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The Ancient Diocese of Vaison (Lat. dioecesis Vasionensis) was a Roman Catholic diocese in France, suppressed in 1801, with its territory transferred to the diocese of Avignon. It had been one of nine dioceses in the ecclesiastical province presided over by the Archbishop of Arles, but a later reorganization placed Vasio under the Archbishop of Avignon. Jurisdiction inside the diocese was shared between the Bishop and the Comte de Provence, higher justice and the castle belonging to the Comte, and civil justice and all other rights belonging to the Bishop. The Cathedral was served by a Chapter which had four dignities: the Provost (Praepositus), the Archdeacon, the Sacristan, and the Precentor. There were also six Canons, each of whom had a prebend attached to his office.
History
The oldest known bishop of the See is Daphnus, who assisted at the Council of Arles in 314.
Others were St. Quinidius (Quenin, 556-79), who valiantly resisted the claims of the patrician Mummolus, conqueror of the Lombards; Joseph-Marie de Suares (1633–66), who died in Rome in 1677 while filling the office of Custode of the Vatican Library and Vicar of the Basilica of St. Peter, and who left numerous works.
St. Rusticala (b. at Vaison, 551; d. 628) was abbess of the monastery of St. Caesarius at Arles.
William Chisholme (II), former bishop of Dunblane, became bishop of Vaison-la-Romaine in 1566 or 1569.
Two councils which dealt with ecclesiastical discipline were held at Vaison in 442 and 529, the latter a provincial council under the presidency of Caesarius of Arles.
The bishopric was suppressed as part of the Napoleonic Concordat of 1801, between Consul Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII, and the territory of Vaison was incorporated into the diocese of Avignon and the diocese of Valence. In 2009 the title of Vasio was revived as a titular See.