Passau, Diocese of

PASSAU, DIOCESE OF. - A diocese in Bavaria, existing in its present extent only from 1817 and 1821, but in ancient times one of the most extensive dioceses of Germany and a missionary center of the first order.

The diocese has an area of 5,442 sq. km., and 497,535 Catholics and 52,512 non-Catholics; it comprises 267 parishes in 24 deaneries, with a seminary, and a quantity of religious institutes of every category; the religious orders and the female congregations flourish. The shrine of Altötting is very famous, and that of Halbmeile, of the Sorrowful Mother, is also well known.

I. ANCIENT PERIOD

Very ancient inhabited settlements are found in the country, especially along the spur formed by the confluence of the Danube and the Inn, where the Celtic Boii built Boiodurum. In 15 B.C. the Romans extended the frontiers of Rome as far as the Danube, and the Inn became the boundary line between the provinces of Raetia and Noricum. Around 153 they built, on the right bank of the Inn, opposite Boiodurum, the fortress that took the name "Batava castra," from the cohort of Batavi stationed there. In the time of St. Severinus (d. 488), the garrison had moved to the main center, by then called Batavis, while the former fortress retained its original name Boitro. There were a church and two monasteries, but the ecclesiastical center was Laureacum (today Lorch), whose bishop contemporary with St. Severinus is also known, namely Constantius; the diocese extended as far as the Pannonian frontier. In 488 Batavis was destroyed by the Thuringians; Laureacum also disappeared, and the ancient cathedral continued to serve as the mother church for the new center, on the nearby hills, which later took the name Enns.

II. CAROLINGIAN ERA, FIRST MISSIONARY PERIOD

During the 6th-7th centuries the formations of the new Germanic states began to take shape, among them Bavaria, ruled by its own dukes, who from the middle of the 8th century stood under Frankish hegemony. Batavis had become Bazzava and then the present-day Passau; Christianity was spread among the Bavarian populations by missionary bishops, without a fixed see, who founded various monasteries as centers of irradiation. Only St. Boniface in 739 was able to establish a stable hierarchy, with Salzburg as metropolis, and four diocesan sees among which was P., with a rather modest territory in present-day Bavaria, while to the east, toward present-day Hungary, the boundaries depended on the political vicissitudes of the Germanic power. After the missionary bishops Ercanfrid and Otcar (of uncertain date), a certain Vivilo, ordained by Gregory III himself, became the first stable bishop of the new diocese. He was a monk and near the cathedral of St. Stephen he erected a monastery of which the bishop was the abbot of the monks. Only after 900 did the Chapters of secular canons arise and did the separation between bishopric and Chapter come about. In 768 Duke Tassilo III had the body of the missionary bishop St. Valentine brought from Trent, and he became the patron of P., city and diocese. Charlemagne in 791 began, from the camp near Lorch, the war against the Avars and, after their complete defeat (796), instituted the eastern march, opening for P. the field to a missionary and civilizing penetration, directed eastward along the Danube. Louis the Pious then delimited the zones of action between Salzburg and P. The latter extended, as it seems, as far as the Slovak territories, whereby the bishop of P., Ermenrich (866-74), found himself in conflict with the Byzantine missionaries led by Sts. Cyril and Methodius. In 900, moreover, when John IX erected an independent hierarchy in Moravia, the entire Bavarian episcopate, headed by Salzburg, protested to Rome; but very soon every political, cultural and ecclesiastical activity collapsed under the tremendous Magyar invasions that seriously threatened Germany and Italy for half a century. Monasteries, churches and inhabited centers in Hungary and even in the heart of Bavaria disappeared again, and not all of them rose again.

III. MEDIEVAL ERA, SECOND MISSIONARY PERIOD

Once the Magyar invasions had been checked in 955, the eastern march was restored, at least in part, and then subsequently extended toward Pannonia, forming under the rule of the Babenbergs (976-1246) that territory which was later to become Austria. At this same time P. had the most famous bishop of its history, Pilgrim (Pilgrim, 971-91), a learned and energetic man and a strenuous defender of the rights (real and supposed) of his see. A legend widespread at the time held that P. continued the ancient bishopric of Lorch, which had become outright an archbishopric and metropolis of Pannonia, transferred by Vivilo to P. on account of the barbarian migrations; a fictitious list of bishops had also been drawn up, headed by St. Maximilian of Celeia (4th century); and now, with the conversion of the Magyar people, Pilgrim claimed for his see the supposed metropolitan prerogatives of Lorch over all Pannonia, that is, Hungary. By means of forged documents he obtained recognition from the imperial court of rights over the restored monasteries (Kremsmünster, St. Florian, St. Pölten, etc.). In 973 or 974 he asked Benedict VI for confirmation of his pretended metropolitan rights, but Archbishop Frederick of Salzburg succeeded in thwarting Pilgrim's action by securing the confirmation of a single metropolitan for Bavaria and the eastern territories as far as Pannonia. But Pilgrim created a series of imperial and papal diplomas to prove the continuation at P. of the (nonexistent) metropolis of Lorch (these are the famous "Passauer" or "Lorcher Fälschungen"), but without succeeding in his aim. Pilgrim meanwhile brought the cathedral school to fame, celebrated various synods in the most notable places of the eastern march, and displayed a remarkable activity of colonization and ecclesiastical foundations (churches, monasteries, cells, agricultural centers, etc.). In 985 he celebrated a synod at Lorch itself and had the relics of St. Maximilian, believed to be archbishop of Lorch, transferred to P., where he is venerated as second patron of the diocese. From Otto III the bishop of P. received sovereign rights over certain territories of the diocese, whereby the bishop subsequently became a prince of the Empire. The 11th-13th centuries are notable for P. as the most fruitful in monastic and ecclesiastical foundations (the mother parishes) and in cultural penetration, always in collaboration with the nobility and especially with the margraves, from 1156 dukes of Austria. Otto of Lonsdorf (1254-65) introduced and favored higher studies and reorganized the administration; he was very charitable and left the collection of the diocese's documents in the Codex Lonsdorfianus (ed. in the Monum. Boica, XVIII, 2, 40 ff.). At the same time the cathedral canon Albert of Behaim (1260), a historian and a man of political-religious action of wide scope, reworked the fabulous history of Lorch, making it almost the pivot of other new aspirations of the bishops of P. One must take into account the fact that the greater part of P.'s territory belonged to Austria, a country then of great importance.

