GURK, Diocese of. - Austrian city and diocese, comprising the entire federal territory of Carinthia (9,533 sq km), with 497,000 inhabitants, of whom 455,000 are Catholics. The parts ceded in 1918 are administered by Maribor, Ljubljana and Udine. The Slovene minority, about 10%, enjoys full religious and cultural freedom. It comprises 26 deaneries and 327 parishes, with 372 diocesan priests and 122 regulars, a seminary, 20 male religious communities and 33 female (1949).
STORIA. - In the present diocesan territory there existed in the 4th-6th centuries the dioceses of Virunum and Teurnia. After the profound upheavals of the barbarian migrations, Christian penetration began anew, starting from the two great metropolises of Aquileia to the south and Salzburg to the north. Charlemagne designated the Drava as the ecclesiastical frontier for the zones of influence and mission (811; thus until 1782). Given the difficult communications with Salzburg, the archbishops sent (8th-10th centuries) chorepiscopi to ensure regular preaching and mission. Once the religious-political situation had been consolidated (10th-11th centuries) and the chorepiscopate had fallen into disuse, Gebhard I, authorized by Alexander II (21 March 1070) and by Henry IV (4 Feb. 1072), founded in the middle of Carinthia, at G., a bishopric, availing himself of the vast properties of the monastery founded there by St. Emma in 1043, which was therefore suppressed. G. became the first of the three "Eigenbistümer" of Salzburg (v.), whose archbishop held from 1155 to 1933 the right of appointing the bishops of G., alternately with the Emperor. The bishop of G. was a kind of expositus, a quasi vicar. Around 1123 the canonical life was introduced at G.; on 17 July 1131 Bishop Hiltipolt succeeded in obtaining a tiny diocesan territory; from as early as 1162 the bishops of G. were princes of the Empire. A first notable increase came to the diocese with the addition of the district of Millstatt (1775), and of almost half of Carinthia, even beyond the Drava, in 1782; from 1786 the residence has been in the capital, Klagenfurt, and finally, with the new circumscription of 1859, the whole of Carinthia came to constitute a political and ecclesiastical unit.
Carinthia, since antiquity a land of crossroads and of contacts between cultures and peoples, besides its natural beauties, is extraordinarily rich in art, including sacred art. In some places there still exist ancient centers of worship, for example, in the Möll valley, on a great isolated cone (Danielsberg) where prehistoric, Celtic, Roman and Christian cults succeeded one another (a very ancient church of St. Daniel the Prophet); on the Ulrichsberg, the ancient "Mona Carantanus", from which the country takes its name, the ruins of a Roman temple are superimposed on a Celtic one, and above them rises the Romanesque-Gothic church of St. Ulrich, etc. For the Roman period, Teurnia, Virunum, the ancient "refuges", etc. (v. AUSTRIA, History of Christianity).
Some churches go back to the Carolingian period, such as Karnburg, where there was an imperial Pfaltz (residence) (888), and St. Peter in Friesach; many others, even in the Alps and the countryside, have a pre-Romanesque or Romanesque core (Plattnitz, a Romanesque Alpine church with a dome; v. ibid., col. 427 ff.); the wealth of frescoes is enormous, often also in scattered churches; it suffices to see the two volumes of W. Frodl, Die romanische Wandmalerei in Kärnten (Klagenfurt 1942) and Die gotische Wandmalerei in Kärnten (ibid. 1946).
In place of a previous church, built by St. Emma (d. 1045), the first bishops erected a grand cathedral (c. 1160-1220, with crypt, two towers 60 m. high; an atrium and above it the episcopal chapel) in Romanesque style, the exterior in well-squared blocks of marble (very interesting for the knowledge of stonemasons' marks; cf. J. Löw, Die romanischen Steinmetzzeichen am Gurker Dom, in Carinthia, 1 [1930], p. 1 ff.). The crypt measures 20 x 20 m., with 100 small marble columns, the sarcophagus of the foundress St. Emma (1174), remains of frescoes, etc. The interior with three naves and tall pillars is today covered with Gothic vaults, partly painted (late 15th century, early 16th century). Many frescoes, among them St. Christopher (c. 1380), the 24 Elders (c. 1480), etc. Six enormous panels of carved and painted wood, with scenes from the life and miracles of St. Emma (c. 1500, L. Pambatel), the miraculously healed reproduced with crude realism. A grandiose high altar, in gilded wood, 16 m. high, with more than 76 life-size figures, in the center the Assumption (by M. Hönel, 1626-32); the altar of the Holy Cross, in lead, with the famous impressive Pietà by G. R. Donner (1741), by whom are also some panels of the monumental pulpit. Main door, carved in wood and painted (c. 1218). Countless minor sacred objects.
