Diocese of Pamiers

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Categories: Roman Catholic dioceses in France

The French Catholic diocese of Pamiers comprises Ariège. It is suffragan of the archdiocese of Toulouse. Its see is Pamiers Cathedral.

The territory forming it was united to the archbishopric of Toulouse on the occasion of the Concordat of 1801; the Concordat of 1817 re-established at Pamiers a diocese which existed only in September, 1823, uniting the ancient diocese of Pamiers and diocese of Couserans, the larger portion of the former diocese of Mirepoix and diocese of Rieux, and a deanery of the former diocese of Alet.

A decree of the Holy See 11 March, 1910, re-established the titles of the former Sees of Couserans and Mirepoix.

History

The traditions of the diocese mention as its first apostle of Christianity St. Antoninus, born at Fredelacum near Pamiers, an apostle of the Rouergue, martyred in his native country (date uncertain). The Abbey of St. Antonin was founded near Fredelacum about 960; in 1034 it passed under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Girone and was annexed in 1060 to the Congregation of Cluny.

A castle built on the site of the abbey by Roger II, Count of Foix (1070-1125), was called Appamia; hence the name of Pamiers which passed to the neighbouring small town. Pope Boniface VIII created a see at Pamiers by the Bull Romanus Pontifex 23 July, 1295, and made it a suffragan of the archdiocese of Narbonne. He named Bernard Saisset Abbot of St. Antonin, and by a decree 18 April, 1296, settled the boundaries of the new diocese dismembered from that of Toulouse. The opposition of Hughes Mascaron, Bishop of Toulouse, and the conflict between Saisset and Roger Bernard III, Count of Foix, prevented Saisset from taking immediate possession of his diocese; Abbé Vidal has proven that it is not true, as had long been thought, that St. Louis of Anjou, who became Bishop of Toulouse at the death of Mascaron, had been appointed provisional administrator of the Diocese of Pamiers. Saisset took possession of his see on 19 April, 1297; having sided with Boniface VIII (1301), he was imprisoned by order of Philip the Fair.

After careful investigation, Pope Clement V, 3 August, 1308, complied with certain demands of Toulouse concerning the decree of Boniface VIII, and the Diocese of Pamiers remained, but with poorer resources than those assigned it by Boniface VIII. However, when Pope John XXII raised Toulouse to an archbishopric, 22 Feb., 1318, he also extended the Diocese of Pamiers which he made suffragan of Toulouse. Saisset's successor was Jacques Fournier (1317-26), subsequently pope under the name of Benedict XII. Vidal discovered in the Vatican Library the record of the procedure of the Inquisition tribunal created at Pamiers, by Jacques Fournier in 1318, for the extirpation of the remnants of Albigensianism in the Foix region; this document is most important for the history of the Inquisition, representing as it does, and perhaps in this instance only, that particular tribunal in which the monastic inquisitor and the diocesan bishop had almost equal power, as decreed in 1312 by the Council of Vienna. In this new regime the traditional procedure of the Inquisition was made milder by temporizing with the accused who persisted in error, by granting defendants a fair amount of liberty, and by improving the prison regime.

Among the noteworthy bishops of Pamiers were Cardinal Arnaud de Villemur (1348-50); Cardinal Amanieu d'Albret (1502-06); John of Barbançon (1550-55), who became a Calvinist; Robert of Pellevé (1557-79), during whose episcopate the religious wars gave rise to cruel strife: Protestants destroyed every church in Pamiers, among them the magnificent church of Notre-Dame du Camp, and three times they demolished the episcopal palace of the Mas Saint-Antonin. Henry of Sponde (1626-42) (Spondanus), who summarized and continued the Ecclesiastical Annals of his friend Baronius; the Jansenist François Etienne de Caulet (1644-1680).