page_title: Roman Catholic Diocese of Sion
section_title: The prince-bishops
hierarchical_section_title: Roman Catholic Diocese of Sion / History / The prince-bishops
caption_attribution_description: English: Switzerland in 1378, cropped from a map of the Holy Roman Empire as at the death of Charles IV.
context_page_description: The Diocese of Sion is a Roman Catholic ecclesiastical territory in the canton of Valais, Switzerland. It is the oldest bishopric in the country and one of the oldest north of the Alps. The history of the Bishops of Sion, of the Abbey of St. Maurice of Valais as a whole are inextricably intertwined.
context_section_description: About 999, the last king of Upper Burgundy, Rudolph III, granted the Countship of Valais to Bishop Hugo (998-1017); this union of the spiritual and secular powers made the prince-bishop the most powerful ruler in the valley of the Upper Rhone, the region called the Valais. Taking this donation as a basis, the bishops of Sion extended their secular power, and the religious metropolis of the valley became also the political centre. However, the union of the two powers was the cause of violent disputes in the following centuries. For, while the spiritual jurisdiction of the bishop, as Bishop of Sion, extended over the whole valley of the Rhone above Lake Geneva, the Countship of Valais included only the upper part of the valley, reaching to the confluence of the Trient and the Rhone. The attempts of the bishops of Sion to carry their secular power farther down the Rhone were bitterly and successfully opposed by the abbots of Saint-Maurice, who had obtained large possessions in Lower Valais.
  The medieval bishops of Sion were generally appointed from the younger sons of noble families of Savoy and Valais and often drew the resources of the see into the feuds of these families. Moreover, the bishops were vigorously opposed, as a matter of principle, by the petty feudal nobles of Valais, each in their fortified castle on rocky heights, seeking to evade the supremacy of the bishop who was at the same time count and prefect of the Holy Roman Empire. Especially in the 14th and 15th centuries, the benefactors in these traditional struggles were often the rich peasant communities of Upper Valais, which were called later the Sieben Zehnden (the "seven tithings"), who exacted increasing political rights as the price of support, beginning with the success of the rebellion of 1415–1420.  
  Bishop William IV of Raron (1437-1457) was obliged to relinquish civil and criminal jurisdiction over the sieben Zehnten by the Treaty of Naters in 1446, while a revolt of his subjects compelled Bishop Jost of Silinen (1482-1496) to flee from the diocese. In 1428-1447, the Valais witch trials raged through the area.
  The bishops of Sion minted their own money from earliest times, possibly from as early as the Carolingian era, and certainly from the 11th century. In the early 17th century, the Seven Tithings began to mint their own coin, which was vigorously opposed by the bishops until they finally had to cede temporal power to the Republic in 1634.
  Sion and the district of the Valais were constantly drawn into wider struggles. Walter II of Supersaxo (1457-1482) had taken part in the battles of the Swiss against Charles the Bold of Burgundy and his ally, the Duke of Savoy, and in 1475 they drove the House of Savoy from Lower Valais. 
  Linked to the Old Swiss Confederacy since the 15th century, the Valais region was for long divided between the French party (typified by Georg of Supersaxo) and the Burgundian-Milanese alliance, to which a powerful personage, Cardinal Matthaeus Schiner (1465-1522), bishop of Sion, had thrown his support. 
  Schiner feared French supremacy enough to place the military force of the diocese at the disposal of the pope and in 1510 brought about an alliance for five years between the Swiss Confederacy and the Roman Church, only to end up as one of the biggest losers in the Swiss defeat at Marignano in 1515, in which the bishop fought himself.  In return for his support, Julius II made Schiner a cardinal and in 1513 accepted direct control of the see, which gave the Bishops of Sion much of the authority of an archbishop. The defeat at Marignano and the arbitrary rule of his brothers led to a revolt of Schiner's subjects; in 1518 he was obliged to flee the diocese.
caption: Map of Switzerland in 1378, showing the Bishopric labelled Valais
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