Diocese of Utrecht (695–1580)

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the founding of the diocese dates back to Francia,[1] when St. Ecgberht of Ripon sent St. Willibrord and eleven companions on a mission to pagan Frisia, at the request of Pepin of Herstal.

[1] George Edmundson wrote in the 1911 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica that the bishops of the Diocese, as the result of grants of immunities by a succession of German kings, and notably by the Saxon and Franconian emperors, gradually became the temporal rulers of a dominion as great as the neighboring counties and duchies.

[1] During the administration of the first archbishop, Frederik V Schenck van Toutenburg, Calvinism spread rapidly, especially among the nobility, who viewed with disfavor the endowment of the new bishoprics with the ancient and wealthy abbeys.

[10] "Even though approximately one third of the people remained Roman Catholic and in spite of a relatively great tolerance,"[10] as early as 1573,[1] the public exercise of Catholicism was forbidden,[1][10] and the cathedral was converted into a Protestant church in 1580.

[3] Walter Phillips wrote, in Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911 edition, the last archbishop of Utrecht, Frederik V Schenck van Toutenburg, died in 1580, "a few months before the suppression of Roman Catholic public worship" by William I, Prince of Orange.