gained a powerful position in the Prince-Archbishopric (ecclesiastical principality), pushing its actual ruler aside.
In 1380 knights of the von Mandelsloh family and others Verdian and Bremian robber barons plundered the burghers of Bremen and the people of the entire Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen. In 1381 the city's troops successfully ended this brigandage and captured the castle of Bederkesa and the bailiwick belonging to it, which it was able to hold until November 1654, when after the Second Bremian War Bremen had to cede Bederkesa and Lehe (a part of present-day Bremerhaven) to Bremen-Verden. In 1386 the city of Bremen made vassals of the noble families, which held the estates of Altluneburg (a part of present-day Schiffdorf) and Elmlohe.
When the Protestant Reformation swept through Northern Germany, St Peter's cathedral belonged to the cathedral immunity district (German: Domfreiheit), an extraterritorial enclave of the neighbouring Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen. In 1532, the cathedral chapter which was still Catholic at that time closed St Peter's after a mob consisting of Bremen's burghers had forcefully interrupted a Catholic mass and prompted a pastor to hold a Lutheran service.
In 1547, the chapter, which had in the mean time become predominantly Lutheran, appointed the Dutch Albert Rizaeus, called Hardenberg, as the first Cathedral pastor of Protestant affiliation. Rizaeus turned out to be a partisan of the Zwinglian understanding of the Lord's Supper, which was rejected by the then Lutheran majority of burghers, the city council, and chapter. So in 1561 � after heated disputes � Rizaeus was dismissed and banned from the city and the cathedral again closed its doors.
However, as a consequence of that controversy the majority of Bremen's burghers and city council adopted Calvinism by the 1590s, while the chapter, which was at the same time the body of secular government in the neighbouring Prince-Archbishopric, clung to
