LILLE, Diocese of. - Diocese and capital city of the northern department in France.
It has an area of about 2288 sq km with 1,077,399 inhabitants. The diocese is divided into two archdeaconries, of Lille and of Flanders, and into five archpresbyterates, and consists overall of 377 parishes (plus the annexed parish of Escobecques), served by 1569 diocesan priests and 181 regulars, two minor seminaries, a seminary of philosophy and one of theology; 27 male religious communities and 247 female ones (Annuario Pontificio, 1951, p. 246).
Pius X, by the decree Ut consulere of the Sacred Congregation Consistorial (5 Feb. 1913), established in the city of Lille a general vicariate including the civil districts of Lille, Hazebrouck and Dunkerque under a vicar general, a titular bishop, as auxiliary of the archbishop of Cambrai (AAS, 5 [1913], p. 94); then, by the letter and consistorial decree (25 Oct. 1913), he created the diocese of Lille by detaching from the archdiocese of Cambrai the aforementioned territory of the general vicariate, which before the French Revolution was divided among the four dioceses of Tournai, Ypres, St-Omer and Cambrai. At the same time the church of Notre-Dame de la Treille in Lille was elevated to the rank and dignity of cathedral and the diocese of Lille assigned as suffragan of Cambrai (ibid., pp. 481-85). The Pontiff delegated Card. Luçon, archbishop of Reims, to the ceremony of the erection of the diocese, which took place on 10 Dec. 1913. The sole vicar general and first bishop was Msgr. A. Charost in 1913, later cardinal archbishop of Rennes.
The settlement was called "Isla" from the Latin insula as early as 1054, because of its characteristic position resembling an island at the confluence of the two rivers Deule and Bucquet. But already from 1030 the count of Flanders Baldwin IV had surrounded it with walls; conquered in 1213 by Philip Augustus of France, it soon returned to the power of the counts of Flanders, who made it a center of the woolen industry.
Returned to France in 1320, it passed in 1369 to the duchy of Burgundy, becoming ever more flourishing, especially in the 15th century under Duke Philip the Good; it then belonged to the Habsburgs, from whom Louis XIV took it in 1667. In 1708 it was conquered by Prince Eugene, but the Treaty of Utrecht definitively restored it to France. The great urban development of Lille took place in the 19th century with the linen industry and more recently with the chemical industry, facilitated by its proximity to the coal basin.
Among the churches of Lille, mention is made of St. Maurice in Gothic style; St. Catherine, erected in the 15th century but with rebuildings in the 16th and 18th centuries; St. Magdalene, with a central plan and a dome from the close of the 18th century.
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CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF LILLE
It began with the free courses established on 23 Dec. 1874. Once freedom of higher education had been proclaimed (law of 12 July 1875), on 18 Nov. 1875 the Institut catholique was inaugurated, comprising, in addition to certain chairs of science and letters, a Faculty of Law, legally constituted (28 Oct. 1875). The following year the Faculties of Letters (25 Nov. 1876) and of Sciences (22 Dec. 1876) were constituted and "free courses" in medicine and pharmacy were established. With these three Faculties, the Institut catholique legally assumed the title of Université catholique de Lille. Erected canonically by decree of 8 Nov. 1876 and by the brief Ad catholicae Ecclesiae (16 Dec. 1876) of Pius IX, it now comprises, in addition to the three aforementioned Faculties, that of medicine, constituted on 8 July 1877, and that of theology, inaugurated on 13 Nov. 1877.
Subsequently the advanced schools were added: 1) Hautes-Etudes industrielles (civil engineering, electrotechnics, chemistry); 2) Hautes-Etudes commerciales; 3) Ecole d'expertise-comptable; 4) Institut des sciences sociales et politiques; 5) Journalisme (the only higher school of its kind in France); 6) Ecole des missionnaires du travail (for ecclesiastics destined to be "aumôniers du travail"); 7) Ecole d'infermieres hospitalieres; 8) Ecoles des sages-femmes, Service social, Pédagogie infantile.
Within the Catholic university district of France, L. comprises only the ecclesiastical province of Cambrai (dioceses: Cambrai, Lille, Arras): a region, however, flourishing in schools, industries and commerce. The mixed Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy, the only one among all the Catholic Faculties of France, admits students also from other parts of the nation and from abroad (cf. letter of the Secretariat of State of His Holiness, 14 Jan. 1913; AAS, 5 [1913], p. 53 ff.). Its Grand Chancellor is the bishop of L.
The University is provided with extensive buildings. The students, 270 in 1877, today exceed 2000.