EICHSTÄTT, DIOCESI di. — The diocese of E. is suffragan to the metropolitan see of Bamberg and comprises regions of Central Franconia, the Upper Palatinate, Bavaria and Swabia, as well as Upper Bavaria, with a total of 334,456 Catholics out of the region’s 606,708 inhabitants. The diocese has an area of 6,020 sq. km.; it has 574 churches, of which 216 are parishes. There are 452 secular priests and 94 religious; 12 houses of male religious orders and 91 houses of female religious orders. The city of E. has a seminary and a university for philosophy and theology. Among the organizations serving charitable works, mention should be made of 20 assistance homes and 42 children’s homes, 65 care facilities, 4 orphanages, 16 hospitals and 12 homes for the elderly. There are also 74 assistance unions and 110 charitable leagues (1948).
The diocese was founded by St. Boniface around 741 and was suffragan to Mainz. From 882 to 1806 it was a so-called Fürstbittum and, in 1821, after secularization, became suffragan to Bamberg.
From as early as 900, the canons of the Cathedral had great influence over the government of the diocese; Bishop Heribert nevertheless reduced the number of canons in 1022, bringing it from 70 to 50, and in 1234 there were only 30. The first auxiliary bishop was appointed in 1309. During Luther’s Reformation, the territories of the counties of Aasbach (1528), and the cities of Nuremberg and Weissenburg, the Palatinate of Neuburg and the counties of Ottingen became Protestant. The city of E., the Bavarian territory and the domains of the Teutonic Knights, however, remained permanently devoted to Catholic worship.
Bishop Martin V. Schaumberg founded the Willibaldinum College in 1564, one of the first Tridentine seminaries in Germany.
Since the time of Charlemagne, the secular territory of the bishops of E. had possessed immunity; in 1705 the bishop possessed a territory of 20 square miles with an income of 800,000 florins. The capital of the Cathedral Chapter increased during the period of secularization until it reached the sum of 3,400,000 florins. During secularization (1800–1803), the diocese was divided between Bavaria and Prussia, and in 1806 it came completely under Bavaria.
On 24 November 1821, the diocese of E. (Landesbittum) was then erected, according to the Bavarian concordat and on the basis of the decree of circumscription of 1817, as a suffragan of Bamberg, without the boundaries being altered. Ecclesiastical life resumed its development under the guidance of zealous bishops. In 1838 the Tridentine Seminary was re-established, and in 1843 a philosophical and theological university was established under the direction of the bishop.
The first bishop, St. Willibald, was born in England in 700. During his pilgrimages with his father and his brother Wunibald, he came to Rome and went to Palestine. In 740 he returned to Germany at the request of St. Boniface and founded the monasteries of E. and Heidenheim.
Gebhard I, bishop in 1042, became pope in 1055 under the name of Victor II (d. in 1037). Bishop Gundakar II (1057–75) gave his name to the Gundakarianum, a pontifical book that is the most precious object in the Cathedral treasury. During the Counter-Reformation, the diocese was governed by Christopher V. Westerstetten (1612–36), who brought Jesuits and Capuchins there. After 1821, the date of the diocese’s re-establishment, the best-known bishop was Charles Augustine V. Reisach (1836–46), who founded the university and the lyceum in 1843 and, during the Kulturkampf, gave shelter to theology students from Upper Germany.
The tomb of St. Willibald is preserved in the Romanesque basilica erected between 1042 and 1060. Its late-Gothic cloister is well known; also noteworthy is the church of the Archangels, in the late Renaissance style, also called the Jesuit church. The bishops’ residence is Baroque in style and contains a library of 500,000 volumes. To the west of the city of E. are the ruins of a medieval castle called Willibald, and another two-towered Renaissance-style castle that served as the residence of the bishops from 1609 to 1619.
Friburgo in Br. 1915; J. B. Kurz, Die Eigenklöster in der Döta. E., 1922; E. Bauernfeind, Die Säkularisationsperiode im Hochstift E., Monaco e Frisinga 1927. Bruno Wüstenberg