The Bishop-Prince of Liege and Hainaut earls of the Avesnes and Wittelsbach houses (1247-1433). A more or less permanent case of trickery

While the 1071 and 1076 decrees, thanks to which the Earl of Hainaut became the main vassal of the Liege Bishop, had then no other positive effect for the prelate than creating an area of greater safety along the confines of his States, in the Lower Middle-Ages the relationships between the Bishop-P rince and the Earl of Hainaut, still fairly poor at that time, turned often to the advantage of the Hainaut prince who, though he never managed to rea lly obtain a Bishop-Prince to his taste, nonetheless benefited from several major territorial increases, made a fool of the Liege sovereign, particula rly in the XIVth century, and even succeeded in smothering the episcopal po wer, at the beginning of the XVth century. To what is often akin to a dupes ' deal, two explanations at least, among other, can be put forward: a princ e from a land situated outside the Liege diocese, the Early is not subjecte d to Liege's ordinary standards, to its ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and ab ove all to the Peace, on the one hand; on the other, the weight of feudalis m in the State decreases notably from the XIVth century onward.