In order to specify this territorial meaning the term Stift is then composed with hoch as the compound Hochstift, denoting a prince-bishopric, or Erzstift for a prince-archbishopric.
Das Stift [plural die Stifte] (literally, the 'donation'), denotes in its original meaning the donated or else acquired fund of landed estates whose revenues are taken to maintain a college and the pertaining church (Stiftskirche, i.e. collegiate church) and its collegiate or capitular canons (Stiftsherr[en]) or canonesses (Stiftsfrau[en]).
In some Lutheran states the endowments of women's monasteries were preserved, with the nunneries converted into secular convents in order to maintain unmarried or widowed noble women (the so-called conventuals, German: Konventualinnen), therefore called ladies' foundations (Damenstift) or noble damsels' foundations (Danish: Adelige Jomfrukloster, German: [Adeliges] Fräuleinstift, Swedish: Jungfrustift).
Many of these convents were dissolved in Communist countries after the Second World War, but, in Denmark and the former West Germany, many continue to exist, such as the Stift Fischbeck.
Many secular or religious ancient or modern charitable endowments of earning assets in order to maintain hospitals or homes for the elderly, for orphans, for widows, for the poor, for the blind or for people with other handicaps bear the name Stift, often combined with the name of the main donators or the beneficiaries, such as Altenstift (endowment for the elderly; see e.g. Cusanusstift, a hospital).
Das Stift is also used – totum pro parte – as the expression for the collegial body of persons (originally canons or canonesses) who administered it and for the building (compound) they used to meet or live in.
If a canon-law college or the chapter and/or the bishop of a cathedral managed not only to gain estates and their revenues as a Stift but also the feudal overlordship to them as a secular ruler with imperial recognition, then such ecclesiastical estates (temporalities) formed a territorial principality within the Holy Roman Empire with the rank of an imperial state.
[4] For the three prince-electorates of Cologne (Kurköln), Mainz (Kurmainz) and Trier (Kurtrier), which were simultaneously archbishoprics the corresponding expression is Kurerzstift (electorate-archbishopric).