Parishes 89 Sui iuris church Latin Church Area 5,216 km² Patron saint Saint Stephen Cathedral Cahors Cathedral | Denomination Roman Catholic Rite Roman Rite Country France Bishop Laurent Camiade | |
 | ||
Metropolitan Archdiocese of Toulouse Population
- Total
- Catholics (as of 2013)
181,200 (est.)
169,900 (est.) (93.8%) Address 134 Rue Frédéric Suisse, 46000 Cahors, France Ecclesiastical province Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toulouse Profiles | ||
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Cahors, is a diocese of the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic church, in France. The diocese comprises the whole of the department of Lot.
Contents
In the beginning it was a suffragan of the archdiocese of Bourges and later, from 1676 to the time of the French Revolution, of the archdiocese of Albi. From 1802 to 1822 Cahors was under the Archbishop of Toulouse, and combined the former Diocese of Rodez with a great part of the former diocese of Vabres and diocese of Montauban. However, in 1822 it was restored almost to its pristine limits and again made suffragan to Albi.
In the diocese of Cahors in 2013 there was one priest for every 2,295 Catholics.
History
According to a tradition connected with the legend of St. Martial, this saint, deputed by St. Peter, came to Cahors in the first century and there dedicated a church to St. Stephen, while his disciple, St. Amadour (Amator), the Zaccheus of the Gospel and husband of St. Veronica, evangelized the diocese. In the seventeenth century these traditions were closely examined by the Abbé Antoine Raymond de Fouillac, a friend of Fénelon, and, according to him, the bones discovered at Rocamadour in 1166, and looked upon as the relics of Zaccheus, were in reality the bones of St. Amator, Bishop of Auxerre.
A legend written about the year 1000 by the monks of Saint-Genou Abbey (in the Diocese of Bourges) relates that Genitus and his son Genulfus were sent to Gaul by Pope Sixtus II (257-59), and that Genulfus (Genou) was the first Bishop of Cahors. But Louis Duchesne repudiated this as legend.
The first historically known Bishop of Cahors is St. Florentius, correspondent of Paulinus of Nola (ca. 354–431). The Diocese of Cahors counted among its bishops:
Diocesan organization
The Cathedral of Saint-Étienne de Cahors was served by a Chapter composed of fourteen individuals. The Bishop was considered a member of the Chapter, as were the Archdeacons of Cahors and Tournus; in addition there was a Precentor and a Treasurer, as well as nine other Canons. In addition there were four hebdomadarii, fourteen prebendaries, and twelve chaplains. In 1251, Bishop Bartholomaeus secularized the Chapter, and in 1253 issued new Statutes for them.
The diocese was divided into districts, each headed by an Archpriest. It is attested that by 1526 there were fourteen Archpriests, though a number of them are far older, being mentioned already in the 12th century. Six archpriests are named in the 13th century. The archpriests were supervised by the Archdeacons, of which there were six by 1252: Montpezat, Tournès, Figeac, Cahors, Saint-Céré, and Vaux. In 1418, however, Bishop Guillaume (VI.) d'Arpajon decided to suppress superfluous offices and reduced the number of archdeacons to two: Cahors and Tournès; these two continued to exist down to the Revolution.
City of Cahors
The city of Cahors was visited by Pope Callistus II (1119–24) in 1119, where, on 26 August 1119 he dedicated the high altar of the Cathedral. It was also the birthplace of Jacques d'Euse (1244–1334), who became pope in 1316 under the title of John XXII. The tower of his palace is still to be seen in Cahors. He provided a charter for a university there, dated 7 June 1331, its law faculty being so celebrated as to boast at times of 1200 pupils. There were three colleges at Cahors: Pélegry (1358), Rodez (1371), and San Michel (1473). Fénelon studied at this institution, which, in 1751, was dissolved as a separate institution and annexed to the University of Toulouse. In the sixteenth century the Diocese of Cahors was severely tried by religious wars, and the Collège de Pélegry, which provided for a certain number of university students without cost, became noted for the way in which these young men defended Cahors against the Huguenots. The War of the Spanish Succession in its turn took a heavy toll on the good order of the university. In 1707 King Louis XIV found it necessary to reform the Collège de Pélegry and provide it with new statutes.
