SANT'IPPOLITO (SANKT PÖLTEN), DIOCESE of. — City and diocese in western Lower Austria, suffragan of Vienna.
The diocese covers 10,450 sq. km., with 630,600 inhabitants, of whom only approximately 25,000 are non-Catholic; 411 parishes distributed among 26 deaneries, with a numerous regular clergy, one major seminary, and three minor seminaries. All the principal orders are represented in the diocese; noteworthy is the mother house of the English Ladies of Sankt Pölten, founded in 1706 in a noble Baroque palace, which exercises a profound educational influence through its 13 houses.
S. I. is the Roman «Aelium Cetium», which survived in the city of Theissa (named after the nearby river) in 799 and later took its present name from the monastery of S. Ippolito, founded in 748 and rebuilt after the Magyar devastations in 955. Granted city rights in 1159 and 1338, S. I. enjoyed its greatest cultural flourishing in the 18th century, as the birthplace of outstanding artists such as the architects G. Prandtauer and Mungenst and the painters D. Gran and B. Altomonte, who left their mark there in innumerable ecclesiastical and secular works. In 1081 the monastery of S. I. passed to the Canons Regular of S. Agostino, who remained there until the time of Giuseppe II. Continuing his ecclesiastical administrative reorganization, in 1774 he transferred there the seat of the diocese of Wiener-Neustadt; the church of the suppressed monastery became the cathedral (Maria Assunta), while the extensive convent buildings became the Episcopal Palace. Pio VI, by a bull of 28 January 1774, sanctioned the imperial measure, with which the jurisdiction of Passau ceased in Austrian territory.
The cathedral dates from 1150, but was rebuilt with Gothic elements after 1267 and transformed into grandiose Baroque forms by Prandtauer, with frescoes by Gran and Altomonte. Beneath the Gothic side chapel of the Rosary, a magnificent Roman structure has recently been discovered.
Among the eight great abbeys in the diocese, Melk, Göttweig, Seitenstetten (Benedictines), Lilienfeld, and Zwettl (Cistercians) should be mentioned; among the most notable monuments are the former Charterhouse of Gaming, the former abbey church of the Canons Regular at Dürnstein, several churches in the ancient city of Krems, and the Shrine of Maria Taferl on the Danube. — Vedi tav. CXX.