Franconia, German Franken, one of the five great stem, or Stamm (tribal), duchies—the other four being Saxony, Lotharingia (Lorraine), Swabia, and Bavaria—of early medieval Germany. Today it is divided between Rhenish Franconia, now located in the Länder (states) of Rhineland-Palatinate, Baden-Württemberg, and Hesse, and East Franconia, now in the Länder of Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria.
The Franks forcibly settled the region from the early 6th century ad, and in the early 8th century the Merovingian dynasty claimed it as a royal demesne (crown land). After the division of the Carolingian empire under the Treaty of Verdun in 843, Franconia became the nucleus of the East Frankish (German) kingdom, and, when the Carolingian line died out, Franconia’s duke became the first elected German king as Conrad I (911–918). In 919 the German crown passed to a Saxon dynasty. Franconia remained a royal demesne nurturing no strong ducal dynasty, and their tenure of it provided a support to German kings and Holy Roman emperors. By the 12th century, the name had come to refer only to East Franconia.
The church was always strong in the region, and its bishoprics included the archbishopric of Mainz (in Rhenish Franconia) and Bamberg and Würzburg (East Franconia). After the mid-13th century, the fragmentation of Franconia into secular and ecclesiastical principalities was accelerated. In 1340 these territories organized the Landfriedensbund (regional peace-keeping league), which served as the basis of the Franconian Kreis (circle, or administrative district) set up in the early 16th century.
In Napoleon’s reorganization of Germany, the Franconian region was divided between the kingdoms of Bavaria and Württemberg and the Grand Duchy of Baden. King Louis I of Bavaria revived the use of the name in 1837 by creating the provinces of Upper, Middle, and Lower Franconia, which still form the northwestern corner of the present Land of Bavaria.