Archbishopric of Riga

The Archbishopric of Riga was a Catholic diocese and civil government in Medieval Livonia, subject to the Holy See, established in 1186 and ended in 1561 — the ecclesiastical principality shown on the map. The diocese was established in 1186 as the Bishopric of Livonia at Ikšķile on the Daugava; after its seat was moved to Riga, it became the Bishopric of Riga in 1202 and was elevated to an archbishopric in 1255, the metropolitan of the Livonian church. The archbishops of Riga were also the secular rulers of Riga, prince-prelates who held their own lands between the Teutonic Order's Livonian branch and the free city, coining, judging and warring in their own name through the Middle Ages — the state the map records in its final century. In 1561, during the Reformation and the collapse of the Livonian Confederation in the Livonian War, the archbishopric's temporal rule ended, its lands passing under the control of the Powers that partitioned old Livonia.