Diocese of Amiens

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The French Catholic Diocese of Amiens (old Ambianum) comprises the department of Somme.

Contents 1 History 2 Bishops 3 Cathedral and churches 4 References 5 External links

[edit] History

It was a suffragan of the archdiocese of Reims during the old regime; of Paris, 1802 to 1822; and of Reims again, since 1822.

Louis Duchesne denies any value to the legend of two Saints Firmin, honoured on the first and twenty-fifth of September, as the first and third Bishops of Amiens. The legend is of the eight century and full of incoherences. Even on the supposition that a St. Firmin, native of Pampeluna, was martyred during the persecution of Diocletian, it is certain that the first bishop known to history is St. Eulogius, who defended the divinity of Christ in the councils held during the middle of the fourth century.

[edit] Bishops

Among the bishops of Amiens are counted:

• Jessé, who played an important part in the time of Charlemagne, and was deposed under Louis the Pious
• William of Mâcon, at the end of the thirteenth century, called the greatest jurist of the University of Paris
• Jean de Lagrange, known as the Cardinal of Amiens (d. 1402), who figured prominently in the Western Schism
• the Franciscan monk, François Faure, preacher at the court of Louis XIV, who converted to Catholicism the Duke de Montausier and James II of England
• Bombelles, ambassador to Venice under Louis XVI, who after the Revolution, became a priest, and was Bishop of Amiens from 1819 to 1822.

[edit] Cathedral and churches

The cathedral (thirteenth century) is an admirable Gothic monument, and was made the subject of careful study by John Ruskin in his Bible of Amiens. The nave of this cathedral is considered a type of the ideal Gothic.

The church of St. Acheul, near Amiens, and formerly its cathedral, was, in the nineteenth century, the home of a major Jesuit novitiate. The beautiful churches of St. Ricquier and Corbie perpetuate the memory of the great Benedictine abbeys and homes of learning founded in these places in 570 and 662.

[edit] References

• Gallia Christiana (Vetus, 1656), II, 110-554
• Mioland, Actes de l'Eglise d'Amiens (Amiens, 1848)
• Corblet, Hagiographie du diocèse d'Amiens (1869-76)

[edit] External links

• "Diocese of Amiens". Catholic Encyclopedia. (1913). New York: Robert Appleton Company. 

This article incorporates text from the entry Diocese of Amiens in the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.