LIÈGE, Diocese of. - Diocese and capital city of the province of the same name in Belgium.
It has an area of 6,283 sq. km., with 1,423,297 inhabitants, of whom 1,300,000 are Catholics. It has 778 parishes, with 1,810 diocesan priests and 710 religious; two seminaries: 92 male religious communities and 496 female (Annuario Pontificio, 1951, p. 246).
The territory of Liège originally belonged to the diocese of Trier, then to that of Cologne, and subsequently an episcopal see was created at Tongeren, northeast of Liège; its bishop took part in the Council of Rimini (359-60). After Tongeren was destroyed, the bishop St. Servatius settled at Maastricht. In the 6th century dwellings began to be established in the vicus Leudicus or Leodium, where the bishop St. Lambert (669-705) was killed, whose remains were transported to Maastricht in the church of St. Peter. On the site of his martyrdom, however, the bishop St. Hubert erected a church dedicated to the Virgin and to St. Lambert, and his relics were later translated there. The bishops continued to call themselves bishops of Tongeren or also bishops of Tongeren and of Liège.
Eriberus, a monk of Lobbes, composed around 980 the Gesta of the bishops of Tongeren and of Liège down to the middle of the 7th century, continued in 1153 by Anselm, dean of St. Hubert, down to the bishop Wazo. Other lists are found in an 11th-century codex of the Library of Valenciennes (no. 166), which goes down to the bishop Reginard (1025-38), and in ms. lat. 4208 of the National Library of Paris, which reaches down to Theodwin (1048-75), successor of Wazo. St. Bernard, while preaching the Second Crusade, stopped on Saturday, January 18, 1147, at Liège and remained there 4 days, working miracles there after singing Mass on 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 donated the abbey of Aulne, where the following year monks come from Clairvaux founded the Cistercian abbey in 1146. St. Bernard established the abbey of Villers. The dynasty of the Ottonians made the bishops princes of Liège, continually extending their domain and their rights down to the 13th century even over part of lower Lorraine (G. Kurth, Notger de Liège et la civilisation au Xᵉ siècle, 2 vols., Paris 1905). At the end of the 12th century new encircling walls were built; the commune imposed a tax called permeté also on ecclesiastics, causing an agitation that ended only in 1287 with the "Paix des clercs." Archdeacons of the church of Liège were James of Troyes, later Urban IV (1261-64), and Theobald Visconti, later Bl. Gregory X (1271-72). In the 14th century the struggles between the prince-bishops and the patriciate broke out. In the 17th century the bishops belonged to the house of Bavaria; among these is remembered the prince-bishop Maximilian Henry (1650-1680), who after defeating the democratic party known as the Grignoux obtained in 1684 that the appointment of the Council be reserved to the bishop and "conservators" (Chiroux).
The diocese, suppressed during the French Revolution, was re-established on April 10, 1802, including within it the two departments of the Ourthe and of the Lower Meuse; in 1818 a part of its territory passed to Prussia, and in 1839 to Limburg. The diocese is a suffragan of Malines. The cathedral of St. Paul, founded in 968, was rebuilt in 1480. The choir is in Gothic style, and is still that of the 13th century, but the naves are of the 16th century. The bell tower, destroyed by the French Revolution, was rebuilt in 1812. The interior decoration of the vaults, painted in 1579, was restored in 1860. There is preserved there the gilded reliquary urn of St. Lambert, of the 10th century.
Among the other churches are remembered: the Romanesque church of St. Bartholomew with its typical copper baptismal font, supported by ten oxen, attributed to Regnier de Huy (1107-18); St. John the Evangelist erected by the bishop Notger (982) imitating the cathedral of Aachen, but with reworkings of the 11th, 12th and 18th centuries; St. James in Gothic style erected in the 12th century and rebuilt in the 16th; St. Cross of the 13th century with restorations of the 14th and 15th centuries; St. Denis of the 14th century; St. Martin, with stained-glass windows offered by E. de la Mark (1522-38); St. Christopher (1241-42); St. Gervasius (13th-14th centuries). In the church of St. Cross is preserved a bronze key called that of St. Hubert, sent by one of the Popes contemporary with the bishop Hubert (697-727); it is of bronze with later decorations (images of St. Peter, of Jesus Christ seated, of the Crucifixion between the Virgin and St. John). To the collegiate church of St. Martin belonged the ivory diptych of Fl. Asturius, consul in 449; one of the two leaves, known through a copy of 1584, had already disappeared by 1600; the second leaf is preserved at Darmstadt. The diptych of Anastasius, consul in 517, formerly of the cathedral of St. Lambert, is preserved half in the South Kensington Museum in London and half in the Berlin Museum. In the treasury of the church of Notre-Dame, cathedral of Tongeren, is preserved half of a diptych with the scene of an Evangelist and on the reverse the names of the bishops of Tongeren from 840 to 956.
The Palace of the prince-bishops of Liège, now transformed into a Palace of Justice, was rebuilt in 1526 by A. van Mulcken. The ancient house of J. Curtius (1598-1606) is today the seat of the Archaeological Museum, rich in ivories of the 10th century and local sculptures of the 12th century; there is preserved there the Evangeliary of the bishop Notger (972-1008). The Ausembourg Palace (1735-40) has become the Museum of Decorative Arts; there are then the Museum or Academy of Fine Arts, containing a collection of Belgian and French painters and modern sculptures and terracottas coming from various churches, the Museum of Walloon Art, the Museum of Arms; the Gentry Museum. The abbey of St. Lawrence is transformed into a military hospital. The University has a library with several illuminated codices.
Bibliography7 works
Enrico Josi