MAINZ ON THE RHINE, DIOCESE OF
Diocese and capital city of the Land of Rhineland-Palatinate, facing the mouths of the Main. Over an area of 792 sq. km., it has 1,794,600 inhabitants, of whom 631,100 are Catholic, distributed in 284 parishes, served by 437 diocesan priests and 79 religious; it also has 14 male and 199 female religious communities, 7 educational institutes, and 100 charitable and welfare works (Ann. Pont., 1951, p. 260).
Certainly merchants and soldiers of the XXII *Legio Primigenia*, stationed first at Lyon and then at Mainz, brought the Christian religion to Mainz. According to the tradition of medieval legends, the honors of protopope and martyr of the Church of Mainz belong to Crescentius, a disciple of the Apostles. His feast is on 27 June. Subsequent martyrs of the early Christian age are Ferrucius, Albanus, Aureus, and Justina. Outside the Roman walls of the city, remains of rich Christian sepulchral monuments from the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th centuries were found (now preserved in the Civic Museum of Antiquities). In the mid-6th century, Bishop Sidonius restored the city’s church and baptistery.
Mainz owes its greatest glory to St. Boniface (d. 754), a missionary from Anglo-Saxon lands, known in history as the “Apostle of Germany.” Though of episcopal rank, he was only Bishop of Mainz; his successor as Bishop of Mainz, St. Lullus, blessed as Boniface, was elevated to the archbishopric in 780–782. From 695, the office of royal chancellor for Germany was attached to the see of Mainz. From 1257, the metropolitan of Mainz presided over the college of prince-electors. Consequently, the archbishops of Mainz, given their influential position in royal elections, were vitally involved in the struggle between Church and Empire. Notable archbishops were Rabanus Maurus, honored with the title *magister Germaniae* (d. 856), St. Willigis (d. 1011), builder of the Mainz Cathedral, and St. Bardo (d. 1051); at Bingen, the great mystic St. Hildegard (1089–1179). Archbishop Diether of Isenburg founded the University of Mainz in 1477. Archbishop Albert of Brandenburg (1514–1545), following the preaching of indulgences by the Dominican Tetzel during his tenure, provided the occasion for Luther’s posting of the theses in 1518.
In the medieval struggles between nobility and bourgeoisie against the archbishops, Mainz remained a bishop’s city. In the early Middle Ages, Mainz had 14 suffragan bishoprics. At times, the ecclesiastical province of Mainz extended to the North Sea with the territory of the present-day Dutch and Belgian provinces, to the south as far as Chur (Switzerland), to the east as far as Prague and Olomouc, and to the north beyond the Elbe as far as Brandenburg and the Harz, including Hildesheim and Paderborn.
Under Archbishops Friedrich Karl Joseph von Erthal (1774–1802) and Karl Theodor von Dalberg (1802–1817), the archdiocese and the episcopal city declined due to the spiritual and military events of the French Revolution. From 1797 to 1814, Mainz was under French rule, and under Napoleon, in 1802, it became a bishopric and suffragan of Mechelen. The new bishopric ultimately comprised only the territories on the left bank of the Rhine. In 1821, the Roman Curia reorganized the Diocese of Mainz, whose boundaries then coincided with those of the region then known as Hesse-Darmstadt. According to this new division, the diocese included the three provinces of Hesse: Rheinhessen, Starkenburg, and Upper Hesse. Mainz remained the episcopal see.
Notable bishops of the new diocese were: Joseph Ludwig Colmar of Strasbourg (1802–1818), founder of the seminary for priests in Mainz and restorer of the Cathedral, who revived Christian spirit in the diocese by gathering around him prominent figures in the so-called “First Mainz Circle.” Ketteler (v.), a scholar of social issues (1850–1877), founded with Lennig, Heinrich, and Moufang the “Second Mainz Circle.” The first German Catholic Day was held in Mainz in 1848. The “Mainz Circle” had profound importance and great influence throughout Germany in affirming religious life in contrast to the state. The organ of Mainz Catholics was *Der Katholik*, founded in Mainz in 1821 by A. Rass and N. Weis, which earned great merits and lasted until 1918.
Bishop Albert Stohr, doctor of theology and canon law *honoris causa*, governed until 1936. He authored the youth report to the Fulda Bishops’ Conference and the report of the liturgical commission. This bishop played a major role in the creation and restoration of the German ritual.
After the end of the Second World War (1945), the Rhine became the boundary line of the occupation forces, so that the Diocese of Mainz, for the territory on the left bank of the Rhine, belongs to the French zone, and for that on the right bank, to the American zone. Following the new organization of the German Länder, Rheinhessen has belonged since the end of 1946 to the Land of Rhineland-Palatinate, while the former provinces of Starkenburg and Upper Hesse belong to the newly formed Land of Greater Hesse. The external boundaries of the diocese remained unchanged.
### MONUMENTS
In the episcopal city of Mainz, the Cathedral, dedicated to St. Martin, built in the years 975–1009, 1137, 1238, with five naves and a double choir, substantially Romanesque, illustrates with its sepulchral monuments the Archdiocese of Mainz. The flowering of art in Mainz was especially in the 10th, 13th, 15th, and 18th centuries. It was here that the inventor of printing, Gutenberg (v.), was born. The city has significant Gothic and Baroque churches. Many works of art were damaged or destroyed by aerial bombings (1939–45). The following churches in the Diocese of Mainz have the rank of *Basilica Minor* granted by the Pope: the Cathedral of Worms, the collegiate church, once Gothic, of Bingen, and the Carolingian Basilica of SS. Marcellinus and Peter in Seligenstadt on the Main.
The Johannes Gutenberg University, reopened in 1947, has a Catholic theological faculty.
For the study of the diocese’s history, the *Jahrbuch für das Bistum Mainz*, edited by A. Schubert (since 1946), and the *Archiv für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte. Beiträge zur Mainzer Bistumsgeschichte* (Speyer, since 1949) are published in Mainz.