The Bishopric of Schrote!

Schrote is a tiny political entity, nestled uncomfortably between Bachscuttel, Rotenburg, and Gelderland. Since these, therefore, are the only possible destinations upon leaving Schrote, this alone would be sufficient to make the bishopric a very disappointing place to live. Sadly, however, there are so many other reasons why one might wish to avoid a visit there that listing them would be dull, pointless, and self-defeating - not unlike a night out in the bishopric itself. The most notable thing about the bishopric is that it is, rather surprisingly, the sight of the most significant cathedral in Mittelheim.

Schrote had been a bishop's seat since the 6th century; although, as seats go, it was rather an uncomfortable one. The bishop's dwelling in Schrote was at the time a quite modest manor house, with the village of Schrote, a dismal collection of damp dwellings, clustered, or perhaps festered, around it. That this manor was replaced by a somewhat incongruous cathedral can be explained by Bishop Baldwin the XII  and his submission in 1599 for funds to expand his home into a dwelling 'more suitable to his standing'. As it turned out, he must have been standing quite high, because, having received agreement for the provision of inital funding for a roof that didn't leak and an indoor privy, the subsequent alterations to his house were really rather more extensive. Arguing that he needed to be closer to God - about 200 feet closer, as it turned out - Baldwin turned his living quarters into a spire. The expansion of his kitchen into a nave, and his outside watercloset into a transept he explained away in terms of the need to keep the new building  'in keeping with the character of the surrounding village', a process that seemed to involve demolishing the surrounding village and building more cathedral.

The bishop's hope that the cathedral would lead to a significant, and indeed lucrative, expansion of Schrote itself came to nothing. Anyone actively searching for a dwelling in an area as wretched as Schrote, whose main selling point was that it wasn't actually on fire, already had a vast range of choices in every other area of Mittelheim. The only really significant developments in Schrote at this time resulted from the bishop's attempts to sponsor a variety of seats of learning. The fruits of this were two universities: a small two-room cottage in the hamlet of Uxfurt devoted to the study of philosophy; and a rival institution set up just opposite and across a stream, in the hamlet of Kambritz, devoted to the study of piles. The latter, of course, was by far the most popular.

Schrote was for most of its history actually part of the Kingdom of Gelderland. This state of affairs continued until 1678, when its tranformation into a nominally independent bishopric was decreed by King Oskar IV. Oskar, known by his quite judgemental subjects as Oskar the Not Really Tall Enough, was tired of being lectured every Sunday by the bishop. To solve this problem, Oskar gave the bishop his own temporal state. This had at least two advantages. First, the bishop’s ability to get back into Gelderland and lecture the king was impeded by the activities of a Gelderland customs post that suddenly sprang up on the new border. The bishop then had to spend quite large amounts of time filling in forms in triplicate, and being frisked down to his hessian undergarments. Second, the bishop, who in private had often thought how fun it might be to be ruler of his very own kingdom, suddenly found that temporal power carried with it a range of tedious and time-consuming commitments - dealing with complaints about drains, for example, and pot holes; and also having to mitigate the consequences of events such as plagues, famines, and apocalyptic fires; events which he had previously been able to wash his hands of by claiming that they were simply the ineffable will of God, the solution to which was just to pray a lot harder.

 We turn our attention now, dear reader, to the inside of the cathedral. Here we can see three priestly figures deep in conversation ...