LIÈGE, DIOCESE OF. – Diocese and provincial capital in Belgium bearing the same name.
It has an area of 6,283 sq. km, with 1,423,297 inhabitants, of whom 1,300,000 are Catholic. It comprises 778 parishes, served by 1,810 diocesan priests and 710 religious; two seminaries; 92 male and 496 female religious communities (Annuario Pontificio, 1951, p. 246).
Originally the territory of Liège belonged to the diocese of Trier, then to that of Cologne, until a see was established at Tongres, northeast of Liège. Its bishop attended the Council of Rimini (359–60). After Tongres was destroyed, St Servatius took up residence at Maastricht. In the 6th century dwellings began to appear in the vicus Lendicus or Leodium, where St Lambert was martyred (669–705); his relics were transferred to Maastricht, to the church of St Peter. On the site of his martyrdom, however, St Hubert built a church dedicated to Our Lady and St Lambert, and the relics were later translated there. The bishops continued to be styled bishops of Tongres or bishops of Tongres and Liège.
Erigius, a monk of Lobbes, composed around 980 the Gesta of the bishops of Tongres and Liège down to the mid-7th century; this was continued in 1153 by Anselm, dean of St Hubert, up to Bishop Wazon. Other lists are found in a 11th-century manuscript in the Valenciennes Library (no. 166), which extends to Bishop Reinhard (1025–38), and in Latin ms. 4208 of the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, which reaches to Theodwin (1048–75), Wazon’s successor. When St Bernard was preaching the Second Crusade, he stopped at Liège on Saturday, 18 January 1147, and remained there four days, working miracles after celebrating Mass the following Sunday at St Lambert (Historia miraculorum in itinere germanico patratorum, I. II, 10; III, 1 and 2, in MGH, Scriptores, XXVI, pp. 133–34). The bishop then granted the abbey of Aulne, where monks from Clairvaux founded a Cistercian abbey in 1146. St Bernard also established the abbey of Villers. The Ottonian dynasty created the prince-bishops of Liège, steadily extending their dominion and rights until the 13th century, when they held part of Lower Lorraine as well (G. Kurth, Nolher de Liege et la civilisation au Xe siècle, 2 vols., Paris 1905). At the end of the 12th century new city walls were built; the commune imposed a tax called the “permit,” even on ecclesiastics, provoking unrest that ended only in 1287 with the “Paix des clercs.” Archdeacons of Liège included Jacques de Troyes, later Urban IV (1261–64), and Teobaldo Visconti, later Bl. Gregory X (1271–72). In the 14th century the struggle between the prince-bishops and the patriciate intensified. In the 17th century the bishops belonged to the Bavarian house; among them is remembered Prince-Bishop Maximilian Henry (1650–1680), who, after defeating the democratic party known as the Grignoux, obtained in 1684 that the nomination of the Council be reserved to the bishop and the “conservatori” (Chiroux).
The diocese, suppressed during the French Revolution, was re-established on 10 April 1802, incorporating the two departments of the Ourthe and the Lower Meuse; in 1818 part of its territory passed to Prussia, and in 1839 to Limburg. The diocese is a suffragan of Mechelen. The cathedral of St Paul, founded in 968, was rebuilt in 1280. The choir is in Gothic style and still dates from the 13th century, but the naves are from the 16th. The bell tower, destroyed in the French Revolution, was rebuilt in 1812. The internal decoration of the vaults, painted in 1579, was restored in 1860. It preserves the gilded reliquary urn of St Lambert, of the 10th century.
Among other churches are: the Romanesque church of St Bartholomew, with its distinctive copper baptismal font supported by ten bulls, attributed to Renier de Huy (1107–18); St John the Evangelist, erected by Bishop Notger (982) in imitation of Aachen Cathedral, though with later modifications in the 11th, 12th and 18th centuries; St James, in Gothic style, built in the 12th century and remade in the 16th; the Holy Cross, 13th century with 14th- and 15th-century restorations; St Denis, 14th century; St Martin, with stained glass donated by E. de la Mark (1522–38); St Christopher (1241–42); St Gervasius (13th–14th centuries). In the church of the Holy Cross is preserved a bronze key known as that of St Hubert, sent by one of the popes contemporary with Bishop Hubert (697–727); it is of bronze with later decoration (images of St Peter, of Christ seated, of the Crucifixion between the Virgin and St John). The collegiate church of St Martin possesses the ivory diptych of F. Asturius, consul in 449; one of the two leaves, known from a 1584 copy, had already disappeared by 1600, while the second leaf is preserved in Darmstadt. The diptych of Anastasius, consul in 517, formerly in the cathedral of St Lambert, is now split between the South Kensington Museum in London and the Berlin Museum. In the treasury of the church of Our Lady, the cathedral of Tongres, is preserved half of a diptych showing an Evangelist and, on the reverse, the names of the bishops of Tongres from 840 to 956.
The Prince-Bishops’ Palace of Liège, now the Law Courts, was rebuilt in 1526 by A. van Mulcken. The former house of J. Curtius (1598–1606) now houses the Archaeological Museum, rich in 10th-century artifacts and local 12th-century sculpture; it preserves the Evangeliary of Bishop Notger (972–1008). The Hôtel d’Assébourg (1735–40) has become the Museum of Decorative Arts. There is also the Academy of Fine Arts, containing a collection of Belgian and French paintings and modern sculpture and terracottas from various churches; the Walloon Art Museum; the Armoury Museum; the Grétry Museum. The abbey of St Lawrence has been converted into a military hospital. The University has a library containing several illuminated manuscripts.