ALBA IULIA, Diocese of. - Romanian city, in Transylvania. In Romanian Alba Iulia (from the medieval Latin Alba Iulia: the Weissenburg of the German immigrants, later Karlsburg), in Hungarian Gyulafehérvár. From 1103 to 1558 it was the seat of the bishops of Transylvania, who, driven away by the rapid and violent expansion of Protestantism and forced to reside outside their diocese, returned there in 1716; it was subject to Kalocsa, but since 1927 it has been a suffragan of Bucharest.

The foundation of the bishopric by St. Stephen, after the occupation of Transylvania (1003), is legendary. The first bishop, Simon, dates from 1103-13. Bishop Count Ignatius Batthyáni (1786-98), who is known for his resistance to the innovations of Joseph II, issued norms for clerical life, collected and published ancient Hungarian ecclesiastical laws, and founded a kind of university, the "Batthyáno," with an observatory.

In 1920 Transylvania passed to Romania. The Concordat of 1927 reorganized its ecclesiastical circumscriptions. The diocese has 390,000 Catholics, with 249 parishes, 320 diocesan priests and 109 regulars. The cathedral, partly Romanesque, partly Gothic, is dedicated to St. Michael.

Bibliography2 works

BIBL.: A. Szeredai, Series antiquorum et recentiorum episcoporum Transylvaniae, Alba Carolina 1790; A. Theiner, Vetera monumenta historica Hungarian sacram illustrantia, 2 vols., Rome 1859-60.

Giuseppe Löw

@incollection{ec1_alba_julia_diocesi_di, author = {Lów, Giuseppe}, title = {Alba Julia, diocesi di}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {I}, pages = {633--634}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1948}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/alba-julia-diocesi-di} }

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Alba Iulia, Diocese of

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