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Archdiocese of Toulouse (–Saint Bertrand de Comminges–Rieux) | |
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| Location | |
| Country | France |
| Ecclesiastical province | Toulouse |
| Statistics | |
| Area | 6,372 km2 (2,460 sq mi) |
Population
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| Parishes | 602 |
| Information | |
| Denomination | Catholic |
| Sui iuris church | Latin Church |
| Rite | Roman Rite |
| Established | 3rd Century (as Diocese) 13 July 1317 (as Archdiocese) |
| Cathedral | Cathedral of St. Stephen in Toulouse |
| Patron saint | Saint Stephen |
| Secular priests | 132 (Diocesan) 79 (Religious Orders) 45 Permanent Deacons |
| Current leadership | |
| Pope | Leo XIV |
| Metropolitan Archbishop | Guy de Kerimel |
| Suffragans | Albi Auch Cahors Montauban Pamiers Rodez Tarbes-et-Lourdes |
| Auxiliary Bishops | Jean-Pierre Batut |
| Bishops emeritus | Émile Marcus Robert Le Gall |
| Map | |
.svg) | |
| Website | |
| Website of the Archdiocese | |
TheArchdiocese of Toulouse (–Saint Bertrand de Comminges–Rieux)[a] is aLatin Church ecclesiastical territory of theCatholic Church inFrance. Thediocese comprises theDepartment ofHaute-Garonne and its seat isToulouse Cathedral. ArchbishopGuy de Kerimel has been its head since 2021.
In 2022, in the Archdiocese of Toulouse there was one priest for every 3,997 Catholics.
The Archdiocese has 7 suffragan dioceses and archdioceses:Archdiocese of Albi,Archdiocese of Auch,Diocese of Cahors,Diocese of Montauban,Diocese of Pamiers,Diocese of Rodez,Diocese of Tarbes-et-Lourdes.
As re-established by theConcordat of 1802, it included the departments of Haute-Garonne andAriège, at which time, the archbishop joined to his own the title of Auch, jurisdiction over Auch being given to theDiocese of Agen, also the title of Narbonne, an archdiocese over which jurisdiction went by the Concordat to theDiocese of Carcassonne, and the title of Albi, over which, though formerly an archdiocese, jurisdiction went by the Concordat to theSee of Montpellier. In consequence of the creation of theArchdiocese of Auch andArchdiocese of Albi under the Restoration, the Archbishop of Toulouse only styled himself Archbishop of Toulouse and Narbonne, and when theDiocese of Pamiers was created the limits of the Archdiocese were restricted to the Department of Haute-Garonne. As thus marked off by the BullPaternae Caritatis, July, 1822, the Archdiocese of Toulouse includes almost the whole of the ancientDiocese of Toulouse,Diocese of Rieux, andDiocese of Comminges, and a few small portions of the ancientDiocese of Montauban,Diocese of Lavaur,Diocese of St-Papoul,Diocese of Mirepoix, andDiocese of Lombez.
Toulouse, chief town of theTectosagi, at the end of the second century B.C. tried to shake off the yoke of Rome during the invasion of theCimbri, but at the beginning of the empire it was a prosperous Roman civitas with famous schools in which the three brothers of theEmperor Constantine were pupils. In the fourth century it was reckoned the fifteenth town in importance in the empire.
In 413 it was taken byAstulph, the Goth, and in 419 underWallia it became the capital of theVisigothic Kingdom. In 508 after conquest byClovis it became Frankish. Legends of more or less recent date claim that it was evangelized bySt. Martial, but as far as historical evidence goes the see seems to have been founded bySt. Saturninus (Sernin) in the middle of the third century. ThePassio Sancti Saturnini corroborates this date as that of his incumbency and martyrdom. Subsequent tradition claims that he was a disciple ofSt. Peter.St. Papoul was his companion and like him a martyr.
According toGregory of Tours history written in the 6th century, Saturninus was martyred by being dragged by a bull, and due to his having been abandoned by the local priests, he prayed to Christ that the diocese would forever be ruled by bishops that were not citizens of the city.[1]
St. Honoratus, given in some lists as St. Saturninus's successor, is recognised as a pre-Schism Western saint by the Orthodox Church and it is therefore wrong to suggest that he seems just to have crept in through error from the fabulous legend ofSt. Firminus of Amiens.
Among the bishops of Toulouse may be mentioned:Rhodanius (350-58), exiled byConstantius toPhrygia because of his efforts againstArianism at theCouncil of Béziers in 356;St. Hilary, whom some historians place before Rhodanius, but who is placed after him by Duchesne;St. Sylvius (360-400);St. Exuperius (c. 400), who drove from his diocese in 405 the hereticVigilantius, saved Toulouse from the Vandals, and was the friend ofSt. Jerome;St. Germerius (Germier), whose episcopate (c. 541) is questioned by Duchesne;Magnulphus (c. 585), exiled by KingGundoald;St. Erembert [fr] (657), a monk ofFontenelle who returned to his monastery to die.
From being the capital of theDuchy of Aquitaine, from 631, Toulouse became in 778 the capital of theCounty of Toulouse created byCharlemagne, and which in the tenth century was one of the mainfiefs of the crown.Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse, known as Raymond de Saint Gilles (1042–1105), was one of the leaders of theFirst Crusade.
