the Teutonic Order and King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary.

The Polish king accepted Tüngen as prince-bishop in the First Treaty of Piotrków Trybunalski, while Tüngen inversely accepted the Polish king as protector and obliged the chapter to elect only candidates approved by the Polish king. However, when Tüngen died in 1489, the chapter elected Lucas Watzenrode as bishop and Pope Innocent VIII supported Watzenrode against the wishes of Casimir IV Jagiellon, who preferred his son Frederic. This problem finally led to the Exempt Status of the bishopric in 1512 by Pope Julius II. In the Second Treaty of Piotrków Trybunalski (December 7, 1512) Warmia conceded to King Alexander Jagiellon a limited right to propose four candidates to the chapter for the election, who however had to be native Prussians.

The Diocese of Warmia lost the two thirds of its diocese within Teutonic Prussia after 1525 when the Order's Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach converted the monastic state into Ducal Prussia, himself ruling as duke. On 10 December 1525, at their session in Königsberg, the Prussian estates established the Lutheran Church in Ducal Prussia by deciding the Church Order.

Thus Bishop Georg von Polenz of Pomesania and Samland, who had converted to Lutheranism in 1523, took over and introduced the Protestant Reformation also in the ducal two thirds of Warmia diocese, territorially surrounding the actual prince-episcopal third. With the formal abolition of the now Lutheran bishopric of Samland in 1587 the now Lutheran Warmian parishes became subject to the Sambian Consistory (later moved to Königsberg). As a result, even within ducal Warmia, the vast majority of burghers had become Lutherans.

After the Council of Trent the later cardinal Stanislaus Hosius (1551–79) held a diocesan synode (1565) and the same year the Jesuits came to Braunsberg. While nearly all of Ducal Prussia took on Lutheranism, the prince-bishops Hosius and Cromer and the Jesuits were instrumental in keeping much of the prince-episcopal Warmians Catholic. The Congregation of St. Catherine, founded at Braunsberg by Regina Protmann, engaged in education, especially schooling for girls. However even Hosius and Cromer strongly defended the exempt status of Ermland against the many attempts of the Polish kings to annex it to Poland-Lithuania after 1569.

In this period the cathedral chapter mostly elected bishops of Polish nationality. The faithful in the northern part of the diocese were by large majority ethnic Germans. Following King Sigismund III's contract on regency in Ducal Prussia (1605) with Joachim Frederick of Brandenburg, and his Treaty of Warsaw (1611) with John Sigismund of Brandenburg, confirming the co-enfeoffment of the Berlin Hohenzollern with Ducal Prussia, these two rulers guaranteed free practice of Catholic religion in all of prevailingly Lutheran Ducal Prussia.

So some churches were reconsecrated to or newly built for Catholic worship (e.g. St. Nicholas, Elbing, St. John the Baptist, Königsberg). Those new Catholic churches located in the ducal two thirds of Ermland diocese and in diocesan territory of the suppressed Samland see were then subordinated to the Warmian Frombork see. This development was recognised by the Holy See in 1617 by de jure extending Ermland's jurisdiction over Samland's former diocesan territory, only containing few immigrated Catholics. In practice the ducal government obstructed Catholic exercise in many ways.

Until the late 18th century, the prince-bishop was also a Ober-President of all of Prussia combined as part of the Senate Conventus generalus Terrarum Prussiae.

As a result of the First Partition of Poland in 1772, Warmia was incorporated into the Kingdom of Prussia's province of East Prussia as bishopric of Ermland.