LIMBURG, DIOCESE OF. — A city and diocese in Germany. The diocese comprises the Duchy of Nassau and the city of Frankfurt, to which were added in 1884 the province of Biedenkopf and the territory of Homburg.
The endowment of the diocese was declared insufficient by Leo XIII. After the Concordat of 13 August 1929, six parish districts of western Frankfurt and the province of Wetzlar were annexed to the diocese. It is a suffragan of Cologne.
The diocese, with a population of 1,527,250, has 606,900 Catholics, 431 parishes, 520 secular priests and 204 regular priests, 27 male religious communities and 180 female (Ann. pont., 1957, p. 247); 2 boarding gymnasia and a theological-philosophical faculty in Frankfurt.
The episcopal curia is housed in the former Franciscan convent, built already in the time of St Francis. At present there are in the diocese 6 Franciscan monasteries, one Cistercian, one Capuchin, one of the Oblates, one of the Pallottines, two houses of the Jesuits, three of the Fathers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, two of the Salesians and 9 of the Brothers of Mercy. In the diocese there are 19 communities of sisters, among them the Benedictine nuns of Eibingen, the Pallottine Sisters and the Sisters of Dernbach.
The origins of the city go back to Roman times. The first cathedral was built in the 9th century, dedicated to St George and consecrated by Archbishop Hetti of Trier. The second basilica was built by Count Conrad Kurzbold about 910. Even today the cathedral celebrates his memorial. The present cathedral, of early Gothic form, was consecrated in 1235. It has seven towers and is one of the best examples of its period in Germany, and was built by Count Henry of Isenburg. The Chapter, in its most flourishing period, numbered 58 canons, of whom 30 were resident. Common life, however, declined already in the 13th century. Ecclesiastical administration until 1794 was directed by the office of the Archbishop of Trier, located in Coblenz. In that year the last official, Ludwig Beck, a fever-
onian, retired before the French invasion, taking refuge in Limburg, and from then on Limburg had the function of ecclesiastical administration dependent on Trier for the rural deaneries on the right bank of the Rhine: Dietkirchen, with 27 parishes, Cunosten-Engers with 51 parishes, and Kamp with 9 parishes. In 1802 Archbishop Clement Wenceslas elevated this office of Limburg to a vicariate general headed by Beck. After the death of Clement Wenceslas in 1812, Beck administered the vicariate general as capitular vicar. After his death in March 1816, he was succeeded, by decree of Dahlberg, by a regent of the vicariate in the person of the parish priest Corden, who was then appointed apostolic vicar by Pius VII on 8 July 1818. Only with the bull Ad dominici gregis custodiam (11 April 1827) was the new diocese of Limburg erected, with a Chapter composed of a dean, five canons and two vicars.