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The article discusses the history and development of the Catholic diocese of Liège, in modern Belgium, until the reforms of 1559. Specifically in describes the administrative districts of the Catholic church in the Netherlands and Belgium prior to a reorganization in 1559. Among other topics addressed are the history and evolution of parishes within dioceses and their relation to Church structure and function, the development of the concepts of parishes in canon law, and the effects of increasing population density in Christian Europe generally.

In the Middle Ages archdeacons represented a group of the ecclesiastic élite, who had a bright perspective for the future and who played an important role in church administration. They had a large area of competence, high authority and serious power to exercise in everyday life all these enabled them to hold leadership and control in their hands and to give orders. Due to their competence in administrative, financial and canon law matters related to the priests and church members within their own church district, they played a key-role in the life of the Church in the Middle Ages. This being the case it is understandable why the Church, on the one hand, aimed at raising the level of their erudition and providing their education and why the court, on the other hand, made it its practice to honour their activity at court by donating them benefices. By patronizing the archdeacons both the church and the court ensured very prudently their own interests as well. In the present study, I will try to illustrate the career perspectives of the archdeacons holding benefices by presenting the career of two representatives, i.e. two archdeacons of two neighbouring archdeaconries: Szatmár (Satmar) and Ugocsa (Ugocea) in the late Middle Ages. The walk of life of Ferenc Acél, archdeacon of Satmar and Miklós Gerendi, the archdeacon of Ugocea have many similarities as both belonged to the middle class of the clergy, but at the same time also many differences springing from their origin, their family relations, their studies and their patronage can be found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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French. L'analyse diachronique de la gestion institutionnelle du croire—dans un contexte spatio-temporel trop limité qui autorise une quelconque tentative de généralisation—permet de dégager trois modèles qui se différencient principalement par les rapports qui s'instaurent entre l'autorité religieuse et les fidèles: le modèle de l'unanimisme, fortement hiérarchisé et territorialisé; le modèle du pluralisme, marqué par une forte segmentation organisationnelle et l'emprise du militantisme; le modèle de la gouvernance, qui résulte de la mise en œuvre du principe de synodalité et du processus de déclergification. English. The diachronic analysis of the institutional administration of belief—in a spatio-temporal context too limited to permit any attempt whatsoever at generalization—allows us to distinguish three models which differ principally with regard to the relations that they institute between religious authority and believers: the model of unanimity, markedly hierarchical and quite territorial; the pluralistic model, characterized by a high degree of organizational segmentation and by a very militant attitude; the governance model, which results from the implementation of a synod-based direction along with a process of declericalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]