Cologne, Archdiocese of

COLOGNE, ARCHDIOCESE OF. - The archdiocese of C. forms, together with its suffragan sees of Limburg, Trier, Aachen, Münster and Osnabrück, the ecclesiastical province of C., also called that of the Lower Rhine. The archdiocese has an area of 6,000 sq km and a population of 4,000,000 inhabitants, of whom 2,500,000 are Catholics. Before 1939 it counted 1,484 churches with 697 parishes, served by 2,100 diocesan priests, 200 regulars, 269 seminarians, 50 male religious houses with 380 religious and 506 female religious houses with 8,225 religious sisters; it further has 292 houses of assistance and care with 29,565 patients. For the seminarians there are two colleges at Bonn on the Rhine, namely the Albertine College and the Leonine College; the last two years are spent by the seminarians in the seminary of Bensberg near C. Alongside the archbishop are two auxiliary bishops and the metropolitan Chapter.

In the year 30 B.C., C. was one of the settlements of the Germanic Ubii and, in A.D. 50, it became a Roman colony which, from the emperor Claudius and his consort, was called C. Claudia Augusta Agrippinensis. Before long C. was the capital of a province and temporarily also an imperial residence.

The first historically attested bishop was Maternus, present in 313 at the Synod of Rome and in 314 at that of Arles. The presence of Christian communities can be demonstrated as early as the 2nd century. Around 400 C. was conquered by the Franks, in 511 by the Merovingians, and formed a part of Austrasia; in 925 it became definitively German.

Following the granting of the duchy to Bruno I (953-56), the temporal authority of the archbishops of C. was established. From 1028 until the 16th century, they held the right to crown the sovereign, and from 1131 they became chancellors for Italy, and from the 13th century they held the electoral dignity. Around 1288 the city freed itself from the authority of the archbishops, who from that time had their seat at Bonn, Brühl, Godesberg and Poppelsdorf.

During the Middle Ages, C. was one of the largest and most respected cities for its art treasures, for its learning (1388, University), and also for its industry and economy (one of the most distinguished members of the Hanse).

The attempts of Hermann of Wied (1515-46) to make the country Protestant were unsuccessful. The apostasy of Archbishop Gebhard II Truchsess (1577-83) provoked the war known as the "Kölnischer Krieg" (1583-88). The defeat of the prince-elector saved Catholicism in northwestern Germany. After Ernest of Bavaria (1583-1612) various Bavarian princes obtained the archiepiscopal dignity. The last prince-elector, Maximilian Francis of Austria (1785-1801), fled in 1794 before the French into Westphalia. Between 1801 and 1803 the archdiocese was secularized and divided into the archdiocese of C. on the eastern Rhine and the diocese of Aachen in western Rhineland. In 1821, following the bull of Pius VII De salute animarum, the old state of affairs was restored.

Archbishop Clement Augustus, Baron Droste zu Vischering, occupied a preeminent place in the so-called "Kölner Wirren," that is, in the struggle of the Protestant Prussian State against the Catholic Church (the dispute over mixed marriage). The struggle continued between Bismarck and Archbishop Paul Melchers (Kulturkampf, 1866-85). In 1930, on the basis of the concordat with Prussia (13 Aug. 1929), Pius XI reestablished the division between Aachen and C. with the bull Pastoralis officii nostri. Much venerated in C. are St. Ursula and St. Gereon with his companions, victims of the Diocletianic persecution.

One of the greatest archbishops is St. Bruno (925-65). Also from C. are St. Bruno the Great, founder of the Carthusians, and St. Albert the Great (1193-1280). In C., from 1248-52, St. Thomas Aquinas was his disciple. In the church of the Friars Minor, in C., is the tomb of the Doctor Subtilis, Duns Scotus. In the same church is the tomb of Adolph Kolping (b. 18 Dec. 1813 at Kerpen, near C., and d. in the metropolis on 4 Dec. 1865), the founder of the journeymen's association (Gesellen-Verein) and one of the most eminent popular educators.

