of the people of Liège. In the twelfth century the cathedral chapter assumed a position of importance in relation to the bishop, and began to play an important part in the history of the principality.
The struggles between the upper and lower classes, in which the prince-bishops frequently intervened, developed through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, to culminate, in the fifteenth, with the pillage and destruction of the episcopal city. In the reign of Robert of Thourotte, or of Langres (1240-46), St. Juliana, a religious of Comillon, Lidge, was led by certain visions to the project of having a special feast established in honour of the Blessed Sacrament. After much hesitation, the bishop approved of her idea and caused a special office to be composed, but death prevented his instituting the feast. The completion of the work was reserved for a former prior of the Dominicans of Liège, Hugh of Saint-Cher, who returned to the city as papal legate. Hugh, in 1252, made the feast one of obhgation throughout his legatine jurisdiction. John of Troyes, who, after having been archdeacon at Liège, was elected pope as Urban IV, caused an office to be composed by St. Thomas, and extended the observance of the feast of Corpus Christi to the whole Church. Another archdeacon of Liège, becoming pope under the name of Gregory X, deposed the unworthy Henry of Gueldres (1247-74). The Peace of Fexhe, signed in 1316, in the reign of Adolph of La Marck (1313-44), regulated the relations of the princebishop and his subjects; nevertheless the intestinal discord continued, and the episcopate of Arnould of Hornes (1378-89) was marked by the triumph of the popular party. Louis of Bourbon (1456-82) was placed on the throne by the political machinations of the dukes of Burgundy, who coveted the principality. The destruction of Dinant, in 1466, and of Liège, in 1468, by Charles the Bold, marked the ending of democratic ascendancy.
Erard de la Marck brought a period of restoration; he was an enlightened protector of the arts. He it was who commenced that struggle against the Reformation, which his successors maintained after him, and in which Gerard of Groesbeeck (1564-80) was especially distinguished. With the object of assisting in this struggle, Paul IV, by the Bull "Super Universi" (12 May, 1559), created the new bishoprics of the Low Countries. This change was effected largely at the expense of the Diocese of Liège; many of its parishes were taken from it to form the entire Dioceses of Ruremonde, Bois-le-Duc (Hertogenbosch), and Namur, as well as, in part, those of Mechlin and Antwerp. The number of deaneries in the Diocese of Liège was reduced to thirteen.
Most of the bishops in the seventeenth century were foreigners, many of them holding several bishoprics at once. Their frequent absences gave free scope for those feuds of the Chiroux and the Grignoux to which Maximilian Henry of Bavaria (1650-88) put a stop by the Edict of 1684. In the middle of the eighteenth century the ideas of the French encyclopedistes began to be received at Liège; Bishop de Velbruck (1772-84), encouraged their propagation and thus prepared the way for the Revolution, which burst upon the episcopal city on August 18, 1789, during the reign of Bishop de Hoensbroech (1784-92). At last the territory of the principality was united to France, and thenceforward shared the destines of the other Belgian provinces. The diocese, too, disappeared in the Revolution.
The new diocese, erected April 10, 1802, included the two Departments of Ourte and Meuse-Inferieure, with certain parishes of the Forest districts. In 1818 it lost a certain number of cantons, ceded to Prussia. After the establishment of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the diocese comprised the Provinces of Liège and Limburg. On May 6, 1833, Msgr. Van Bommel divided the Province of Liège into two deaneries. In 1839 the diocese lost those parishes which were situated in Dutch Limburg. The present Diocese of Liège, suffragan to Mechlin, consists of 670 parishes, grouped in 40 deaneries, and has (1909) a population of 1,152,151, the majority (Walloons) speaking French; the minority, Flemish or German. Diocesan statistics (1909): deaneries, 40; curacies, 44; succursal parishes, 620; chapels, 30; vicariates paid by the State, 307; annexes, 22. After the Concordat, the diocese was governed by Zaepffel (1802-08); after him, Lejeas, nominated in 1809 by Napoleon, failed to obtain canonical institution, and the diocese was administered successively by the two vicars-capitular, Henrard (1808-14) and Barrett (1814-29). The succeeding bishops have been: Corneille Van Bommel (1829-52), Theodore de Montpellier (1852-79), Victor Joseph Doutreloux (1879-1901). Msgr. Martin-Hubert Rutten, the present bishop was instituted in 1901. On account of the Law of Separation, a number of French religious communities have settled in the diocese.
Fisen, Flores ecclesiæ Leodiensis (Lille, 1647); Idem, Historia ecclesiæ leodiensis (Liège, 1696); Foullon, Historia leodiensis (Liège, 1735-37); Bouille, Histoire de la ville et pays de Liège (Liège, 1725-32); de Gerlache, Histoire de Liège depuis César jusqu'à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Brussels, 1874); Daris, Histoire du diocèse et de la principauté de Liège, Des origines à 1879 (Liège, 1868-92); Paquay, Les oriqines chrétiennes dans le diocèse de Tongres (Tongres, 1909); Kurth, La cité de Liège au moyen âge (Liège, 1910); Demarteau, Liège et les principautés épiscopales de l'Allemagne occidentale (Liège, 1900); Bulletin de l' Institut archéoloqique liègois (Liège, 1852-); Bulletin de la Société d'Art et d'Histoire du diocèse de Liège (Liège, 1881-); Leodium (Liège, 1902-); Pirenne, Bibliographie de l'histoire de Belgique (Brussels, 1902), after that, in Archives Belges. Joseph Brassinne.
Liesborn, a former noted Benedictine Abbey in Westphalia, Germany, founded in 815; suppressed in 1803. It was situated near Beckurn, in the south-eastern part of the district of Münster. According to an old tradition the monastery was established in 785 by Charlemagne. More probably, however, it was built in 815 by two laymen, Bozo and Bardo, whom the register of deaths of Liesborn names as the founders. At first Liesborn was a convent for women. As time passed on the nuns grew more and more worldly, so that in 1131 Bishop Egbert of Münster expelled them, and installed Benedictine monks in their place. It was several times besieged by enemies and from the thirteenth century ascetic life steadily declined as the abbey increased in wealth. The monastery became a kind of secular foundation, into which the nobility gained admittance through influence. In 1298 the property of the abbey wall divided unto separate prebends, twenty-two of them full prebends, and six for boys. The Bursfeld Union successfully worked here also (1465) for the restoration of discipline. To the Union was due the flourishing condition of Liesborn in the period of the excellent abbots Heinrich of Cleves (1464-90), and Johann Smalebecker (1490-1522) who restored the buildings and greatly improved the economic condition of the abbey. Monastic life, art, and study flourished again. The zeal of Liesborn influenced other Benedictine abbeys, and it succeeded in re-establishing discipline and the cloister in several convents for women. The beautiful altar-paintings with which Abbot Heinrich adorned the church became famous, but under French administration (1807) they sold for a mere song. The artist is unknown, and the best pictures are now in the National Gallery, London.
The pious Bernard Witte, a warm friend of Humanistic learning, was a monk at Liesborn (1490 to about 1534). He wrote a history of Westphalia and a chronicle of the abbey. The period of prosperity, however, did not last long. Abbot Anton Kalthoff (1522-32) adopted the doctrines of the Anabaptists and was deposed; Gerlach Westhof (1554-82) favoured the Protestants and involved the monastery heavily in debt;
