ABSTRACT
Bamberg and Eichstätt.1 Like any other region of Catholic Europe, a dense web of patronage networks spanned the region, with the bishops, the monastic houses, the Palatine elector and the local nobility holding rights to present clergy to benefices. The territory was amply endowed with monasteries; there were old Benedictine abbeys at Reichenbach, Ensdorf, Weissenohe, Michelfeld and Kastl, Cistercian abbeys in Walderbach and Waldsassen, a Cistercian nunnery at Seligenporten, a Premonstratensian canonry at Speinshart and a Bridgetine house at Gnadenberg, this the latest foundation (1426). Less prominent were the mendicant orders, although the Franciscans had a convent at Amberg. The abbeys had their bench in the local Landtag, alongside the nobility and the towns, until their secularisation with the Reformation, after which their properties and jurisdictions were administered by the elector’s officials.
