Tarnow

DIOCESE OF TARNOW (TARNOVIENSIS).

Diocese in western Galicia, Austria. The See of Posen, founded in 968 by Duke Miecyslaw, was the only one in Poland until 1100. In that year Otto III and Duke Boleslaw Chabry founded the Sees of Gnesen and Cracow, to which also belonged what is today western Galicia. When in the First Partition of Poland, in 1772, the latter fell to Austria, it was separated from the foreign See of Cracow, and the administration entrusted to the vicar-general, Johann von Duval, who resided at Tarnow. On the erection of the See of Tarnow in 1783, he became its first bishop. By the Third Partition of Poland in 1795, Cracow too fell to Austria, whereupon it was considered advisable after the death of the second bishop (1801) to divide the See of Tarnow between Cracow and Przemysl. By the Peace of Vienna in 1809 Austria was obliged to relinquish western Galicia and with it Cracow, both assigned to the Duchy of Warsaw. The Diocese of Tarnow thereupon came under Lemberg, whose bishop gave the management of it to the prior of Alt Sandek as his vicar-general. In the Congress of Vienna, Austria once more incorporated the Kingdom of Galicia. The Emperor Francis in 1822 gave Tarnow another bishop, Gregorius Thomas Ziegler. He had been a Benedictine at Wiblingen, but was at that time professor of dogma at Vienna. He established his residence in the former Benedictine monastery of Tyniec. This, however, was too near Cracow, and Ziegler removed thence to Bochnia and finally in 1826 back to Tarnow. There are today in this diocese 809,000 Catholics ; 379 secular priests ; 72 male religious and 340 nuns.