SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN. - Formerly a duchy, ceded by Emperor Conrad II to Denmark in 1035 and governed with the title of Dukes by members of the Danish royal house; passed by inheritance in 1386 to the Counts of Holstein-Schauenburg; returned, after their extinction, to Denmark in 1459; became a province of Prussia in 1867.
The first missionaries were St. Willibrord and Atrebanus, who died a martyr in 780 in the rebellion of the Saxons. Under Louis the Pious, Ebbo, archbishop of Reims, and St. Ansgar, companion of King Harald of Denmark, converted to Christianity in 826, made another attempt at the mission. Through the incursions of the Normans and the Wends everything was once again destroyed.
Under Henry I the March on the Eider was newly constituted, thus beginning a new missionary era. The archbishop of Bremen Adaldag founded in 948 the diocese of S. and those of Ribe and Aarhus in Denmark. Under the son of Harald, Sweyn Forkbeard, a Viking, who returned in 985, the diocese of Aarhus was suppressed and the bishops of Ribe and of S. were expelled. In the last years of his life Sweyn Forkbeard became a Christian. His son Canute the Great spread Christianity throughout his entire kingdom (Denmark, England, Norway). When Canute also became margrave of S., S.-H., until then part of the ecclesiastical province of Bremen-Hamburg, passed to the Danish province of Lund, erected in 1104, to which it remained united until its suppression by Christian III of Denmark. The last Catholic bishop of S., Godescalc von Ahlefeld (1527-41), did not succeed in overcoming the policy of the kings of Denmark, who were inclined to the Reformation. Christian III proclaimed Lutheranism the state religion in 1536 and prohibited the practice of the Catholic religion. After the death of Godescalc, Tileman von Hussen became the first Lutheran bishop of S. In 1542 the ecclesiastical ordinance of S.-H., identical to the Danish one of 1537, was proclaimed the fundamental law of the State. Only at the beginning of the 17th century did some Catholic communities manage to form. From 12 Nov. 1669 the territory belonged to the newly erected apostolic vicariate of the Northern Missions. On 29 July 1868 the apostolic prefecture of S.-H. was erected and subjected to the bishop of Osnabrück as pro-vicar. After the Concordat with Prussia of 14 June 1929, the apostolic prefecture of S.-H. was incorporated into the diocese of Osnabrück by the constitution Pastoralis Officii Nostri of 13 Aug. 1930.
Bibliography
Nicola Kowalsky