Under Bishop Peter (1265-80) Austria passed to the House of Habsburg, and later Vienna became the capital of the Empire; therefore the Austrian rulers soon aimed at making the capital and their lands independent also in ecclesiastical matters. In 1365 Rudolf "the Founder" established at Vienna the first university of Germany and obtained the elevation of the mother church of Vienna, St. Stephen, to a collegiate church. P. exercised its jurisdiction in the Austrian territories through an "officialis" (a kind of vicar general), until in 1469 the emperor Frederick III succeeded in obtaining from Pope Paul II the erection of two modest bishoprics at Vienna and at Wiener-Neustadt, to the great displeasure of P. In this period P. often had zealous and industrious bishops; synods were celebrated with a certain regularity; in 1513 Viguleus Fröschl published a diocesan Rituale.

IV. AGE OF THE "REFORMATION" AND OF THE "COUNTER-REFORMATION" UP TO THE END OF THE ANCIENT DIOCESE

The history of the "Reformation" and of the "Counter-Reformation" in the diocese of P. follows the general history of Bavaria and especially of Austria (v.). The bishops all remained within the furrow of Catholic tradition: Wolfgang of Salm (1540-55) called in the Jesuits (Father Bobadilla), erected a gymnasium at P., and introduced the catechism of St. Peter Canisius; Urban of Treunbach (1561-98) favored the Franciscans very greatly and especially the Capuchins, as more popular. The government of Vienna did everything so that the see of P. would be occupied by ecclesiastics of Austrian origin; and this lasted from 1598 to the end of the ancient diocese; indeed for almost a century they were even archdukes (1598-1664), who nevertheless exercised a truly salutary and effective government, in collaboration with the governmental bodies. Archduke Leopold founded in 1613 a college directed by the Jesuits; Archduke Leopold William in 1638 the Tridentine Seminary. Famous was the bishop Joseph Dominic of Lamberg (1723-61), who visited the diocese 199 times, instituted the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, on the model of that of Rome, and was cardinal in 1738. Under him, after long disputes and conflicts, the metropolitan see of Vienna was erected, with a considerable enlargement of territory (1728), whereby the diocese of P. lost a good third of its own. In compensation Lamberg finally obtained exemption from the metropolis of Salzburg and the pallium, though without the title of archbishop. Leopold of Firmian (1763-83), infected by the Enlightenment, as were many other prelates, for that matter, was intent on spiritual profit. Hardly had he died when the emperor Joseph II in 1784 decreed the end of P.'s jurisdiction over the Austrian territories, and erected, with pontifical approval, the new bishoprics of St. Pölten and Linz, as suffragans of Vienna. The territory of P. remained very modest and entirely within Bavaria; the general secularization of 1803 put an end also to the ecclesiastical sovereignty of the bishop of P., and the last prince-bishop, Leopold Leonard Raymond of Thun, withdrew to his personal estates in Bohemia, where he died in 1825, while the diocese was governed by the Chapter and by a vicar.

V. THE MODERN DIOCESE

The Napoleonic upheavals forced Bavaria into a total reorganization of its ecclesiastical boundaries, which was carried out in the Concordat of 1817. On Sept. 8, 1821, the bull of circumscription was published, by which P. received the eastern part of the country, with some increase taken from Salzburg, becoming a suffragan of Munich. The new order came into force on Dec. 8, 1822, but only after the death of the last incumbent did the diocese have a new bishop of its own. In 1828 the Seminary and a lyceum were reopened; the philosophical-theological Academy, founded in 1612, was reopened in 1833 as a theological faculty. The diocese of P. followed the vicissitudes of Catholic life in Bavaria.

The cathedral of St. Stephen, after various rebuildings, presents itself as a Gothic construction (1407), rebuilt after the fire of 1622 with Baroque naves (Carlo Lurago) and a very rich decoration (G. B. Carlone), with one of the most grandiose organs in Germany. The church of St. Severinus dates back to the Carolingian age, with early Christian remains; the present building is of the 11th-12th century, with a Gothic choir. Above the Innstadt rises the pilgrimage church of Mariahilf. The whole city, with its suburbs on the various banks, presents an extremely picturesque appearance.

Giuseppe Löw