[1] It goes back to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bamberg established at the 1007 synod in Frankfurt, at the behest of King Henry II to further expand the spread of Christianity in the Franconian lands.

The bishops obtained the status of Imperial immediacy about 1245 and ruled their estates as Prince-bishops until they were subsumed to the Electorate of Bavaria in the course of the German Mediatisation in 1802.

Part of the Franconian Circle (territories grouped together within the Holy Roman Empire for defensive purposes) from 1500 onwards, the Bamberg territory was bordered, among others, by the Prince-Bishopric of Würzburg to the west, by the Hohenzollern margraviate of Brandenburg-Ansbach and the Free Imperial City of Nuremberg to the south, by the margraviate of Brandenburg-Bayreuth to the east and by the Wettin duchy of Saxe-Coburg to the north.

The Prince-bishopric was also vested with large possessions within the Duchy of Carinthia that were strategically important for crossing the Eastern Alps, including the towns of Villach, Feldkirchen, Wolfsberg and Tarvis, located at the trade route to Venice, as well as Kirchdorf an der Krems in the Archduchy of Austria.

The king, having suppressed the revolt of Margrave Henry of Schweinfurt in 1003, intended to strengthen his rule and to create a new diocese that would aid in the final conquest of paganism in the Franconian area around Bamberg.

The 39th bishop, Georg Schenk von Limpurg had a procedure for the judgment of capital crimes (Halsgerichtsordnung) drawn up by Johann of Schwarzenberg in 1507, which later became a model for the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina agreed at the 1530 Diet of Augsburg.

Bishop Georg, though a confidant of Emperor Maximilian I, was inclined toward the Reformation movement of Martin Luther, which caused a violent social outbreak under his successor Weigand, ruling from 1522 to 1556.

Morevover, the city suffered severely in the Second Margrave War (1552–54), when Albert Alcibiades' forces occupied large parts of the bishopric.

Bishop Johann Georg fled to his remote Carinthian estates in 1631 and his successor Franz von Hatzfeld was likewise expelled, when the Bamberg and Würzburg bishoprics was placed under the jurisdiction of Prince Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, who obtained the title of a "Duke of Franconia" from the hands of the Swedish chancellor Axel Oxenstierna in 1633.

Though he once again returned in 1800 and appointed his nephew Georg Karl Ignaz von Fechenbach zu Laudenbach coadjutor, he had to face the occupation by the Bavarian troops of Elector Maximilian IV Joseph in 1802.