Raymond VI andRaymond VII, Counts of Toulouse, had leanings towards theCathars.Simon de Montfort in 1218 died under the walls of Toulouse, At this time Toulouse had as bishopFulk of Marseilles (1206–1231), who fought against Raymond VI and protected theFriars-Preachers in their early days. The marriage (1249) of Jeanne, daughter of Raymond VII, withAlphonse de Poitiers, brother ofLouis IX of France, led to the uniting in 1271 of the County of Toulouse to the Crown of France, and Toulouse became the capital of theProvince of Languedoc.
The See of Toulouse was for a time made famous bySt. Louis (1296–97), son ofCharles II, King of Naples and the Two Sicilies, and of Mary, daughter of the King of Hungary: he was nephew ofSt. Elizabeth of Hungary and grand-nephew ofSt. Louis, King of France. Louis had resigned to his brother Robert all rights over the Kingdom of Naples, and had accepted fromPope Boniface VIII the See of Toulouse after becoming aFranciscan friar. His successor wasPeter de la Chapelle Taillefer (1298–1312) who was created cardinal in 1305.
To this epoch belongs a change that took place in the history of the Diocese of Toulouse. It decreased in size but increased in dignity. Before 1295 the Diocese of Toulouse was very extensive. At the beginning of the thirteenth century Bishop Fulk had wished to divide it into several dioceses. In 1295 a portion of territory was cut off by Boniface VIII to form theDiocese of Pamiers. Then in 1319 John XXII cut off the Diocese of Toulouse from the metropolitan church of Narbonne and made it a metropolitan with the Sees of Montauban, Saint-Papoul, Rieux, and Lombez as suffragans; a little later Lavaur and Mirepoix also became suffragans of Toulouse. The majority of these sees were composed of territory cut off from the ancient See of Toulouse itself. According to Pope John XXII, not only was the diocese too large and too populated for a single bishop to carry out all of his necessary functions, but also it was immensely rich and did not spend its wealth for the growth of the faith, but on luxuries and dissipation of every sort.[2]
Pope John XXII offered theSee of Riez in Provence toGaillard de Preyssac, Bishop of Toulouse since 1305, whom he suspected of having conspired against him withHugues Giraud,Bishop of Cahors. Gaillard refused the offer, and retired to Avignon where he died in 1327.
The first archbishop wasRaymond de Comminges,Bishop of Maguelonne from 1309, who, when created cardinal in 1327, resigned the See of Toulouse in order to take up his duties at the Papal Curia in Avignon, where he died in 1348. He left a book on the "Passion of the Saviour", and some "Sermons for Festival Days". Among his successors were: the DominicanWilliam de Laudun (1327–1345), previouslybishop of Vienne;Raymond de Canillac (1345–50), who resigned upon being named a cardinal in 1350; CardinalFrancis de Gozie (1391–92);Bernard du Rosier (1451–1474), author of two treatises on the temporal power of the pope and on the liberty of the Church, and who founded at Toulouse theCollege de Foix for the support of twenty-five poor scholars, where he collected one of the first libraries of the period;John of Orléans (1503–1533), cardinal in 1533.
Protestantism entered Toulouse in 1532 through foreign students. As early as 1563 the Catholics of Toulouse founded a league to uphold the prerogatives of Catholicism, protected by the Parlement but jeopardized by certain Protestant town-councillors. From 1586 to 1595 the League party under Montmorency, Governor of Languedoc, and theDuc de Joyeuse held control in Toulouse. The rule ofHenry IV of France was definitively recognized there in 1596. During this period of religious unrest Toulouse had many notable archbishops:Gabriel de Gramont (1533–34), cardinal in 1530;Odet de Châtillon, Cardinal de Coligny (1534–1550), who became a Calvinist, married in 1564, and died in 1571;Anthony Sanguin (1550–1559), Cardinal de Meudon in 1539;Georges d'Armagnac (1562–1577), cardinal in 1544;François de Joyeuse (1584–1605), cardinal in 1583 and who conducted the negotiations between Henry IV and the Holy See.
Subsequent archbishops included:Louis de Nogaret (1614–1627), Cardinal de Lavalette in 1621, but who never received orders and from 1635 to 1637 led part of the French troops in theThirty Years War;Charles de Montchal (1628–1651), who in 1635 upheld the decision of the Holy See, against the opinion of the majority of the Assembly of Clergy, that the marriages of princes of blood contracted without royal consent were not null;Pierre de Marca (1652–1662), who underLouis XIII aided largely in the re-establishment of Catholicism inBéarn, in 1621 became president of the Parlement of Béarn, was afterwards made Councillor of State by Louis XIII, and wrote a work ofGallican tendency "De concordia Sacerdotii et Imperii", a voluminous work on Spain and especially on theProvince of Tarragona, and a commentary on thePsalms; he was secretary to theAssembly of the Clergy of France of April, 1656, which drew up a formula condemning the Five propositions drawn from the "Augustinus", and he died in 1662 just as he was about to take possession of theSee of Paris;Pierre de Bonzy (1672–1673), cardinal in 1672;Charles Antoine de Laroche Aymon (1740–1752), cardinal in 1771;Etienne Charles de Lomenie (1763–1789), Cardinal de Brienne in 1788;Anne de Clermont Tonnerre (1820–1830), cardinal in 1822;Paul d'Astros (1830–1851), cardinal in 1850;Julien Desprez (1859–1895), cardinal in 1879;François-Désiré Mathieu (1896–1899), cardinal in 1899, was a member of theFrench Academy, wrote the history of Lorraine under the ancien regime, of the Concordat of 1801–2, and of theconclave of 1903; he died in 1908.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Toulouse".Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
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