SPIRE (SPEYER), DIOCESE OF. - A city and diocese in Germany in the Palatinate. It covers an area of 5,964 sq. km. with a population of 1,218,165, of whom 558,231 are Catholics, distributed in 307 parishes served by 529 diocesan priests and 46 regular clergy; it has a seminary, 7 male religious communities and 273 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 407).
On the beginnings of Christianity and the first bishops of Spire from the 4th to the 6th centuries, there are no reliable records; at the Council of Paris on 10 October 614, Bishop Hildricus was present (MGH, Concilia, I, p. 192). A regular list begins with Bishop Basinus (d. 782); in the Carolingian period some bishops were also abbots of Wissembourg. Bishop David is mentioned among those to whom Pope Zachary addressed a letter on 1 May 748; Bishop Gebhard is recorded in a letter of Pope Nicholas I (858–63). The series of bishops from the end of the 10th century is in MGH, Scriptores, XIII, p. 219, and is reproduced by L. Duchesne in Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, II, 2nd ed., Paris 1910, pp. 163–66. Among recent bishops are noted Abp. Johann von Geissel (1836–41), later Archbishop of Cologne, the Benedictine Daniel Boniface von Haneberg (1872–76), and Michael von Faulhaber (1911–17), later Archbishop of Munich and Freising and cardinal.
Spire was greatly favoured by King Sigebert III in 653, Childeric II (664–66), Charlemagne (782), and Emperor Otto I in 969; the Salian emperors were buried in the cathedral; the diocese received rich gifts from Conrad II in 1032, from Henry III in 1056, and from Henry IV in the years 1063–65, 1074, 1086, 1087, when he donated the abbeys of St Lambert, Linthurch, Eschinewage, and Hornbach to Blisenzove in the diocese of Metz. For this reason the bishops of Spire were always favourable to the Empire, so much so that Pope Gregory VII summoned Bishop Henry I to Rome in 1074 and suspended him in February 1075.
The diocese comprised four archdeaconries; until 1803 Spire was suffragan to Mainz; in that year it was suppressed and, restored in 1817, became suffragan to Bamberg, after its boundaries were limited to the left bank of the Rhine, i.e. to a quarter of its former extent.
The cathedral, dedicated to Our Lady and St Stephen, is already mentioned in a charter of King Childeric II (MGH, Diplomata Merovingica, XXVII, no. 28). The new cathedral was begun by Conrad II in 1030 and, though not completed, was dedicated in 1061 (MGH, Scriptores, XIII, p. 732). Pope Victor II buried Emperor Henry there on 28 October 1056, and the cathedral became an imperial burial place. But in the 13th century, a dozen years after its consecration, Bishop Frederick of Bolanden reconsecrated the cathedral in 1281. It suffered several fires and was almost destroyed in that of 1689, but was always restored; it is one of the most notable products of Romanesque architecture for its imposing plan and development; it has two opposing apses, Lombard reminiscences in the external arcades, domes, and bell towers. At Spire, in the time of Bishop Gunther von Henneberg (1146–61), St Bernard came to preach the Crusade.
The episcopal archives are rich in documents and diplomas. The cathedral library was destroyed by fire in 1689; the episcopal library, very rich, was dispersed at the end of the 17th century by the French.
The Collegiate Church of St Germanus. - Although the Annales Spiresenses write that King Dagobert gave the church of St Germanus to monks (MGH, Scriptores, XII, p. 82), there are no reliable records of this church until the 12th century, when archdeacons are mentioned as provosts of this collegiate church, which was sacked in 1422 and 1462; it was transferred to the church of St Maurice in 1468 and then destroyed in 1794. Its archives are now in those of Munich (A. Pfeiffer-F. Klimon, Das Statutenbuch des St. German-und St. Moritzstiftes, in Palatina-Almanach, 1925, pp. 21–25).
The Church of Our Lady. - At Hördt, of the Order of St Augustine, it was founded by a certain Hermann in the time of Henry III. The goods and rights of this church were confirmed in 1155 by Pope Innocent II and by Emperor Frederick I; it flourished until the 14th century. In 1525 it was ruined and then suppressed by the Palatine Elector from 1557; in 1625 the bishop transferred its foundation to the parish of Philippsburg. The Karlsruhe archives preserve some documents of the church: among these the privilege of Innocent II (I. Baumann, Zur Geschichte von Hördt, Speyer 1909; G. Buindo, Zur Geschichte der Propstei Hördt, in Blätter für Pfälzische Kirchengeschichte, 6 [1930], pp. 93–96).
Diet of Spire. - Two imperial diets were held at Spire and presided over by Ferdinand, brother of Charles V, which had special importance in the religious events of Germany in the 16th century. At the first, in 1526, it was decided: “Until the meeting of a council or a national assembly on matters concerning the Edict published at the Diet of Worms (1521) we have resolved and decided unanimously to live with our subjects, to govern and to behave in such a way that each of us hopes and thinks to be able to answer before God and His Imperial Majesty.” But the Lutheran princes interpreted this text as having full freedom to “reform” religion in a Lutheran sense in their territories.
(d) F. Witte, Tausend Jahre Bistum Speyer (Sondernummer der Rhenania Sacra), Speyer 1930; T. Mozzillo, Il secchiello di rame per l'acqua benedetta con rilievi (1st half of the 11th cent.) - Spira, in the four-hundredth anniversary of the birth (special number of Rivista di Studi Romani), Milan 1934.