But more important are three great pictorial cycles preserved: 1) Romanesque (1220, renewed in 1268), in the episcopal chapel, with the Glory of Christ and of Mary (Throne of Solomon), and a painted glass window of the period; 2) early Gothic (c. 1349), in the atrium, stories of the Old and New Testament; 3) Gothic (1458, Conrad of Friesach), painted on canvas (10 meters per side), with 100 small panels, half scenes from the Old, half from the New Testament, and which serves as a Lenten veil (the largest known) to cover the high altar.
Also to be noted is Strassburg, episcopal residence until 1787, a small town joined to the grandiose castle-palace (Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque), a collegiate church with the tombs of the bishops, the church of the Holy Spirit, Gothic (1337), with a dome, for the episcopal Hospital. At Böckstein the summer residence, by G. G. Hagenauer (1780), a famous building uno sub tecto.
Singular is the city of Friesach, from the 8th century to 1803 Salzburg territory, with its walls, moat and four castles for defense, among them the Petersberg with a church existing already in 927; a large Romanesque collegiate church; the first Dominican convent north of the Alps (1217, St. Hyacinth) with an enormous Gothic church (70 m. long), seat and hospital of the Teutonic Order from 1213, etc.
Principal sanctuaries: Maria Saal, founded around 870 by the chorepiscopus St. Modestus, buried there, today a grandiose fortified complex; Maria Wörth, on the lake of the same name, founded by the bishop of Freising, Waldone, around 900, who deposited there (Carolingian crypt) Sts. Primus and Felician; the present Gothic construction is of the 14th century. Heiligenblut (1301 m.) of world fame for its panorama, at the foot of the Grossglockner (3798 m.); the present Gothic church (1485) very notable for a relic of the Most Precious Blood, brought there from the East, it is said, by St. Briccius. Famous is the grandiose panel in the church of Ober-Vellach, by Jan Scorel (1520). Other sanctuaries: Maria Rain, mentioned in 927, today entirely Baroque; St. Leonhard, with a French Gothic cathedral, built by St. Otto, bishop of Bamberg (1106-39); it has an enormous iron chain around the building (storied glass windows of the time). Luggau (from 1635 Servites), Maria Hilf (Guttaring), 1725-27, which dominates the center of the country from its mountain.
One cannot pass over in silence, as a specialty, the many ossuaries (Karner), widespread everywhere, and often very characteristic; with an underground chamber for the bones and an apsidal chapel above; Romanesque buildings generally round, Gothic ones with 6 or 8 corners. The ossuary of Pisweg is entirely frescoed (12th century), that of Metnitz has on the exterior a famous Danse Macabre (c. 1500). In the eastern part, since the Turkish invasion (at its height 1470-1529) many fortified churches, for example, Diex, Hohenfeistritz, etc.
As a curiosity to note among the many castles, that of Hochosterwitz, a picturesque complex, with a series of 14 gate-towers, palace, church; present state 1570-86; it belongs to the counts Khevenhüller. - See plate LXXXIX.
Bibliography3 works
XXIII, pp. 8-10. Studi: A. v. Jaksch, Geschichte Kärntens bis 1335, 2 vols., Klagenfurt 1928-29; Mayr-Kandl-Pirchegger, Geschichte und Kulturleben Deutschösterreichs, 3 vols., Vienna 1929-37; E. Riebel, Zur Geschichte der Kirchen und Pfarren Kärntens, Klagenfurt 1930; K. Ginhart, Die Kunstdenkmäler Kärntens, 8 vols., ibid. 1930-32; K. Ginhart and B. Grimschitz, Der Dom zu Gurk, Vienna 1930; J. Löw, Kl. Gurber Domführer, 3rd ed., ibid. 1930, based on the Capitular Archive of G.; E. Tomek, Kirchengeschichte Österreichs, 2 vols., Innsbruck 1935-49; A. Lamprecht, Heilige und Heiligenreliquien in Kärnten, Klagenfurt 1936; W. Frodl, Die romanische Wandmalerei in Kärnten, ibid. 1942; id., Die gotische Wandmalerei in Kärnten, ibid. 1946; G. Graber, Volksleben in Kärnten, Graz 1949; V. Paschinger, Landeskunde von Kärnten, Klagenfurt 1949; X. Braumüller, Geschichte von Kärnten, ibid. 1949.
Giuseppe Löw