MAGDEBURG, ARCHBISHOPRIC OF: A former archbishopric, named from an ancient city of Germany, situated on the Elbe, 88 m. w.s.w. of Berlin. The town was an important commercial center as early as the reign of Charlemagne, and its oldest church is supposed to date from this period. In the tenth century, when the city belonged to the diocese of Halberstadt, it contained a parish church, and on Sept. 21, 937, Otho I. founded there a Benedictine monastery, which he endowed richly. Later he conceived the plan of transferring the episcopal palace from Halberstadt to Magdeburg, incorporating the monastery with it, and trans forming the bishopric into an archbishopric for the Wends. In 955 he assured himself of the papal sanction through Abbot Hadamar of Fulda, but his plans failed on account of the opposition of Archbishop William of Mainz, who refused to re linquish Halberstadt and proposed to separate Magdeburg from the diocese of Halberstadt and create of it a new bishopric among the Wends. This plan was carried out. In the Roman synod of Feb. 12, 962, Magdeburg was made an archbish opric with jurisdiction over all future Wendish di oceses, according to the emperor's wish. The final negotiations took place at Ravenna in Oct., 968, when Archbishop Hatto II., who had succeeded William seven months previously at Mainz, agreed to the creation of the new archbishopric. Otho appointed Adalbert, abbot of Weiasenburg in Al sace, the first archbishop. The archdiocese of Magdeburg comprised the dioceses which already existed in Brandenburg and Havelberg, as well as the new bishoprics of Merseburg, Meissen, and Zeitz, thus stretching from the Saale and Elbe in the west to the Oder in the east.

(A. Hauck.)

Bibliography: Sources are the Geata archiepiscaporum Mapdeburgenaium, and the Catalogi, ed. W. Schum, in MGH, Script, xiv (1883). 381 sqq., 484-488; Annales Magdeburpenais, ed. G. H. Pertz, ib., xvi (1859), 105-198; G. A. von Mtilverstedt, ReOesta arcAiepiscopatus Magdeburpenaie, 4 vols., Magdeburg, 1878-99; and Die Mapdeb. 3ch6ppenchronik, ed. W. Janieke, in Chroniken der deutschen Stttdte, vol. vii., Leipsic, 1889; Gams, Series episcoporum, p. 288. Consult: F. W. Hoffmann, Geschichte der Stall Magdeburg, 2 vols., Magdeburg, 1885-86; W. Kawerau, Aua Mapdeburpa Verpangenheit, Halle, 1888; K. Uhlirz, Geschichte des Erzbistums Magdeburg, Magdeburg, 1887; C. Eubel, Hierarchic catholica medii a'uii, 2 vols., Münster, 1898-1901; Hauck, KD, vols. iii.-iv.