METROPOLITAN: The title of the bishop of the provincial capital, who possesses provincial as opposed to merely diocesan rights, including juris diction over (neighboring) suffragan bishops. See Archbishop; Exarch; Patriarch, and cf. Bing ham, Origtnm, II., xvi., where synodal and other references are given.
METROPOLITAN CHURCH ASSOCIATION. See Miscellaneous Religious Bodies, 18.
METZ, BISHOPRIC OF: An ancient episcopal see in Lorraine, founded according to unhistorical tradition by disciples of the apostles, probably in fact during the Roman domination. The town, known as Divodurum when it was the old capital of the Celtic tribe of the Mediomatrici, survived the fall of the empire and appears under the name of Mettis in the Frankish era as the seat of a bishop. The first certain occupant of the see is Hesperius, whose name is attached to the proceedings of the Synod of Clermont in 535. The diocese was of con siderable extent in the Middle Ages, and contained a mixed population, though more German than French.
Angilram or Engelram (bishop 768-791), a Benedictine, was archicapellanus to Charlemagne and apocristarius under Adrian I. From 823 to 855 the see was occupied by Drogo, a brother of Louis I. Bishop Theodoric I. of Hama]and (964-984), one of the most influential counselors of Otto I. and Otto II., secured from the latter (977) the insignia and title of a prince of the empire for himself and his suocxssors. With the next bishop, Adalbero II. of Bar (984-1005), a son. of Duke Frederick I. of Upper Lorraine, begins a new period of nearly six centuries, during which the see is no longer involved in the affairs of the court and develops a strong soclesiastical life, though troubled frequently by conflicts between the citizens of Metz and the bishops as secular lords. With the election of Henry II. of Lorraine-Vaudemont (1484-1505) the see became for over a century an appanage of the house of Lor rains--a relation which helped materially to retard the progress of the Reformation. The peace of Catesu-Cambh6sis (1559) gave the king of France a protectorate over his "allies" of the districts of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, without altering their fundamental relations to the empire. Charles IX. attempted to suppress the Protestant religion, but Henry IV. permitted it to be practised in 1592 and 1597, and this liberty continued until the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, after Metz bad become part of France by the Peace of Westphalia (1648). The last prince-bishop, Louis-Joseph de Montmorency-Laval (1761-1802), was driven out by the Revolution, and even the " constitutional bishop of the department of the Moselle," Nicolas Francin, was imprisoned in 1793, while the cathedral was turned into a Temple of Reason and all church property confiscated. By the Concordat of 1801 the bishopric was restored and made subject to the archbishop of Besangon, although with somewhat altered limits, which were reduced to about one-third of the former extent by the agreement of Louis XVIII. with Rome (1817-21). When Lorraine was annexed to Germany in 1871, the diocese was removed by Pius IX. from the metropolitan jurisdiction of Besanson and made immediately subject to the Holy See, with a further readjustment of boundaries.
Bibliography: Sources for the early history are found in AfGH, Script., ii (1829), 260-270, iv (1841), 426 sqq., 461
sqq., 658 sqq., 696-700, a (1852), 531-572, xii (1856), 4$0479,:iii (1881), 303 sqq. Consult: Game, Series|
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