DIOCESE OF FULDA. - In Germany, a suffragan of Paderborn, it has an area of 19,958 sq. km., population 3,603,800 of whom 838,580 are Catholics, 465 churches, 284 parishes, 394 diocesan priests, 97 regulars, 144 seminarians, 16 male religious houses with 121 professed, 16 female religious houses with 2,072 professed, 315 charitable institutions with 8,900 inmates (1948).
On 12 March 744 Sturm (abbot 744-79), at the request of his master St. Boniface (v.), founded a monastery at F. which was richly endowed by Carloman, mayor of the palace of the Franks. Pope Zachary (741-52) granted it exemption from all episcopal authority. After the death of St. Boniface (754), who was buried there, the monastery developed rapidly and a great basilica replaced the primitive church (780-807). The school, founded by Sturm, was famous and produced celebrated men: Einhard, Rudolf of F., Walafrid Strabo, Servatus Lupus and others. Equally important was the library, whose treasures were dispersed in the Thirty Years' War. In 969 John XIII granted the abbots primacy over all the abbots of Germany and Gaul. From the 10th century those abbots were archchancellors of the Empress and from 1289 they bore the title of prince. In the Peasants' War the territories of the abbey were terribly devastated. The "reform" penetrated the region and the abbot Balthasar of Dembach (1570-1606) energetically promulgated the Catholic Reform, calling the Jesuits to F. (1671), uniting the seminary to their college (1584). Only after the Peace of Westphalia (1648), given the resistance of the nobility supported by the neighboring Protestant princes, could the Catholic restoration be completed. With the bull In apostolicae dignitatis apice of 5 Oct. 1752 Benedict XIV erected F. into a diocese, which was secularized together with the abbey in 1803. Pius VI, establishing the ecclesiastical province of the Upper Rhine, with the bull Provida solersque (16 Aug. 1821) fixed the boundaries of the new diocese, which comprised the electorate of Hesse and a large part of Thuringia. These were slightly altered by the Prussian Concordat of 14 June 1929. Since 1867 F. has been the seat of the annual episcopal conferences.
The most celebrated abbot is Bl. Rabanus Maurus (822-42), "praeceptor Germaniae"; under him the school developed to its greatest splendor and he can be considered the creator of the German humanistic school. In modern times the bishop Georg von Kopp (1881-87) had great merits; he was appointed after an interregnum of eight years, because of the Kulturkampf. In 1886 he reopened the Theological College, closed in 1875.
The prince-abbot Adolph of Dalberg (1724-37) founded a university (1733) which was suppressed by William Frederick of Orange-Nassau (1805). The present library, founded in 1771 by the bishop Henry of Bibra (1759-88), is rich in precious manuscripts.
The Cathedral, built by Johann Dientzenhofer (1705-1712) under the reign of the abbot Adalbert of Schleifras (1700-14), is a combination of central and basilical building with Baroque elements.
Bibliography9 works
Hermine Kühn-Steinhausen
