The Roman Catholic Episcopal Palace () is a historical monument in Timișoara, Romania. It was built between 1743 and 1752, the building being donated to the Diocese of Timișoara by Empress Maria Theresa. From 1783, the building became the permanent residence of the Catholic bishop. Confiscated during communism, the building was returned to the Catholic Church after 1990, which opened a museum here in 1995, where statues, paintings and other religious exhibits can be seen.
Background
The Diocese of Timișoara is considered the successor of the diocese of Cenad, established since 1030. The first bishop was Gerard Sagredo, who was killed by pagan rebels in Buda in 1046; he was sanctified, and since then the hill that rises steeply above the Danube in Budapest bears his name: Gellért-hegy (Gerard's hill).
The most difficult period for this diocese was the Turkish occupation. After the establishment of the Austrian administration in 1716 and the arrival of many Catholic colonists, the seat was moved to Timișoara. Between 1716 and 1918, monks from several Catholic orders arrived in Timișoara – Jesuits, Franciscans, Piarists, Misericordians, the School Sisters of Notre Dame, Salvatorians; these orders had a great influence on the development of the city in the 18th–19th centuries, some (the Salvatorians) are still active today.
A second difficult period began with communism. Catholic orders were banned, Bishop Augustin Pacha was imprisoned and the diocese itself was abolished – until 1990 it functioned as a deanery. It was reactivated after 1990; some of the former properties of the diocese, scattered throughout the city, have been retroceded in recent years.
Typical for the Catholic diocese of Timisoara is the extremely heterogeneous ethnic composition of the believers: Hungarians, Germans, Romanians, Croatians, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Czechs, Italians, etc.
History
The episcopal residence of the diocese was in Cenad until the middle of the 16th century. It was destroyed during the Ottoman occupation. After the liberation of Banat from the rule of the Ottoman Empire, for a short time (1710–1730), the bishops of Cenad carried out their activity in Szeged, however, already on 7 August 1723, an imperial decree was issued ordering the construction of an episcopal residence in Timișoara, with help from the Treasury, and – implicitly – the relocation of the diocesan seat in the city. Despite this fact, until April 1726, nothing was done in this regard, a fact that led Bishop Ladislaus Nádasd to address a request to expedite the construction of the episcopal residence. On 30 May 1731, based on an aulic decree, the fund for the episcopal residence was established. Bishop , who arrived in Timișoara, did not use this fund, but lived for a period of time in the residence of the Jesuit monks (St. George Square), and then settled in the House of Count Claude Florimond de Mercy, the first governor of Banat, which, in part, served as his temporary residence. On May 10, 1738, Emperor Charles VI reiterated his earlier decree for the construction of an episcopal palace, but due to the new war with the Turks, the works were not started immediately. The bishop, the canons and the diocesan administration were thus forced to live and carry out their work provisionally in various locations.
The current building of the palace was passed into the possession of the diocese of Cenad on 2 June 1780, through an imperial decree signed by Maria Theresa. The measure was planned in advance, because the architect Ignaz Johann Cetto received in 1773 the task of adapting a building used by a civil office (i.e., the Salt Office and/or Fiscal Office) into an episcopal palace. The beginning of its construction seems to be dated to 1743, as it was not yet highlighted in the city plans from 1733 and 1745. On the plans from 1758, signed by the engineer Carl Steinlein, the building appears with a clear delimitation of its two components, the northwestern half and the southeastern one. Part of the northeastern half – called the New Provincial House () – is already thought of as a functional episcopal residence, and the southeastern part is inhabited by a councilor for constructions from the provincial administration, also here being positioned the adjacent chancellery.