Minden, Germany

The name Minda was firstly mentioned in a Royal Frankish Annals record referring to an army assembly held by Charlemagne in 798 CE. The location of the so-named settlement is supposed at the left river side, where today's Fischerstadt exists. Directly neighbouring was the suspected site of a permanent frankish army camp and a royal estate, located favourably at the place where ways from the south were bundled by the Porta Westfalica gap, connected with a west–east way parallel to the Wiehen and Weser hills, and at a ford through the Weser. The region had already been converted to Christianity, when around 800 CE a bishopric was founded in Minden, one of the seven diocese foundations established under the rule of Charlemagne. The first cathedral was built nearby to the older village. After the dissolution of the Duchy of Saxony in 1180 the bishop became sovereign of the Prince-Bishopric of Minden as a constitutional territory of the Holy Roman Empire, and remained in this status until 1648. During the Investiture controversy two bishops were nominated at the same time in 1080 both by the papal supporters and those of King Henry IV.

The Cathedral close on the lower Weser terrace was soon surrounded to the north and west by a settlement of artisans and merchants, who lived in a parish of their own. The development of the upper town began with the activities of ecclesiastical convents. A convent of Benedictine nuns removed from the Wiehen Hills to the northwestern edge of the town around St Mary approximately 1000 CE. In 1029, the Canonical Convent of St Martin appears, and a 1042-founded Benedictine monastery removed in 1434 from the Weser shore to a new upper site, where the monastery of St Mauritius was founded. The Dominicane convent St Paul was established in 1236.

German medieval sovereigns governed their realms with an itinerant court, travelling from town to town. Louis the German hold an imperial assembly in Minden in 852. The Emperors of the Ottonian and Salian dynasty visited Minden several times. When Henry IV came to visit in 1062, a dispute between members of his entourage and citizens caused a fire that destroyed the cathedral and parts of the town. The imperial visit of Charles IV in October 1377 was the last one until the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806.

In 1168, Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, married his second wife Matilda, daughter of Henry II of England, in Minden Cathedral; with this marriage Henry maintained the continuance of the House of Welf.

The rights to hold a market, to mint coins, and to collect customs duties were granted in 977 by Emperor Otto II. Until the beginning of the 13th century, the bishop appointed the Wichgraf as secular administrator of the town. The citizens of Minden and their council obtained independence from the bishop's rule around 1230 and received a town charter in 1301. The increased self-confidence of the citizens was demonstrated by the construction of the town hall, probably adjoining the separately governed cathedral precinct. As a result, the Bishop moved his official residence from Minden to Petershagen in 1307.

The economic development of Minden was influenced by its location on a navigable river and by its success in grain trading since the Middle Ages. Minden got the right to store goods and could force passing ships to unload their cargo; furthermore the town became a flourishing member of the Hanseatic League. The precise year of the first Weser bridge construction is not known. A previous wooden pedestrian bridge was replaced in the late 13th century by another one fit for wagon transport. In the early 16th century Minden got a stone arch bridge.

At the end of the medieval age the papal legate Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa visited some German church provinces to remedy deficits in pastoral care and clerical administration. During his journey he stayed in Minden for one week in August 1451, where he signed various decrees, but on the whole this project did not achieve the intended aims. The Lutheran Reformation was introduced in 1529 during a vacancy after the death of the not very respected Bishop Francis of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, and a 36-man unit constituted itself as town regiment. A new church order, based on Martin Luther's principles, was announced from the pulpit of St Martin's Church (Martinikirche) on 13 February 1530. The Dominican convent was dissolved in 1529, and its buildings have been used since 1530 as a location of the new founded municipal Gymnasium, the first Protestant Gymnasium in Westphalia.

Imperial Catholic troops occupied Minden from 1625 to 1634 during the Thirty Years' War. Protestant Swedish troops laid siege to Minden and captured it in 1634. Queen Christina of Sweden (r. 1632–1654) granted Minden full sovereignty in internal and external affairs. During the Catholic occupation the bishop ordered the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1630; the calendar was re-set in 1634 under the Swedish régime, but finally standardized to the new style in 1668.