STRASBOURG, Diocese of. - Diocese and city situated in France at the confluence of the Bruche and the Ill, between the Vosges and the Rhine, from which it is 4 km. distant, at the junction point of the Marne-to-Rhine and the Rhone-to-Rhine canals. The diocese currently comprises the two civil departments of the Upper Rhine and the Lower Rhine. Out of a total of 1,215,490 inhabitants, there were counted, in 1935, 893,899 Catholics, 262,437 Protestants, 20,684 Israelites and 39,470 persons who had not declared their religion.
In 1952 there were counted, over an area of 8294 sq. km., 1,200,000 inhabitants, of whom 890,000 were Catholics, 1198 priests incardinated in the diocese, distributed among 725 parishes. The regular clergy was represented by 20 male Orders and congregations and by 37 female congregations. It is directly subject to the Holy See. Important pilgrimage centers are Mount St. Odile (where Herrad of Landsberg lived [v].), the basilica of Marienthal, and the Trois-Epis.
A strategic point of great importance, on the borders of two civilizations, S. has a turbulent and complex history; of Celtic origin (Ptolemy, II, IX, 9), it later became a Roman fortified camp with a colony in the 1st century A.D.; in 357 Julian the Apostate gave battle there to the Alemanni; in 453 the city was sacked by the Huns; in 498 it was occupied by Clovis; Eticho, duke of Alsace, established the "curtis regia" near S. at Königshoffen. In the 6th century the bishop Arbogast had a church dedicated to the Virgin built, replaced by a basilica in the Carolingian age, when the city flourished through its commerce throughout the Frankish Empire. In 842 the sons of Louis the Pious swore the famous oath of S. In 870, by the Treaty of Meerssen, Alsace was taken from Louis the German and in 925 was united to the Holy Roman Empire, but in 982 S. detached itself from the Duchy of Alsace and passed under episcopal authority at the time of bishop Erchembald. In 1262 the burghers of S. freed themselves from that tutelage, the bishop moved to Saverne and S. became a free city of the Empire, with an aristocratic constitution that from 1339 became democratic. After the Treaty of Frankfurt (1871), Alsace and S. were united to Germany, as a territory of the Empire; the city became French again at the end of the war of 1914-18; it was annexed de facto to Hitlerite Germany in 1940 and restored to France on 23 Nov. 1945.
Traces of Christianity are lacking before the 4th century, and until the 7th century there are only some vague indications: the bishop St. Amand is mentioned in the Councils of Sardica (343) and of Cologne (346). Very well known is the bishop St. Arbogast (673-78); his successor Florentius (678-93) founded the female monastery of St. Stephen (its first abbess was St. Attala). In 728 the abbeys of Muhrbach and Ettenheimmünster were founded. With the help of Charlemagne the bishop Eddo introduced the reform of Boniface and founded the Chapter. During the Investiture Controversy the bishops of S. sided with the emperor Henry IV. The civil territory of S. was constituted ca. 1244-60. John II (1353-65) was a very pious bishop, but his successors did not follow his example and this explains the ease of penetration of the Lutheran Reformation. John IV (1569-1592) began the Counter-Reformation movement by calling the Jesuits to Molsheim; under him occurred in 1583 the question of the great Chapter. Once S. had returned to France, Catholic influence became ever stronger at the time of the bishop Francis Egon of Fürstenberg (1663-82). From 1704 to the Revolution in 1789, four cardinals of the Rohan family succeeded one another, the last of whom, René, was involved in the affair of the Queen's necklace.
The symbol of the city remains the Cathedral, a jewel and compendium of medieval architecture and sculpture. Of the three-nave Basilica of the 7th century no trace remains. The present building was begun in 1015 under the bishop Werner I and traces of that time remain in the crypt and in the transept. The choir, the dome and the two arms of the transept belong to Romanesque architecture from 1176 to 1245. The three naves with seven bays in Gothic style were built between 1252-75. The carved stone pulpit was erected in 1485, in honor of the celebrated preacher Geiler of Kaysersberg. The stained-glass windows belong to various periods, from the 12th century onward. The facade was begun in 1277 by Erwin de Steinbach and carried up to the height of the splendid rose window. In 1318, with a modification of the original plan, a third story was added; the single north tower, 142 m. high, a true lacework in stone, was finished in 1449. The Cathedral is rich in celebrated Gothic sculptures, among which are remembered the Madonna with the Child, the struggle between the vices and the virtues, the wise and the foolish virgins. In the Middle Ages S. was a notable center of culture; there flourished Godfrey of S. (12th century), Closener (14th century) author of a chronicle in German; later it was an active center of humanism (Wimpfeling, Brant). Although hindered by the efforts of the Catholics, among them Geiler of Kaysersberg, the Lutheran Reformation established itself there rapidly through the work of Zell, Bucer and Capito, supported by Sturm, founder of the Academy. In 1529 the Mass was abolished there and the convents suppressed. After the conquest of Alsace, of which S. was not a part, this city was annexed in 1681 by Louis XIV, who restored the Cathedral to Catholic worship. During the ancien régime the noble Chapter of S. was very powerful and had 24 canons and 24 prebendaries. In the period of the Revolution, from 1791 the see of S. was occupied by a constitutional bishop (Brendel), while the clergy remained faithful to Rome.
