Please help support the mission of New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download. The name Thuringia is given to a large part of Central Germany , bounded on the west by the Werra River, on the east by the Saale, on the north by the Harz Mountains, and on the south by the Thuringian Forest. The extent of territory is not exactly defined.
The early inhabitants of Thuringia were a German tribe called Hermunduri; about A. The powerful kingdom of the Thuringians, which at the beginning of the sixth century extended to the Danube, was overthrown in by the Franks. Christianity had been introduced in various places through the intermarriage of the royal families of the Thuringians and the Visigoths.
The Gospel was preached in Southern Thuringia by the Apostles of the Franks , Kilian and his two companions Coloman and Totnan, and in Northern Thuringia by Willibrord, the Apostle of the Frisians; but these missionaries had little success. The real Apostle of Thuringia is St. From the monasteries of Fulda and Hersfeld in Hesse , Christianity spread throughout this region. In St. Boniface established Erfurt as the See of Thuringia, making it an important centre of civilization.
After the death of the first Bishop of Erfurt, St. Adelar, the diocese was suppressed and Thuringia was united with the Archdiocese of Mainz. The episcopal assistants of the Archbishop of Mainz , who since the fourteenth century had been auxiliary bishops , resided at Erfurt and in the course of time became almost entirely independent of Mainz. The extreme southern part of Thuringia always belonged to the diocese of Wurzburg, the extreme northern to the Diocese of Halberstadt, and the central or main part to Erfurt-Mainz; in the tenth century Eastern Thuringia was divided between the newly-found Dioceses of Merseburg and Zeitz-Naumburg.
The first monastery established by St. Contrary to canon law, no church tithes were paid by the inhabitants of Thuringia up to the time of the Reformation , and they obstinately maintained this right, that had become theirs by custom, against the Archbishop of Mainz. The tribal characteristics of the Thuringians gradually disappeared. The southern Thuringians were absorbed by the Franks , the northern Thuringians adopted the character and racial peculiarities of the Saxons, whose territory closely adjoined theirs.