C. is the seat of the provincial houses of the Jesuits of the Lower Rhine, of the Congregation of the Lazarists, of the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit, of the Alexians or Cellite Brothers, of the Augustinians, of the Sisters of St. Vincent, of the Benedictines of Perpetual Adoration, of the Carmelites, of the Poor Clares, of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd and of the Ursulines. The archdiocese counts 21 male Marian Congregations and 34 female Congregations.

The University of C. was founded in 1388, following the example of that of Paris, and is the first German university founded by a city. Incorporated into the theological faculty were Dominicans, Franciscans, Hermits of St. Augustine and Carmelites. Students who had left Heidelberg because of the plague and Paris because of the schism represented the University's first growth. The northern countries were more numerous than the others both in professors and in students. The most celebrated faculty was the theological one. The University flourished in the 16th century; in 1528 a decline began which was halted by the Jesuits. The scholastic method of this University was always the "old way," that is, the scholastic realism taught by St. Thomas and St. Albert.

The various monasteries and Congregations had founded seminaries attached to the theological faculty; besides these, from 1610 to 1670 there existed a Dutch seminary (Collegium Hollandicum). At the beginning of the Protestant Reformation the University first sympathized with it, but soon took its stand on the side of the papacy and distinguished itself for ecclesiastical severity. In it were accepted theses drawn solely from the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas. The University, in fact, as early as 1250, had condemned the doctrine of Luther.

After its dissolution ordered by the French in 1798, its restoration failed in 1818 owing to the resistance of the Prussian Government, which decided on the founding of the University of Bonn on the Rhine. Only in 1919 was a new University erected with five faculties.

C. is the seat of the "Caritas Verband" of the archdiocese and of the central office of Catholic statistics for Germany. Besides two boarding houses for theologians, there are four secondary-school boarding houses at Münstereifel, Neuss, Opladen and Rheinbach. In 1928 the Albert the Great Institute for the study of his doctrine was erected at C. The state higher school of music contains a section for Catholic church music. At C. there is also an Institute for Religious Art, the library of the archdiocese with 60,000 volumes, and the historical archive of the city and of the archdiocese. The Schnützen Museum contains religious art from all of Rhineland. Among the city's 33 scholarly unions, the Görres Catholic Union (Görresgesellschaft) predominates, along with the Union of Catholic Academics (Kath. Akademiker-Verband) and the Advisory Congregation (Zentralbildungsausschuss) for the Catholic unions of Germany.

Already in the Roman period, C. possessed various churches, preserved until the war of 1939-45. The oldest church was the ancient cathedral in the center of the city, where, later, the church of St. Cecilia was erected. Soon churches were erected over the tombs of the martyrs: St. Gereon to the northwest of the city, also called ad Sanctos Aureos; to the north of the city St. Ursula, called ad Sanctas Virgines. In the Merovingian period the church of St. Clement was built, later St. Cunibert, and on the Roman temple, St. Mary in the Capitol; near it the church of St. Andrew and that of the Holy Apostles. St. Bruno I founded the Benedictine abbey of St. Pantaleon.

Of the Gothic churches the most illustrious is the Cathedral. Gothic too are the churches of the Friars Minor, the choir of St. Ursula and St. Andrew with the tomb of Albert the Great.

The Cathedral is one of the major European cathedrals, a masterpiece of Gothic art. Its history extends over the centuries. After 300 years of work the construction was halted for three centuries. Only with the beginning of Romanticism, in the early 1800s, did the desire to complete this national monument revive. In its construction the Cathedral shows influences from northwestern France, where similar models had already been created. The five-nave basilica is interrupted by the three-nave transept, which is completed in the choir. There the two principal seats were assigned to the pope and to the emperor. The Cathedral was the parish church for the high nobility of the archdiocese.

