Church province of Mainz

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The ecclesiastical province of Mainz around the year 1000, before the exemption of Bamberg and after the founding of the ecclesiastical province of Magdeburg. In 1344 Prague was elevated to an archbishopric with Olomouc as a suffragan

The ecclesiastical province of Mainz was an ecclesiastical province of the Roman Catholic Church that existed from 782 to 1805 .

development

The ecclesiastical province came into being in 782 after the reestablishment of the metropolitan constitution under Charlemagne and after Boniface's plans to create a large Austrasian ecclesiastical province based in Cologne had failed.

The ecclesiastical province was formed around the turn of the 8th and 9th centuries. Century from. An official description (circumscription) is not proven. Boniface's successor as Bishop of Mainz, Lullus , probably made do with Boniface's decree of appointment for Cologne as archbishopric , which he changed for his own purposes.

The ecclesiastical province of Mainz extended in a north-south direction almost through the entire area of ​​the Holy Roman Empire .

In addition to the Archdiocese of Mainz, the dioceses of Verden , Hildesheim , Halberstadt , Paderborn , Würzburg , Worms , Speyer , Augsburg , Eichstätt , Constance , Strasbourg and Chur were part of the Metropolitan Association. In 946 and 948 the dioceses of Havelberg and Brandenburg were added, but they left the province a good 20 years later and were incorporated into the Archdiocese of Magdeburg , which was founded in 962 . In 973 the dioceses of Prague and Moravia (later Olomouc ) to the ecclesiastical province were added as replacements . In 1007 the diocese of Bamberg was founded, which belonged to the Mainz church province, but at the same time had certain rights of immunity from the archbishop. In 1245 the exemption of the diocese was formally confirmed, whereby the Archbishop of Mainz retained the right to invite the Bamberg bishop to the provincial synod.

In 1344 Prague and Olomouc left the ecclesiastical province. Prague became an archbishopric with Olomouc as a suffragan. The description of the Metropolitan Union did not change until the end of 1803. In the 18th century, Corvey and Fulda were raised to dioceses, but their territories lay in the area covered by the ecclesiastical province of Mainz.

After the French Revolution , the Mainz electoral state was secularized by Napoleon with the Concordat of 1801 . The Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of February 25, 1803 resolved the transfer of the dignity of the archbishopric to the diocese of Regensburg . On May 1, 1805, Pope Pius VII confirmed the translation. In the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the territory ceded by the empire to France was withdrawn, but the Archdiocese of Mainz was not rebuilt, but instead was added as a suffragan to the newly founded Upper Rhine Church Province with its metropolitan seat in Freiburg , to which it still belongs today.

meaning

The metropolitans of the ecclesiastical province, the Archbishops of Mainz, were among the most powerful men in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation as successors to Boniface, Electors and Imperial Arch Chancellors . They used to claim the title Primate Germaniae for themselves. The membership of Prague made the Archbishop of Mainz the bishop responsible for the coronation of the Bohemian kings .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Georg May , Spiritual Offices and Structures in: Handbuch der Mainzer Kirchengeschichte, Vol. 2, p. 465
  2. ^ Franz Staab in: Handbuch der Mainzer Kirchengeschichte vol. 1/1, p. 139

literature

  • Friedhelm Jürgensmeier (ed.): Handbuch der Mainz Kirchengeschichte , Echter Verlag, Würzburg 1997–2002.
  • Alfred Wendehorst : Germania Sacra: The dioceses of the ecclesiastical province of Mainz. The Diocese of Eichstätt Vol.1: The row of bishops until 1535 de Gruyter; 1st edition of June 29, 2006, ISBN 3-11-018971-2
  • Helmut Maurer : Germania Sacra: The dioceses of the ecclesiastical province of Mainz. The Diocese of Constance Vol.5: The bishops from the end of the 6th century to 1206 de Gruyter; 1st edition of June 29, 2006, ISBN 3-11-017664-5 . (Incorrectly referred to as vol. 2)
  • Alfred Wendehorst : Germania Sacra: The dioceses of the ecclesiastical province of Mainz. The Archdiocese of Würzburg, Vol. 4 de Gruyter; 1st edition from May 1, 1969