The Holland Mission or Dutch Mission ( or ') was the common name of a Catholic Church missionary district in the Low Countries from 1592 to 1853, during and after the Protestant Reformation in the Netherlands.
History
Pre-reformation diocese and archdiocese of Utrecht
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the founding of the diocese of Utrecht dates back to Francia, when St. Ecgberht of Ripon sent St. Willibrord and eleven companions on a mission to pagan Frisia, at the request of Pepin of Herstal.
The Diocese of Utrecht () was erected by Pope Sergius I in 695.
In 695 Sergius consecrated Willibrord in Rome as Bishop of the Frisians. John Mason Neale explained, in History of the so-called Jansenist church of Holland, that bishops "became warriors rather than prelates; the duties of their pastoral office were frequently exercised by suffragans, while they themselves headed armies against the Dukes of Guelders or the Counts of Holland." Adalbold II of Utrecht "must be regarded as the principal founder of the territorial possessions of the diocese," according to Albert Hauck, in New Schaff–Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, especially by the acquisition in 1024 and 1026 of the counties of Drenthe and Teisterbant; but, the name "Bishopric of Utrecht" is not used in the article. ' was Pope Leo X's 1517 prohibition to the Archbishop-Elector of Cologne, Hermann of Wied, as ', to summon, to a court of first instance in Cologne, Philip of Burgundy, his treasurer, and his ecclesiastical and secular subjects.