Ancient Diocese of Vaison

Ancient Diocese of Vaison

(VASIONENSIS.)

This was suppressed by the Concordat of 1801, and its territory is now included in the Dioceses of Avignon and Valence. St. Albinus (d. 262) was incorrectly placed by the Carthusian Polycarpe de la Riviere among the bishops of Vaison. 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 while filling the office of librarian of the Vatican, and who left numerous works. Vaison, the capital of the Voconces, was very important during the Celtic period and under the Roman domination; it belonged in turn to the Visigothic and Austrasian Kingdoms. The disputes which broke out in the twelfth century between the counts of Provence and the bishops, both of whom were in possession of half the town, were injurious to its prosperity; they were ended by a treaty negotiated in 1251 by the future Clement IV. The apse of the Church of St. Quenin seems to date from the eighth century; it is one of the oldest in France. As a whole the cathedral dates from the eleventh century, but the apse and the apsidal chapels date from the Merovingian period. St. Rusticala (b. at Vaison, 551; d. 628) was abbess of the monastery of St. Caesarius at Arles. Two rather important councils as regards Gallican ecclesiastical discipline were held at Vaison in 442 and 529, the latter under the presidency of St. Caesarius.

Gallia christiana, nova, I (1715), 919-40, 1329-30, instr. 151-54; DUCHESNE, Fastes episcopaux, I, 254; BOYER DE SAINTE-MARTHE, Histoire de l'eglise cathedrale de Vaison (2 vols., Avignon, 1731); COURTET, Notice historique et archeologique sur Vaison in Revue archeologique, VIII (1851), 306-22; LABANDE, La cathedrale de Vaison (Caen, 1905).

GEORGES GOYAU