GORIZIA, ARCHDIOCESE of. — In Venezia Giulia. The occupation of Aquileia, which, according to the agreements of 1445, was to remain under the temporal rule of the patriarch, carried out in 1542 by the troops of Ferdinand I, king of Germany, out of spite toward Venice, created a new political situation in the country. Ferdinand was ill disposed toward the fact that a Venetian prelate was the holder of the patriarchate, which occupied so large a part of his territories in the southeast; there was also a conflict of interests and boundaries with the Venetian Republic, which made political relations particularly difficult.
It is known that Ferdinand aimed to establish a bishopric at G. in order to free himself as much as possible from subjection to the patriarchate. G. was then a simple parish church, which had separated from nearby Salcano and had acquired importance, situated as it was beneath the Castle, on the upper edge of the Friulian plain; Archduke Carlo of Styria, Ferdinand’s son, succeeded in 1574 in having it placed at the head of an archdeaconry, separating it from that of Aquileia; then, from 1583 onward, he worked energetically to establish a bishopric there, also supported by the papal nuncio at Graz. He encountered opposition in Venice and in the Papal Curia and died (1591) before seeing his plan fulfilled. Several further attempts in the following century met with no better result, partly because no way could be found to provide the endowment of the new foundation. Contributions from citizens of Gorizia (Gullin and Codelli) facilitated the execution of the plan, which found its strongest support in the reforming activity of the empress Maria Teresa. Benedict XIV, despite the tenacious opposition of the Venetian Republic and of the patriarch Daniele Delfino, initially resolved the matter by establishing at G. an apostolic vicariate, which he entrusted to Count Carlo Michele Attems, titular bishop of Pergamum (1749). On 9 July 1751, the same Pontiff, with the bull Iniuncus nobis, by which he suppressed the patriarchate of Aquileia, established the archbishopric of G. for the territories subject to the Empire and appointed Attems its first archbishop. The new archdiocese had as suffragans: Pedena in Istria, Trieste, Trento, and Como. This arrangement did not last, because Joseph II, with the consent of Pius VI, elevated the see of Ljubljana to an archbishopric in 1788, abolished the see of G., and established that of Gradisca in its place. But on 12 September 1791 the Pope, in agreement with the emperor Leopold, re-established the episcopal see of G., that is, Gradisca, until Pius VIII, on 27 July 1830, once again elevated G. to a metropolitan see, with the suffragan dioceses of Luoiana, Trieste-Capodistria, Parenzo-Pola, and Veglia; since after the war of 1915–18, Ljubljana and Veglia, incorporated into Yugoslavia, have been immediately subject to the Holy See (1920). The territory of the diocese, after various vicissitudes, now consists only of the Italian portion, with the seminary; it has an area of 1,030 sq km and 168,000 inhabitants in 85 parishes, among which are Aquileia and Grado. The sanctuary of Monte Santo above G., famous throughout the region, has remained in the territory assigned to Yugoslavia. At G., at the time of the division of the patriarchate, the Treasury was assigned to it, together with part of the codices, since it was the heir of the patriarchate of Aquileia. — Vedi tav. LXV.