WORMS. - City and ancient diocese in Germany. It is the Celtic "Borbetomagus," the Roman "Vormatia."
There is no certain information about the origin of the diocese. At the pseudo-Council of Cologne of 346, Victor, bishop of Vangio, appears; although its acts seem to have been drawn up in the 9th century, it appeared to Duchesne that the names of the bishops were authentic (Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, I, 2nd ed., Paris 1907, p. 7). Orosius (Hist. adv. paganos, VII, 32, 10-13) and Socrates (Hist. eccl., VII, 30) attest to the existence of the diocese of W. in the 4th century. But the first bishop of whom there is sure record is Bertholf, present in 614 at the Council of Paris (MGH, Concilia, I, p. 192). It is not known whether the diocese in its early times was a suffragan of Trier, but when in the 7th century the catalogue of bishops begins, it was a suffragan of Mainz (L. Duchesne, op. cit., III, Paris 1915, pp. 161-63). The first bishops were also abbots of Weissenburg. Among the prelates are remembered Hildibald (979-98), chancellor of Otto II and III; Burchard I (v.); 1000-25) who composed the Decretum and the statutes of St. Peter's of W., where Bruno, later Gregory V, had been educated (Lib. Pont., II, p. 262); the bishop Adalbert (1069-1107), exiled from W. The diocese had limited territory on both banks of the Rhine. Suppressed in 1802, between 1821-27 its territory was for the most part incorporated into the diocese of Mainz and the rest among those of Speyer, Freiburg and Rottenburg.
At W. numerous imperial diets were held: famous is that of 1122, when the Concordat was concluded that put an end to the investiture struggle, and the other of 1521, when Luther was condemned.
The Cathedral, formerly dedicated to Sts. Peter and Paul, had privileges from the 7th century onward, confirmed by Pepin and by Louis the Pious. Restored in 852, it is indicated at this time as dedicated to St. Peter. Its provosts from the 12th to the 16th century were archdeacons of the Church of W. (H. Weigert, Die Dome zu Speyer, Mainz und W., Berlin 1930; W. Hege, Die Kaiserdome am Mittelrhein, Speyer, Mainz und W., ibid. 1936). The cathedral of W. is linked by its architecture with those of Speyer and Mainz and was built between 1000 and 1018 by bishop Burchard on the site of the modest Merovingian church.
The Library has been almost entirely dispersed: the missal of the 10th century is in the Library of the Arsenal in Paris; a manuscript is now in the Vatican (Vat. Palat. 477). Of the royal and imperial diplomas granted to the churches of W., the list was given by L. Lachner (in Mittel des Instituts für Österreich, Geschichtsforsch., 22 [1901], pp. 571-74). The episcopal Archive was for the most part transferred after 1802 to Darmstadt (G. Fink, Geschichte des hessischen Staatsarchivs zu Darmstadt, Darmstadt 1925, pp. 54-58); part has ended up in the Libraries of Heidelberg and of Hannover and in the Archive of Speyer; very little has remained in the Archive of the city of W. The Benedictine women's monastery of St. Mary - Nonnenmünster - situated in the suburb of the city, founded and endowed by Louis the Pious, was renewed by bishop Burchard; the Cistercians replaced them there in 1236; it was suppressed in 1862. St. Martin's is from the end of the 10th century; Romanesque is the church of St. Andrew, desecrated in 1802 and today used as a Museum. St. Magnus's of the 13th century is today in the possession of the Protestants. The church of the Dominicans is from the 14th century. The Liebfrauen, of 1468, has three naves: it has been a parish church since 1898. Among the ancient churches of the diocese are remembered the Collegiate Church of St. Cyriacus in Neuhausen, known from the 9th century onward; erected by bishop Samuel and renewed by Burchard I, it was disputed between the monks of Gorze and the clergy of the city; the collegiate church of St. Paul, founded by bishop Burchard in 1016, burned in 1264, restored in 1681, was suppressed in 1802; the collegiate church of St. Peter in Wimpfen, of which a provost is known in 1068, was suppressed in 1802. The Benedictine monastery of St. Mary at Schönau, near Heidelberg, founded by Hugh II in 1142, but passed to the Cistercians as early as 1145, was suppressed in 1560. Notable is the church of St. Mary Magdalene in Frankenthal erected in 1197 by Eckenbert, near a large monastery of the Canons of St. Augustine; it had nearby a small women's monastery of the same Order erected in 1125, which remained until 1432; it was enriched with privileges by the popes Innocent II, Victor IV and Alexander III, it was given to the laity in 1562. The monastery of Heiligenberg on Mount Abraha was erected in 870 by the abbot of Lorsch Thiodroch and had privileges from Louis III in 882, from Conrad I in 912, from Otto I in 965. Reginbald, abbot of Lorsch between 1023 and 1033, erected there a monastery in honor of St. Michael. It had a privilege of Lucius II in 1144, was restored in 1165 by the abbot Henry of Lorsch; it was granted to the Benedictine nuns in 1195, then replaced by the Cistercians; in the 15th century the Benedictines returned there; from 1706 to 1777 it was granted to the Society of Jesus, now it is aggregated to the Benedictine Congregation of Beuron. The church of Sts. Peter and Verena in Hömingen, founded by Henry II count of Lainingen and his wife Alberta at the time of Callistus II (Liber Censum, ed. P. Fabre - L. Duchesne, I, Paris 1889-1910, p. 160), belonged to the Regular Canons of St. Augustine and was suppressed in 1569. At Neuburg the church of St. Bartholomew was founded by an Anselm in 1130, later a monk of Lorsch. The buildings were granted to the Capuchins in 1624, who held it intermittently until the suppression in 1802.
Bibliography18 works
Enrico Josi
TREATY OF W
Agreement between the elected emperor Maximilian of Austria and the German estates, established on 7 Aug. 1495 at the Diet of W., which, under the name of "perpetual peace" (ewige Friede), institutes a compromise between the estates' (princes of the Empire and imperial cities) leanings toward self-government with federal ties and the centralizing tendencies of the kings of the House of Habsburg, on the basis of the rights acquired by the estates themselves, thereby laying the foundations of a constitutional structure for the Kingdom of Germany.
Among other things, the Treaty provided for an imperial tax, the so-called "gemeine Pfennig," whose collection and allocation, however, were to be controlled by the Diet, and for the annual convocation of the Diet itself. The enforcement of its application was entrusted to a court of the Reich Chamber, presided over by a judge appointed by the emperor and composed of sixteen assessors, to be appointed by the estates. This court had ordinary jurisdiction over fiscal questions, over cases in territorial-feudal matters and over violations of the "perpetual peace"; it served as a court of second instance for the territories whose princes did not enjoy the privilege "de non appellando." The Treaty of W. therefore represents an episode in the struggle for the reform of the Empire formally demanded in order to ensure order, to prevent private wars and organized brigandage, in which the minor feudatories found the means to assert themselves; it was also conceived as a guarantee for the estates against the developments of imperial-Habsburg centralism. It, and in particular the provisions concerning the use of the imperial tax and those relating to the jurisdiction of the Reich Chamber Court, was frequently invoked in the controversies brought about in the 16th century by the Protestant Reformation, especially with regard to the legitimacy, contested by Catholics, of the secularizations of ecclesiastical property: among other things, the Protestants obtained the court's parity of composition from the confessional point of view.