County of Tyrol

The (Princely) County of Tyrol was an estate of the Holy Roman Empire established about 1140. After 1253, it was ruled by the House of Gorizia and from 1363 by the House of Habsburg. In 1804, the County of Tyrol, unified with the secularised prince-bishoprics of Trent and Brixen, became a crown land of the Austrian Empire. From 1867, it was a Cisleithanian crown land of Austria-Hungary. Today the territory of the historic crown land is divided between the Italian autonomous region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and the Austrian state of Tyrol. The two parts are today associated again in the Tyrol–South Tyrol–Trentino Euroregion. History of Tyrol At least since King Otto I of Germany had conquered the former Lombard kingdom of Italy in 961 and had himself crowned Holy Roman emperor in Rome, the principal passes of the Eastern Alps had become an important transit area. The German monarchs regularly traveled across Brenner or Reschen Pass on their Italian expeditions aiming at papal coronation or the consolidation of Imperial rule. In 1004 King Henry II of Germany separated the estates of Trent from the North Italian March of Verona and vested the bishops of Trent with comital rights. In 1027 Henry's Salian successor, Emperor Conrad II, granted the Trent bishops further estates around Bozen and in the Vinschgau region; at the same time, he vested the bishop of Brixen with the suzerainty in the Etschtal and Inntal, part of the German stem duchy of Bavaria under the rule of Conrad's son Henry III. Especially the Brixen bishops remained loyal supporters of the Salian rulers in the Investiture Controversy and in 1091 also received the Puster Valley from the hands of Emperor Henry IV. Documented from about 1140 onwards, the comital dynasty residing in Tyrol Castle near Meran held the office of Vogts (bailiffs) in the Trent diocese. They extended their territory over much of the region and came to surpass the power of the bishops, who were nominally their feudal lords.