Saxe-Zeitz

The Duchy of Saxe-Zeitz () was a territory of the Holy Roman Empire established in 1657 as a secundogeniture of the Electoral Saxon house of House of Wettin. Its capital was Zeitz. The territory fell back to the Wettin electoral line in 1718.

== History == On 20 July 1652, the Saxon elector John George I stipulated in his will that, while the electoral dignity passes to his eldest son John George II, his three younger brothers should receive secundogeniture principalities upon his death. After the elector died on 8 October 1656, his sons concluded the "friend-brotherly main treaty" in the Saxon residence of Dresden on 22 April 1657 and a further treaty in 1663 delineating their territories and sovereign rights definitely. These treaties created three duchies: Saxe-Zeitz, Saxe-Weissenfels and Saxe-Merseburg. thumb|left|Schloss Moritzburg (Zeitz)|Moritzburg Palace, Zeitz, [[Burgenlandkreis, Saxony-Anhalt]] Prince Maurice, the fourth-oldest son received the districts of Zeitz, Naumburg and Haynsburg in the former Bishopric of Naumburg-Zeitz which in 1562 had been secularized in the course of the Protestant Reformation.