according to canon law individuals were prohibited from exercising authority over Church property, was only with reluctance accepted by the nobles. The rights of advocacy were bought back by the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century abbeys in alliance with the Babenberg and early Habsburg dukes; the abolition of the () thereby exchanged local secular jurisdiction for the protective overlordship of the duke of Austria, sometimes by forging charters that the duke confirmed. Imperial advocates In Germany, the title of Vogt ( or "advocate") was given not only to the of churches and abbeys but also, from early in the Middle Ages, to officials appointed by the Holy Roman Emperor to administer lands directly under his dominion, as opposed to the comital domains, owned by counts who had become hereditary princes of the Empire. The office or territory of a was a Vogtei. Land administered by a could also be known as a (), a name still used to refer to a region, the Vogtland, that adjoins the principalities of Reuss and adjacent portions of Saxony, Prussia and Bavaria. An imperial advocateship tended to become hereditary. Sometimes the emperor himself assumed the title of in application to particular parts of his eminent domain. In the German-ruled Holy Roman Empire, the term can refer to two different offices: church or imperial . Imperial are further subdivided into land and city . In addition, the term was used for administrative officers of territorial rulers, such as reeves and bailiffs. An imperial () was an officer of the king, who served as administrator and judge of a subdivision of royal property, or of a royal abbey. The seat of an imperial Reichsvogt was often at an imperial city. When the imperial cities gained more independence, the office was split into city () for the cities and land () for other areas. The offices of city were usually bought by the imperial cities by the late Middle Ages, which led to the independence of the cities. Most land offices became meaningless as the amount of royal property was reduced more and more in favor of territorial rulers (such as dukes and counts). A Burgvogt was a castle administrator responsible for the general running of a castle and also for exercising jurisdical powers. The term is still sometimes encountered for someone who manages a castle. The land office of the Alsace, consisting of the ten imperial cities of