Diocese of Lydda (Lod) is one of the oldest bishoprics of the early Christian Church in the Holy Land. Suppressed under Persian and Arab-Islamic rule, it was revived by the Crusaders and remains a Latin Catholic titular see.
According to the Bible, Lod was founded by Semed of the Israelite Tribe of Benjamin; Some of its inhabitants were led into Babylonian exile, part of them returned, but by mid second century, the king of Syria gave it to the Maccabees, who kept control until the arrival of Roman conqueror PompeiinJudea. Flavius Josephus confirms Julius Caesar gave it in 48 BC to the Hebrews, but Cassius sold the population in 44 BC, Mark Antony released them two years later. The city saw Roman civil wars and Hebrew revolts in the first century, was officially renamed Diospolis, but remained known as Lod or Lydda.
The city was renamed Georgiopolis after local martyr St George, patron saint of England, who was born Lod and buried on the site of the basilica of Georgius, first mentioned about 530 by pilgrim Theodosius.
It suffered gravely under pagan Persian border incursions and faded at the advent of Arab Muslims.
Byzantine Suffragan Bishops of Lydda/ Diopolis/ Georgiopolis
In 1099, during the triumphant First Crusade (1096–1099), Lydda and Arab neighbour town Ramla were assigned to Robert, a Norman known after his natal diocese Rouen (inNormandy, France, where conquering Vikings were christianized only a few generations).[5] This briefly created the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lydda and Ramla. The crusaders seized Ramla without fight on 3 June 1099, because the Muslim garrison had left the town before their arrival.[6][5] Located at the crossing of two roads, Ramla was a strategically important fortress.[5] The nearby Lydda was the most important shrine of the warrior saint, Saint George.[5] The crusaders held an assembly and decided to establish a bishopric in the town.[5]
Robert was installed as virtual prince-bishop, wielding temporal feudal power as well as religious jurisdiction, obliged to supply a cavalry contingent to the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.
In 1110 civil jurisdiction over Ramla was split off as a separate Lordship of Ramla, vested in Baldwin.
Saint George's church was burned by Muslims in 1099, but rebuild larger, shifted to the northeast, in the 12th century by the Crusaders as Latin cathedral, but again destroyed by Saracens in 1191, in the fight against English crusader king Richard Lionheart, the patron saint of both knighthood and England being of great significance to his troops.
Bishop John MonaghanLawrence ShehanBp William ShomaliDom Grammont
As the Crusader kingdom fell to Saladin, Lydda was truly in partibus infidelium. From the 15th century, it was a Latin titular bishopric both under the names Lydda and Diospolis in Palaestina, with a messy proliferation of titular incumbents the next century with up to eleven titular bishops 'on' the see of Lydda.
Titular Bishops of Lydda/ Diospolis
Benedikt Sibenhirter, (20 Nov 1452 – 10 May 1458)[11]
Thomas Lydensis (fl. 1495)
Nicolaus de Braciano, (29 April 1504 – 1509)
Hermanus Nigenbroch, (7 Nov 1509 – 1511)
Petrus Antonii (18 July 1511 – 1515)
Heinrich von Hattingen (10 Dec 1515 - 1519)
Giovanni Brainfort (26 Feb 1517 - 1521)
Thomas Bele (7 June 1521 – 1524)
Pompeo Musacchi (11 May 1524 – )
Marcus Teggingeri (10 Dec 1568 – )
Georges Scultetus (3 March 1603 -1613)
Franz Weinhart (26 Feb 1663 – 22 June 1686)
Francisco Varo (5 Feb 1687 – did not take effect)
Giovanni Battista Bruni, (5 August 1765 – 21 Sep 1771)
Johann Baptist Joseph Gobel (27 Jan 1772 – 7 Nov 1793, resigned)
Hans Eberhard Mayer, The Origins of the Lordships of Ramla and Lydda in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, in Speculum, vol. 60, nº 3, July 1985, pp. 537-552.
Bruno Figliuolo, Chiesa e feudalità nei principati latini d'Oriente durante il XII secolo, in Pietro Zerbi (editor), Chiesa e mondo feudale nei secoli X-XII: atti della dodicesima settimana internazionale di studio Mendola, 24-28 agosto 1992, Vita e Pensiero, 1995, pp. 375-410, ISBN978-88-343-1241-4.
Victor Guérin, Chapitre III - Loudd, in Description géographique, historique et archéologique de la Palestine: Judée, Imprimerie impériale, 1868, pp. 322-334.
Emil Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi, J. C. Hinrichs, 1909, I e II, passim.
Fulcran Vigouroux, Dictionnaire de la Bible, Parigi, Letouzey et Ané, 1895-1912.
Gaetano Moroni, Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastica, vol. 38, pp. 195-197
Pius Bonifacius Gams, Series episcoporum Ecclesiae Catholicae, Leipzig 1931, p. 453
Konrad Eubel, Hierarchia Catholica Medii Aevi, vol. 1, p. 305; vol. 2, p. 144 e 177; vol. 3, pp. 225 e 344; vol. 4, p. 221; vol. 5, p. 251; vol. 6, p. 270
