LAMEGO, DIOCESI di. – City and diocese in the northern part of Portugal.
It has an area of 2,751 sq. km., with a population of 224,969 inhabitants, of whom 224,398 are Catholics, distributed among 217 parishes, with 215 diocesan priests and 9 religious priests, one seminary, 2 male and 7 female religious communities (1949).
The earliest information concerning this diocese is found in the Council of Lugo (569). Three years later, the bishop of L., Sardinarius, took part in the Second Council of Braga, perhaps as the diocese’s first bishop. Philip, who participated in the Third Council of Toledo (589), was probably his successor. The diocese of L., which was a suffragan of Braga, passed under the jurisdiction of Mérida around 653. Fiontius, present at the Fifteenth Council of Toledo (688) and also at the Seventeenth (695), appears to have been the last Lamecian prelate before the Arab invasion. From this period there are the names of various bishops who seem to have been merely titular bishops, since residence there was impossible. After the reconquest of the city by Ferdinand the Great, between 1057 and 1064, efforts were also made to renew the Christian faith. Sancho of Castile, Ferdinand’s son, restored the bishopric and placed Bishop Peter at its head. Because of the region’s precarious economic situation, however, Pope Paschal II, by the bull Apostolicae Sedis of 23 March 1102, entrusted its administration to the bishop of Coimbra, which gave rise to not a few disputes. Hugo, bishop of Porto, went to Rome and obtained for himself the administration of the bishopric of L. The bishop of Coimbra protested against this decision. Pope Paschal II then, having heard the opinions of the bishops of Toledo, Braga, Tui, and Salamanca, once again entrusted the administration of the diocese to the bishop of Coimbra, a provision confirmed by Pope Honorius II (11 February 1126). At this time the diocese of L. was a suffragan of Compostela, to which Callistus II had transferred the metropolitan rights of Mérida. This fact caused conflicts between the archbishop of Compostela and that of Braga. Innocent III brought the conflicts between the two archbishops to an end in their presence, placing the dioceses of L. and Guarda under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Compostela. Pope Pius XI, by the apostolic constitution Praedecessorum nostrorum (AAS, 14 [1922], pp. 369–72), assigned L. to the ecclesiastical province of Braga.
Among its bishops was Tomaso d'Almeida, who was bishop of Porto and subsequently the first patriarch of Lisbon.