As the only social class eligible for election to the cathedral chapter, the free imperial knights of the Holy Roman Empire dominated the prince-bishopric of Bamberg, supplying all its prince-bishops and cathedral canons, and the overwhelming proportion of its high secular officials. Like neighbouring Würzburg, and the prince-bishoprics of Mainz and Trier (but not Cologne), Bamberg exemplified a particular feature of the imperial Church (Reichskirche) in that social estate (Stand) determined the composition of the many ecclesiastical collegiate bodies, supported by generous land endowmenst and tithes. Lineage, not religion, was decisive. In Bamberg, the imperial knights excluded commoners, younger sons of princes, and the titled nobility from their preserve. Class solidarity trumped even confessional divisions as the Protestant Reformation made strong gains in Bamberg after the Peace of Augsburg (1555) guaranteed the personal religious liberty of the free imperial knights. Claiming the ius reformandi, Protestant knights sponsored and protected Lutheran worship in many enclaves in this fragmented territorial state. Until 1594 private religious beliefs did not prevent members of this exclusive oligarchy from being elected to the cathedral chapter or from service in the high officialdom of the principality. The election of Neithard von Thüngen in 1594 as prince-bishop, however, provoked repeated conflicts between a Counter-Reformation prelate and the imperial knights, who provided the political, military and financial backbone for the territorial state. Contesting their claim of ius reformandi, Bishop Neithard tried to impose on his many Lutheran subjects conformity to Tridentine Catholicism. Resistance and remonstrances abated after 1599, when the next prince-bishop, Johann Philipp von Gebsattel, changed the policy of confessional confrontation. But with a new prelate, and with escalating confessional conflicts in the Thirty Years' War, the struggle between bishop and imperial knights, prince and estate, Catholic and Lutheran, continued until the 1648 peace of Westphalia, which finally confirmed the ius reformandi of the knights. This interesting story is told in an able analysis based on solid archival research.