Roman Catholic Diocese of Lavant

The Diocese of Lavant (also Lavanttal, ) was a suffragan bishopric of the Archdiocese of Salzburg, established in 1228 in the Lavant Valley of Carinthia. In 1859 the episcopal see was re-assigned to Maribor (Marburg an der Drau) in present-day Slovenia, while the Carinthian parishes passed to the Diocese of Gurk. The diocese became the Diocese of Maribor (Marburg, in Slovenia), separated from the Salzburg ecclesiastical province, and became a suffragan of the Archbishop of Ljubljana on 5 March 1962. The Bishop of Maribor kept the additional title of Bishop of Lavant. On 7 April 2006 the Diocese of Maribor was elevated to an archdiocese. While the bishops of Lavant bore the title of prince-bishops, this was purely honorary and they never became full-fledged prince-bishops with secular power over a self-ruling prince-bishopric (Hochstift), unlike the majority of the bishops in the Holy Roman Empire. They only exercised pastoral authority over their diocese like other ordinary bishops and for that reason, they did not have seat and vote in the Imperial Diet. History The original seat of the bishopric lay in the eastern part of Carinthia in the valley of the Lavant River. It was here, in the parish of Sankt Andrä, that Archbishop Eberhard II of Salzburg established a collegiate chapter with the consent of Pope Innocent III and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II on 20 August 1212. Its regular canons followed the Rule of St. Augustine; its members were chosen from the cathedral chapter of Salzburg. In about the year 1223, the Archbishop of Salzburg asked Pope Honorius III to allow him to found a bishopric at Sankt Andrä on account of its great remoteness and the difficulty of travelling there. After the pope had had the archbishop's request examined by commissioners and gave his consent, Eberhard drew up the deed of foundation on 10 May 1228, wherein he secured possession of the episcopal chair for himself and his successors in perpetuity. He named as first suffragan bishop his court chaplain Ulrich (died 1257), who had previously been priest of Haus im Ennstal in the Duchy of Styria. St. Andrew's Church in Sankt Andrä became the diocese's cathedral.