PÉCS, DIOCESE OF. - City (called Pécs in Hungarian and Fünfkirchen in German), episcopal see and capital of the province of Baranya in Hungary. Its origin goes back to very ancient times; its ancient name Sopianae, also used by the Roman conquerors, is of Celtic origin. Already in Roman times there were Christians at C., as the catacombs discovered in 1780 attest. Under Frankish rule it had a flourishing Christian community, and the city itself is called Quinque Ecclesiae by Carolingian documents of the 9th century.
In the time of St. Stephen, Sylvester II founded a bishopric there (1009) which gave a vigorous impulse to the development of the city; in the Middle Ages it was already a flourishing center of culture and the arts. King Louis the Great of Anjou (1342-82) erected there the first Hungarian university in 1367 with the approval of Pope Urban V. Later C. was occupied by the Turks for more than a hundred years, during which it lost its former splendor; 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 recovered little by little, and in 1692, when the plague raged there, the inhabitants made a vow to remain faithful to the Catholic faith. Today C. is one of the major cultural centers of Hungary. Its University, the two colleges run by religious, and other educational institutes, its Catholic daily Dunantul, made it one of the principal cities of Hungary.
The diocese has an area of 9,200 sq km., counts 660,000 inhabitants, of whom 325,000 are Catholics, with 194 parishes, 351 diocesan priests and 76 regulars; a 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 adorned with frescoes and monograms of Christ, the fall of Adam and Eve, the Good Shepherd, Daniel, the story of Jonah, Noah. The chambers and the frescoes show a certain affinity with the catacombs of Rome; they are from the second half of the 4th century. Above the chambers a small cemetery chapel was also discovered, likewise from the 4th century (cella trichora), with a small atrium. On the remains of the walls there are two layers of paintings; the upper one, although damaged, shows a style influenced by Byzantine art.
The cathedral of C. is one of the most beautiful in Hungary. The greater part was built in the time of St. Stephen (beginning of the 11th century); in the 13th century, during the Tatar incursions, 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 the following centuries, while some parts were added later, but in a style different from the original. The exterior, with 4 great towers, is Gothic in style, while some side chapels are Baroque and Rococo in style. The frescoes and paintings are from various centuries. Two mosques were transformed into Catholic churches.
The cemetery church and the hypogea attest that Christianity was flourishing at C. as early as the 4th century; likewise during the reign of Charlemagne. Until the Tatar devastation (1242-43) there were very numerous convents in the diocese. In the battle of Mohács (near the city) the bishop of C., Philip More, also fell; 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 licentiati, laymen authorized to preach and to administer certain Sacraments, without fixed residence: an institution of the Hungarian Church very characteristic of the 16th-17th 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.