CINQUECHIESE, DIOCESE of. — A city (called Pécs in Hungarian and Fünfkirchen in German), episcopal see and capital of the province of Baranya in Hungary. Its origins go back to the most ancient times; its ancient name, Sopianae, also used by the Roman conquerors, is of Celtic origin. Christians were already present at C. in Roman times, as attested by the catacombs discovered in 1780. Under Frankish rule it had a flourishing Christian community, and the city itself is called Quinque Ecclesiae in Carolingian documents of the ninth century.
At the time of s. Stefano, Silvestro II founded a bishopric there (1009), which gave vigorous impetus to the city’s development; in the Middle Ages it was already a flourishing centre of culture and the arts. King Luigi il Grande d’Angiò (1342–82) established the first Hungarian university there in 1367, with the approval of Pope Urbano V. Later C. was occupied by the Turks for more than a hundred years, during which it lost its former splendour; its medieval buildings were for the most part destroyed or damaged, and Protestantism spread there under Ottoman protection. Nevertheless, after liberation from the Turkish yoke, the city gradually recovered, and in 1692, when the plague raged there, the inhabitants vowed to remain faithful to the Catholic faith. Today C. is one of Hungary’s major cultural centres. Its University, the two colleges conducted by religious orders, and other educational institutions, together with its Catholic daily Dunantul, made it one of Hungary’s principal cities.
The diocese has an area of 9,200 sq. km. and numbers 660,000 inhabitants, of whom 325,000 are Catholics, with 194 parishes, 351 diocesan priests, and 76 religious priests; it has one seminary.
Among the historical monuments of C., the most interesting is a Christian hypogeum in the immediate vicinity of the Cathedral. In various excavations (1780, 1913, 1922), burial chambers were discovered at a depth of 5 and 6 m. They are decorated with frescoes and monograms of Christ, the fall of Adam and Eve, the Good Shepherd, Daniel, the story of Jonah, and Noah. The chambers and frescoes show a certain affinity with the catacombs of Rome; they date from the second half of the fourth century. Above the chambers, a small cemetery chapel, also from the fourth century (cella trichora), with a small atrium, was also discovered. On the remains of the walls are two layers of paintings; the upper one, although damaged, displays a Byzantine-influenced style.
The cathedral of C. is one of the most beautiful in Hungary. Most of it was built in the time of s. Stefano (early eleventh century); in the thirteenth century, during the incursions of the Tartars, it was fortified. It suffered greatly during the Turkish occupation, when part of it was used as a warehouse and part as a school. It was restored in subsequent centuries, while some sections were added later, in a style different from the original. The exterior, with four large towers, is Gothic in style, while some of the side chapels are Baroque and Rococo. The frescoes and paintings belong to various centuries. Two mosques were converted into Catholic churches.
The cemetery church and the hypogea attest that Christianity was flourishing in C. as early as the fourth century; the same was true during the reign of Charlemagne. Until the devastation by the Tartars (1242–43), there were very numerous convents in the diocese. The bishop of C., Filippo More, also fell in the battle of Mohács (near the city); during the Turkish occupation, C. remained without a bishop, and the care of souls was entrusted to religious (first Franciscans, then Jesuits) and to the licenziati, laymen authorized to preach and administer certain Sacraments, without a fixed place of residence: an institution of the Hungarian Church particularly characteristic of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. After the liberation, the bishops converted to the Catholic faith the numerous Protestants, schismatics, and Turks who remained in the territory of the diocese.