PADERBORN, ARCHDIOCESE OF. - City and archdiocese in Germany. It has an area of 39,228 sq. km. with a population of 9,382,323 inhabitants, of whom 2,345,344 are Catholics, distributed in 605 parishes, served by 1,454 diocesan priests and 464 religious; it counts
34 male religious communities and 501 female (Ann. Pont., 1952, p. 307).
The foundation of the Church of P. dates back to the year 772, when Charlemagne had the column of Irmes (Irmenssäule) destroyed and Christianity was brought to the surroundings of P. by the holy abbot Sturmi. The foundation took place during the Synod of Maifeld in 777. The territory of P. then depended on the diocese of Würzburg. The first bishop of P. is St. Hathumar (775-815), of noble Saxon lineage. He built the cathedral of St. Mary and St. Kilian. The territory of the diocese was delimited by the Synod of Salz (804) and bordered on the dioceses of Mainz, Cologne, Osnabrück and Hildesheim. To the east it extended beyond the Weser, to the south beyond the Diemel, and it was a suffragan of the archdiocese of Mainz. If the diocese of P. had no special role in the history of Germany, it has nevertheless often seen, within its walls, kings and emperors, Carolingians, Saxons and Franks. Of historical importance is the meeting of Pope Leo III with Charlemagne at Christmas in 799.
St. Baduard (815-52) finished the Cathedral and founded the college for the clergy, establishing the common life there. In 836 he obtained from Louis the Pious the body of St. Liborius, bishop of Le Mans, who became the principal patron. During his governance the abbeys of Corvey and Herford were founded; together with the monasteries of Boddeken, Neuen-Herse and Geseke, they contributed to the conversion of the region to Christianity. Henry II of Werl (1090-1127) consecrated a Christian chapel on the "Externsteine" (a pagan sacred place). A friend of St. Bernard of Clairvaux was Bernard I of Ocsede (1127-60). The latter founded the Cistercian monastery of Hardehausen, and obtained, during a journey of his to Rome, from Innocent II, permission to use the so-called "rationale" which the archbishops of P. wear still today. Having returned to his see, he found a great part of the Cathedral destroyed by fire. The reconstruction he ordered was carried out according to the designs of the cathedral of Poitiers and became the most important monument of all Westphalia. The history of the diocese in the 13th century is full of skirmishing with the neighboring archdiocese of Cologne, whose archbishop Dietrich von Mörs (d. 1463) united the two dioceses (1429-44), seeking the approval of Martin V, but the Cathedral Chapter, which had great influence in the administration of the diocese, succeeded in preventing that union from becoming effective. Under Erich von Braunschweig (1508-32) Protestant doctrine entered the diocese of P. and spread, despite the apostolic zeal of bishop John of Hoya (1568-74). In 1580 the Chapter called in the Jesuits, one year after bishop Henry of Lauenburg (1577-85) had adhered to the "Augsburg Confession". There followed Theodore of Fürstenberg (1585-1618), one of the most famous bishops of the diocese, founder of a library and of a seminary that bear his name. During the congress for the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the Landgrave of Hesse, a Lutheran, attempted to have the diocese of P. secularized and to annex it. But Louis XIV opposed this, and so did the diocese of Le Mans, which considered itself almost a guardian of P. by virtue of its Patron St. Liborius. The bull De salute animarum of 16 July 1821 enlarged the diocese of P. with the annexation of the dioceses of Corvey, Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Merseburg, part of Naumburg, Cologne, Mainz, Osnabrück, Minden, Verden, Havelberg and Brandenburg. After Breslau, P. became the largest diocese of Germany. To the diocese of P., in 1851, the Duchy of Gotha was subjected, and in 1868 the apostolic vicariate of Anhalt, which in 1921 was incorporated into the same diocese, and in 1869 the Principalities of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt and Sonderhausen. Pope Pius XI with the apostolic constitution Postoralis officii of 13 Aug. 1930 elevated the diocese of P. to an archdiocese, giving it Fulda and Hildesheim as suffragans. The bishops of this period were Friedrich Clemens von Ledebur (1825-1841), R. Dammers (1841-44), F. Drepper (1845-55), K. Martin (1856-79), F. C. Drobe (1882-91), H. Simar (1891-1900), W. Schneider (1900-1909), K. J. Schulte (1910-20), C. Klein (1920-40) and from 1940 to the present Lorenz Jäger. - See pl. XXXIV.
Bibliography8 works
Bruno Wüstenberg