Bruno Wüstenberg

ARCHAEOLOGY

Cologne has open-air Christian cemeteries with sanctuaries dedicated to St. Ursula, St. Gereon, and St. Severin. The burial system consisted of wooden coffins, stone sarcophagi, or simple graves with stone slabs. At St. Severin it has been established that the Christian cemetery was established above an earlier pagan one. In the same place, Frankish tombs were later superimposed. The Christian cemetery has yielded gold-glass vessels of the 4th century. A fine inscription of a Concordia from the end of the 4th century offers the monogram 𝔐 with the two letters A and Ω and two palm branches; another inscription, now in the city museum, commemorates a Romula societate martyribus (CIL, XIII, 8486). Even more important than at Cologne are the discoveries of a Christian cemetery at Bonn, beneath the collegiate church formerly dedicated to St. Martin but which also preserves the name of St. Cassius, companion of Florentius, who are the two martyrs of Bonn. Another crypt was found beneath the Romanesque basilica, belonging to an earlier sacred building. Beneath the floor of the crypt a large burial area with stone sarcophagi was found.

Very precious is the glass cup (4th century) found at Müngersdorf with biblical scenes on a gold ground.

Emilio Stommel

ART

The greatest splendor of the Cologne school of painting occurred between the end of the 14th century and about the middle of the 15th century. The works of the school display a traditionalist character pervaded by a gentle lyricism, at times mawkish, and which borders on the graceful and the miniature-like.

The Cologne masters, almost all of foreign origin and for the most part remaining anonymous, lived in the Schildergasse and belonged to one of the 22 Gaffeln, which regulated their production.

Among the most interesting painters of the school are to be remembered: WILHELM VON HERLE, author of a Madonna with Pea Flowers (Wallraf Museum), of a St. Veronica (Munich picture gallery) and of an altarpiece for the Poor Clares (1380) in which the Sienese influence is visible, having arrived through Fraga and Avignon: it is here for the first time that there appears that type of blonde Virgin, with rounded forehead, downcast eyes and small mouth, which would later be found in all the works of the Cologne masters. STEPHAN LOCHNER, a native of Meersburg on Lake Constance, emigrated to Cologne, where he died in 1451. He can be considered the representative par excellence, the most significant of the school. The works that can be ascribed to him with certainty are the Last Judgment, which is the earliest (Cologne museum), the Madonna of the Rose Garden (Wallraf Museum) and the Madonna with the Violet (Archiepiscopal Museum), the Presentation in the Temple (Darmstadt museum), which is the only dated work (1447, the artist's maturity), and then the triptych of the Cathedral (about 1440), a true masterpiece for its admirable balance, for the acute characterization of the types and for its masterly technique and expressive force. After him, the Cologne masters (first half of the 15th century) were influenced by the Flemish artists of Bruges and Louvain, especially by Jean van Eyck and by Roger van der Weyden. Mention is made of the so-called MEISTER DES MARIENLEBENS, author of seven pictures of the life of Mary (Munich picture gallery) and of the Vision of St. Bernard, in which, through the influence of Thierry Bouts, a profound feeling is expressed united with a graceful realism. A minor painter is the MEISTER DER VERHEBRLICHUNG MARIÄ, with whom the Cologne school moves ever further away from mysticism. The MEISTER DER HEILIGEN SIPPE owes his name to a picture with such a subject (Cologne museum): also his is a St. Sebastian rich in dramatic effect. The MEISTER VON ST. SEVERIN dominates the school at the end of the 15th century: in the Adoration of the Magi and in the Cycle of St. Ursula he reacts against the mawkish idealism of the preceding masters by exaggerating, without falling into the banal, the ugliness and vulgarity of the figures. With him the influence of Roger van der Weyden ceases and that of Quentin Metsys begins instead; he also has the merit of having been the first portrait painter of the school. The MEISTER DES BARTHOLOMÄUSALTARS belongs, if not in style, to the beginning of the 16th century and was trained in the school of Martin Schongauer: his works (some altarpieces and a Deposition, which is the masterpiece) redeem themselves from a certain knowing vulgarity through the magnificence of the vivid colors filtered through a background of amber.

With the 16th century, the Cologne masters are influenced by the masters of Antwerp, such as Scorel, Heemskerck and especially Joos van Cleef. The latter had great importance for BARTHEL BRUYN (b. at Wesel in 1493, of Dutch origin, d. 1557), who won notable fame as a portrait painter; his religious pictures are cold imitations of the Italian mannerists known through Jan van Scorel. — See PLATES CXXVII-XXVIII.

Fabia Borroni

END OF THE THIRD VOLUME