Other notable churches are: St-Pierre-le-Vieux of the 15th century; St. William, of the 13th century with stained-glass windows of the 15th century; St. Stephen, in Romanesque style, of the end of the 12th century but largely ruined by bombardments; St. Thomas of the 13th-14th centuries. The present episcopal palace is of the 18th century; characteristic are: the Kammerzell house of the 15th century; the covered bridges with their medieval towers; the Palace of the Rohan, etc.; notable is the Archaeological Museum in a building of the 14th century. Since 1949 S. has been the seat of the Council of Europe. The University of S. has two theological faculties, one Catholic and the other Protestant.
The diocese of S. possesses numerous artistic centers, rich in historical memories both religious and secular. Noteworthy are: Colmar, prefecture of the department of the Upper Rhine, an artistic city in the Alsatian plain with ca. 100,000 inhabitants. It is mentioned for the first time in Notker the Stammerer, monk of St. Gall, in the work De bellis Caroli Magni, II, 5 (genitium Columbrense). It was the birthplace of the painter and engraver Martin Schongauer (1440-1488); of Conrad Pfeffel, director of the military academy of Colmar (1736-1809); of the chemist Haussmann; of the sculptor Bartholdi. The collegiate church of St. Martin, called the cathedral of Colmar, owes its origin to a chapel dedicated to St. Martin, founded in the 9th century by the abbey of Münster, in the Vosges Valley (charter of 823 with privileges of Louis the Pious). In the 13th century the chapel was converted into a choir, to which was added a transept with Romanesque pillars that forms the oldest part of the present building; in the 14th century there were added a Gothic basilica with 3 naves, through the work of the architect master Humbert, and the present choir, the work of William of Marburg.
The convent of the Dominicans called "Unterlinden" (S. Johannis sub titis) was built between 1252-89; devastated under the French Revolution in 1793, it was transformed in 1849 into a museum with paintings by Schongauer and by Grün in the central nave; the Archives and the public Library are preserved there. In the ancient church of the Franciscans, of the 13th century, with stained-glass windows of the 15th century, the Protestant church was installed in 1575. Artistically notable are the ancient customs house, called Kaufhaus, a Gothic building of the 15th century, and the Palace of Justice of the 18th century.
Haguenau, a subprefecture of the Bas-Rhin near the large state forest of the same name, owes its origin to a hunting lodge, transformed into a palace by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1152-90); in 1255 Haguenau became an imperial city and later the capital of the Decapolis. The church of St. George was erected in the 12th century by the Hohenstaufen; the nave is Romanesque, the choir and transept Gothic. The church of St. Nicholas, from the 14th century, preserves an octagonal tower from the Romanesque period.
Saverne, situated at the foot of the Vosges, on the canal between the Marne and the Rhine, preserves the old Palace of the Bishops of S., built in 1780 by Cardinal Prince de Rohan, now however reduced to a barracks: it also has a church that offers vestiges of constructions from the 13th-15th centuries, with a five-story tower from the 12th century; a 12th-century castle now serves as a museum. At Wissembourg, in the Bas-Rhin, near the Gothic church of the 13th century, remains of the Benedictine abbey of the 7th century survive. The small wine-growing town of Egisheim prides itself on having been the birthplace, in 1002, of Bruno of Dabo, later Pope Leo IX (v.).
The Benedictine abbey of Murbach was founded in 729 by St. Pirmin, devastated in 929, and restored several times; it was secularized in 1794; the abbey church is from the 12th century and offers one of the most precious examples of religious architecture in Alsace. In 1515, Beatus Rhenanus discovered there the manuscript of the works of Velleius Paterculus. At present the abbey archives are kept in Colmar, while the manuscripts are in S. (Cottineau, II, coll. 2016-18). Near Saverne is the ancient abbey of Neuweiler or Neuwillers dedicated to the Sts. Apostles Peter and Paul, founded by Sigibald, Bishop of Metz (716-41), with monks sent by St. Pirmin (A. Langel, Origines des abbayes de Neuweiler et de Marmoutier, in Revue d'Alsace, 57 [1919], pp. 25-36,
186-203; Cottineau, II, coll. 2063-64). In the diocese three parish churches have been elevated to the dignity of minor basilicas, namely in the Bas-Rhin the Basilica dedicated to the Most Holy Virgin at Marienthal; in the Haut-Rhin the basilica of the Sacred Heart at Lutterbach and that of the Most Holy Virgin at Thierenbach. - See plates XCVIII-XCIX.
Bibliography16 works
Cirillo Vogel