Arsenije III Crnojević was the Archbishop of Peć and Serbian Patriarch from 1674 to his death in 1706. In 1689, during the Habsburg-Ottoman War (1683–1699), he sided with Habsburgs, upon their temporary occupation of Serbia. In 1690, he left the Patriarchal Monastery of Peć and led the Great Migration of Serbs from Ottoman Serbia into the Habsburg monarchy. There he received charters, granted to him by Emperor Leopold I, securing religious and ecclesiastical autonomy of Eastern Orthodoxy in the Habsburg Monarchy. In the meanwhile, after restoring their rule in Serbian lands, Ottomans allowed the appointment of a new Serbian Patriarch, Kalinik I (1691–1710), thus creating a jurisdictional division within the Serbian Orthodox Church. Until death, in 1706, Patriarch Arsenije remained the head of Serbian Orthodox Church in Habsburg lands, laying foundations for the creation of an autonomous ecclesiastical province, later known as the Metropolitanate of Karlovci.

Habsburg-occupied Serbia refers to the period between 1686 and 1699 of the Great Turkish War, during which various regions of present-day Serbia were occupied by the Habsburg monarchy. In those regions, Habsburg authorities have established various forms of provisional military administration, including the newly organized Serbian Militia. By the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699, some of those regions remained under the permanent Habsburg rule, while others were returned to the Ottoman Empire.