Diocese of Metz

	Diocese of Metz
Basic data
Country	France
Ecclesiastical province	Immediate
Diocesan bishop	Jean-Christophe Lagleize
Auxiliary bishop	Jean-Pierre Vuillemin
Emeritus diocesan bishop	Pierre Raffin OP
Vicar General	Bernard Clément ; Jean-Marie Wagner
founding	3rd century
surface	6,216 km²
Parishes	649 ( 12/31/2016 / AP2017 )
Residents	1,046,873 ( 12/31/2016 / AP2017 )
Catholics	813,560 ( 12/31/2016 / AP2017 )
proportion of	77.7%
Diocesan priest	273 (December 31, 2016 / AP2017 )
Religious priest	38 (December 31, 2016 / AP2017 )
Catholics per priest	2,616
Permanent deacons	54 (31.12.2016 / AP2017 )
Friars	84 ( 12/31/2016 / AP2017 )
Religious sisters	512 ( 12/31/2016 / AP2017 )
rite	Roman rite
Liturgical language	French
cathedral	Saint-Etienne cathedral
Website	catholique-metz.cef.fr

The diocese of Metz ( Latin : Dioecesis Metensis ) is an immediate diocese of the Roman Catholic Church in France with its seat in Metz .

Its territory includes the Moselle department .

history

Early and High Middle Ages

The diocese of Metz, which was probably founded in the 4th century and has been reliably verifiable since 535, originally belonged to the church province of Trier . Already during the Merovingian period he managed to acquire numerous goods, so that it surpassed the two other Lorraine dioceses of Toul and Verdun by far - in the early Middle Ages the bishop had considerable possessions up to the Chiemsee in the east and the Cevennes in the south.

During the Carolingian divisions after the death of Louis the Pious , the diocese came to Lorraine in 843 and to Eastern Franconia in 870 .

The Bishop of Metz had sovereignty over the county of Metz and from 1065 also over the county of Saarbrücken , but could not fulfill the claim to form a counterweight to the Duchy of Lorraine. In particular, the independence of the city of Metz (1189) and the loss of the county of Dagsburg significantly reduced the influence of the bishop. Although the bishop remained formally head of the city, he moved his residence to Vic-sur-Seille . In 1296 the Bishop of Metz became a feudal man of the King of France .

From the late Middle Ages to the revolution

The diocese, which had suffered from the poor economic situation since the 14th century, increasingly turned the French attention to Lorraine and thus to its territories. In addition, the popes in Avignon always appointed clerics from southern France with relatives in Lorraine to be his bishops. Although the diocese had its own sovereignty, the bishops did not usually reside in their territory.

The diocese originally had only one archdeacon in its spiritual administration , who was supplemented by a second in the 10th century. Between 1073 and 1090 their number is then increased to 4, which then did not change until the secularization of the diocese. Since the 13th century these were divided into deaneries, which housed 1361 461 parishes and 1544 540 parishes. Of these, the bishop only had the right of patronage in 2 parishes. In his pontifical functions the bishop could fall back on auxiliary bishops since the middle of the 14th century.

Metz : city center and cathedral

The cathedral chapter of St. Paul Cathedral comprised 60 prebends, headed by the primicerius and the dean. Since 1224, the chapter had the right to elect a bishop, which it finally lost after the election of 1302. The Vienna Concordat, which gave the chapters the right to vote, was expressly denied to the diocese. In 1457 the bishop elected a Cologne canon as his coadjutor and obliged the chapter to elect him as bishop after his death. In this way he hoped to be able to secure free election of bishops for his diocese. The chapter gambled away this chance and chose a candidate from Lorraine. The Pope, however, appointed the Cologne canon Hermann von Baden as bishop.

From 1484 to 1607 all bishops came from the House of Lorraine. In 1552 the French king, who had come to an understanding with some Protestant princes in the Treaty of Chambord , occupied the cities of Metz, Toul and Verdun . Charles V failed to retake Metz the following year. The conquests were thus effectively subordinated to the French crown and removed from the Upper Rhine Empire.

In 1556 Lorraine ceded all secular rights to Metz and the territories in France to the king. All attempts by the empire to prevent this failed on the battlefield. In 1613 the French king forced the bishop to pay homage; from 1632 the powers of the governor of Metz were extended to all areas of the prince-bishopric, in 1648 the final cession of the bishopric to France took place through the Peace of Westphalia , together with the other two monasteries of Toul and Verdun, which together formed the province of the three bishoprics . Formally, the bishop now belonged to the Lorraine Parliament, but until 1790 still called himself Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. At that time the diocese owned the feudal lords of Helfedange , Habondange and Hingsingen , the lordships of Lagarde , Türkstein and Chatillon, the county of Rixingen , the castles of Remilly , Vic, Freiburg im Breisgau , Baccarat and Rambervillers .

Since the 19th century

The diocese of Metz perished in the French Revolution , was restored in 1801, subordinated to the Archdiocese of Besançon in 1802 and exempted in 1874 - after the Franco-Prussian War . From the German side it was put on an equal footing with the German dioceses, but was always considered an exceptional area. When it fell again to France in 1918, it again lost the right to freely elect a bishop. However, together with the Archdiocese of Strasbourg , it still forms an ecclesiastical area of exception in France, because the two dioceses were not part of the French national territory in 1905, when the strict separation of church and state was implemented in France. A church tax is levied in both dioceses (as well as in the Protestant churches in Alsace and Lorraine), in contrast to the other dioceses in the country.

literature

Hans-Walter Hermann (ed.): The old diocese of Metz. The ancien Diocese de Metz . Lectures at a colloquium in Waldfischbach-Burgalben from March 21 to 23, 1990 (= publications of the Commission for Saarland State History and Folk Research; 19). Saarbrücken 1993 ( digitized version )
Aloys Ruppel : Metz as an episcopal and free city. Special print from the work “Lorraine and its capital”, pp. 316–342. Metz, Lothringer Verlags- und Hilfsverein, 1913.

Web links

Commons : Diocese of Metz - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Homepage of the Diocese of Metz (French)
Entry for the diocese of Metz on catholic-hierarchy.org