Paderborn

In the later Middle Ages town and bishop drew apart. Paderborn, where the north–south Via Regia crossed the east–west Hellweg, was counted among the Hansa towns by 1295, and in 1327 its bishop confirmed the burghers' right to elect their own council; in 1370 the prince-bishop moved his residence for good to Schloss Neuhaus outside the walls. The Reformation turned most townspeople Lutheran against their lord's will, and decades of unrest, at times close to civil war, ended only in 1604, when the prince-bishop subdued the city, had its Protestant mayor executed and took away its self-government. The Jesuits, called in by the cathedral chapter, opened the first university in Westphalia here in 1614. When Christian of Brunswick seized the city in 1622, legend has it that he melted the shrine of St Liborius into coin, but his stay was short, and Paderborn remained an almost wholly Catholic town.