Free City of Mainz

The Free City of Mainz was a city-state within the Holy Roman Empire that existed from 1244 to 1462, in the late Middle Ages. It began when Archbishop Siegfried III granted Mainz a city charter in 1244, which gave its citizens the right to establish and elect a city council. The city stood on the seat of one of the great church centres of the Empire. Its archbishops, including Lullus, Rabanus Maurus and Willigis, had a central part in the Christianization of Germanic and Slavic communities, and from Willigis until the Empire dissolved in 1806 they served as its archchancellors and ranked highest among the seven Electors. The free city period ended after 1461, when a conflict broke out between Diether von Isenburg, elected archbishop by the cathedral chapter and backed by the citizens, and Adolf II von Nassau, who had been named by the pope.