In 1680 the town of Cahors is reckoned as having some 12,000 inhabitants. By 1766 the population is estimated to have grown to 15,000 persons.
The Cathedral of Saint-Étienne, built at the end of the eleventh and restored in the fourteenth century, has a beautiful Gothic cloister. Recent archival and archaeological discoveries have demonstrated, however, that the westwork of the cathedral, once thought to be of the XIV century, was actually completed by 1288. Plans were already under way by the mid-1240s, when Pope Innocent IV granted indulgences to those who contributed financially to the project; these were renewed by Pope Alexander IV in 1255, and yet another grant was made in 1289 by Nicholas III. The great builders were Bishop Bartholomeus de Roux and Bishop Raimond de Cornil. In 1285 Bishop Raimond persuaded the Chapter to join with him in a commitment to donate half of the first year of income of every newly granted benefice in the diocese to the building fund. When, in the Middle Ages, the bishops officiated in this church they had the privilege, as barons and counts of Cahors, of depositing their sword and armour on the altar. In the diocese local honors are given to St. Sacerdos, Bishop of Limoges, and his mother, Mundana (seventh century); Esperie (Speria), virgin and martyr (eighth century); St. Géraud, Count of Aurillac (beginning of the eleventh century); Blessed Christopher, companion of St. Francis of Assisi and founder of a Franciscan convent at Cahors in 1216, and Blessed Jean-Gabriel Perboyre, born in the village of Mongesty, 1802, and martyred in China, 1840.
The city of Figeac owed its origin to a Benedictine abbey founded by Pepin in 755. The principal places of pilgrimage are: Notre-Dame de Rocamadour, visited by St. Louis (1245), Charles the Fair (1324), and Louis XI (1463); Notre-Dame de Félines and Notre-Dame de Verdale, both dating back to the eleventh century; Saint-Hilaire Lalbenque, where relics of St. Benedict Joseph Labre are preserved.
The Revolution
During the French Revolution the diocese of Cahors was abolished and its territory subsumed into a new diocese, coterminous with the new 'Departement de Lot' and a suffragan of the 'Metropole du Sud' in the departement of Haute-Garonne, with its seat at Toulouse. The clergy were required to swear and oath to the Constitution, and under the terms of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy a new bishop was to be elected by all the voters of the departement, who were not even required to be Catholics. This placed them in schism with the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope. The electors of the diocese of Lot duly met, but found no obvious candidate in the department of Lot; they therefore chose an outsider, Abbé Jean-Louis Gouttes as their new Constitutional Bishop. He has also been chosen by the electors of Seine-et Loire, which he preferred. The electors of Lot then, on 27 February 1791, elected Jean d'Anglars, the Archpriest of Cajarc. He was consecrated at Tulle on 29 April by Jean-Jacques Brival.
The legitimate Bishop Louis Maria de Nicolai died in 1791, leaving the diocese vacant. On 11 November 1791 Pope Pius VI appointed Charles-Nicolas de Bécave to be the Vicar-Apostolic of the diocese of Cahors in the absence of a bishop; he served until the appointment of a new bishop in 1802. Both the Constitutional Church and the Roman Catholic Church were severely stressed in 1793 and 1794 by the Terror, and the discovery that Reason was to replace Faith as the governing principle in France.
In 1801 First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte ordered all the Constitutional Bishops to resign. He was striking a Concordat with Pope Pius VII, which included the liquidation of the Constitutional Church. In accordance with the Concordat, the Pope revived the diocese of Cahors, and placed it in the hands of Guillaume-Balthasar Cousin de Grainville of Montpellier. D'Anglars was made an honorary Canon of the Cathedral of Cahors.