Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dijon

Myths

Between the years 506 and 540 it was revealed to Gregory, Bishop of Langres, an ancestor of Gregory of Tours, that a tomb which the piety of the peasants led them to visit contained the remains of St. Benignus. He had a large basilica erected over it, and soon travellers from Italy brought him the acts of this saint's martyrdom. These acts are part of a collection of documents according to which Burgundy was evangelized in the 2nd century by St. Benignus, an Asiatic priest and the disciple of St. Polycarp, assisted by two ecclesiastics, Andochius and Thyrsus. The good work is said to have prospered at Autun, where it received valuable support from the youthful Symphorianus; at Saulieu where Andochius and Thyrsus had established themselves; at Langres where the three brothers, Speusippus, Eleusippus, and Meleusippus, were baptized, and finally at Dijon. In the meantime the persecution of Marcus Aurelius broke out, and St. Benignus and his companions were put to death.

The doubts first raised by Boulliau and Tillemont in the 17th century concerning the authenticity of these acts seem justified by the conclusions of G. Van Hooff and Louis Duchesne, according to which the Acts of St. Benignus and the martyrdom of the three brothers of Langres, on which the aforesaid traditions are based, are apocryphal and copied from Cappadocian legends. Animated polemics arose among the scholars of France on the apostolate of St. Benignus.

Langres and Dijon

Under the Merovingians and Carolingians, most of the bishops of Langres resided at Dijon, e.g. St. Urbanus (5th century), St. Gregory, and St. Tetricus (6th century), who were buried there. When, in 1016, Lambert, Bishop of Langres, ceded the seigniory and county of Dijon to King Robert of France, the Bishops of Langres made Langres their place of residence.

Diocese

In 1731, Pope Clement XII made Dijon a bishopric. When it was formed, the diocese was composed of 164 parishes divided among seven regional Deanships. 155 of these parishes had been part of the Diocese of Langres, and 19 others had come from the Diocese of Besançon. The seven Deanships were supervised by the two archdeacons. The Abbey of Saint-Etienne of Dijon (5th century) long had a Chapter of Canons Regular who observed the Rule of St. Augustine; the Chapter was altered to one of secular canons by Pope Paul V in 1611, and Pope Clement XI made its church the cathedral of Dijon; during the Revolution the Cathedral was transformed into a forage storehouse. The abbatial church of Saint-Bénigne became the cathedral of Dijon early in the 19th century. From the 1730s the Chapter was composed of six dignities and twelve Canons. The city of Dijon had some 30,000 inhabitants, and was divided into seven parishes. There were two colleges for the education of the young. There were eight houses of male religious, and eight monasteries of men.

Revolution

The diocese of Dijon was abolished during the French Revolution by the Legislative Assembly, under the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790). Its territory was subsumed into the new diocese, called 'Côte-d-Or ', which was part of the Metropolitanate called the 'Metropole de l'Est' (which included eight new 'départements'). The Civil Constitution mandated that bishops be elected by the citizens of each 'département', which immediately raised the most severe canonical questions, since the electors did not need to be Catholics and the approval of the Pope was not only not required, but actually forbidden. Erection of new dioceses and transfer of bishops, moreover, was not canonically in the competence of civil authorities or of the Church in France. The result was schism between the 'Constitutional Church' and the Roman Catholic Church. The legitimate bishop of Dijon, René de Mérinville, refused to take the oath, and therefore the episcopal seat was declared vacant. He was in fact one of the thirty bishops who subscribed to the Exposition des principes, sur la Constitution civile du Clergé (30 October 1790). He emigrated to Germany and took up residence at Karlsruhe.

On 15 February 1791 the electors of 'Côte-d-Or' were assembled, and elected the former Jesuit Jean-Baptise Volfius, whose brother was a member of the Constituent Assembly, as their President; they then proceeded to elect him as their bishop. Volfius travelled to Paris for his consecration, which was carried out on 13 March by Jean-Baptiste Gobel, the titular Bishop of Lydda, who had just been installed as Constitutional Bishop of Paris. Volfius, and all the Constitutional Bishops, were required to resign in May 1801 by First Consul Bonaparte, who was negotiating a treaty with Pope Pius VII, the Concordat of 1801 (15 July 1801). Once the Concordat went into effect, Pius VII was able to issue the appropriate bulls to restore many of the dioceses and to regulate their boundaries, most of which corresponded closely to the new 'départements'. The Bull Qui Christi Domini created the Diocese of Dijon out of the two 'départements' of 'Côte-d-Or and Haute-Marne. The diocese of Langres was reestablished in principle in 1817, but difficulties between the King and the Pope postponed the implementation of Langres until 1823.

Separation of Church and State

Pope Pius X's request in 1904 for the resignation of Monseigneur Le Nordez, Bishop of Dijon since 1899, was one of the incidents which led to the Law of Separation of 1905 and the rupture of relations between France and the Holy See.

Bishops

Architecture

Romanesque architecture was very popular in Burgundy; its masterpiece is the Cathedral of Saint-Bénigne of Dijon, consecrated by Paschal II in 1106 and completed in 1288. The Gothic style, although less used, characterizes the churches of Notre-Dame de Dijon (1252–1334), Notre-Dame de Semur, and l'Abbaye Saint-Seine; it was also the style of the Sainte-Chapelle of Dijon, which is no longer in existence. Under the dukes of Burgundy, at the close of the 14th and beginning of the 15th century, Burgundian art flourished in a surprising degree. The Chartreuse de Champmol, on which Philip the Bold had Claus Sluter, the sculptor, at work from 1389 to 1406, and which was the acme of artistic excellence, was almost totally destroyed during the Revolution; however, two superb traces of it may still be seen, namely the Puits des prophètes and the portal of the church. The Beaune hospital (1443) is a fine specimen of the Gothic style, and the church of Saint-Michel in Dijon (1497) has 16th- and 17th-century porches covered with fantastic bas-reliefs. The Abbeys of Cîteaux, Fontenay, and Flavigny (where in the 19th century Père Lacordaire installed a Dominican novitiate) were all within the territory of Dijon.

Saints

The following saints are specially honoured:

Among the famous persons of the diocese the Seneschal Philippe Pot (1428–94) is remembered for his exploits against the Turks in 1452 and his miraculous deliverance from his captors.

The illustrious Bossuet was a native of Dijon. Hubert Languet, the Protestant publicist (1518–81), was born at Vitteaux.