AIX, ARCHDIOCESE OF. - A French metropolitan see city, in Provence, Aix is the oldest Latin colony in Gaul, founded around the year 120 B.C. by the consul Gaius Sextius, near the thermal springs to which it owes its name (Aquae Sextiae). As for its evangelization, the historically attested series of its incumbents begins in the 5th century.
Aix having become a civil metropolis from the time of the division of Narbonensis at the end of the 4th century, it also claimed a religious supremacy that was contested by the neighboring see of Arles. At the Council of Frankfurt in 794, the bishop of Aix asserted his rights, which were confirmed by the Holy See.
Several times the boundaries of the ecclesiastical province were adjusted: in 1790, by the Constituent Assembly; in 1822, with the creation of the metropolis of Avignon, and finally in 1866, with that of Algiers. Today, larger than it was before the Revolution, it comprises the suffragan dioceses of Ajaccio, Digne, Fréjus, Gap, and Nice. The bull Paternae caritatis, of 6 October 1822, assigned to the see of Aix the two districts of Aix and Arles, with the titles of Arles and Embrun, already suppressed by the Napoleonic concordat. As a diocese, Aix embraces the territory of the department of Bouches-du-Rhône except the district of Marseille, with a population of 239,500 Catholics out of 263,400 inhabitants, 201 priests, 3 archdeaconries, 23 deaneries and 130 parishes. The diocese is placed under the patronage of St. Mitre (Mitrius, or Mitrius).
Aix has given the Church 11 cardinals among its archbishops and 7 among the canons of the metropolitan chapter. Archbishops worthy of mention: Cardinal Guillaume Fillastre (1420-22); Gilbert Génébrard (1591-96); Cardinal Girolamo Grimaldi (1648-85); Raymond de Cucé de Boisgélin (1771-1801). Jean de Saint-Chamond (1551-66) adhered to the Calvinist reform and put himself at the head of a Huguenot regiment, after having renounced the episcopate.
Within the diocese there were numerous religious institutes, later destroyed by the French Revolution, among them the Charterhouse of Sainte-Marthe. It was there above all that the medieval foundations of the Hospitaller Order of St. John developed at their birth.
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Antonio Soirat
THE COUNCILS OF AIX
There is record of several synods or councils held at A. That of 1112 issued three decrees, the first of which reserved to the archbishop of the city a fourth part of the revenues of the diocese. In another, celebrated in 1409, with the participation of three provinces, the members to be sent to the Council of Pisa were elected. That of 1416 chose the delegates for the Council of Constance.
In 1612 Hurault de l'Hôpital, archbishop of A., convoked a council in order to censure there a Treatise on Ecclesiastical and Civil Power, in which its author, Edmond Richer, advocated the liberty of the Gallican Church. More important was the council or synod of 1672. Girolamo Grimaldi, cardinal archbishop, published its statutes, which treat of the duties of pastors and of the administration of the Sacraments and recommend to parish priests the observance of the Roman Ritual. In an appendix is the list of reserved cases and of the penitential canons, as well as St. Charles Borromeo's admonitions to confessors.
Bibliography3 works
Romualdo Souarn
THE UNIVERSITY OF AIX
Among the ecclesiastical institutions of A. the University (Studium generale) stands out, founded by Alexander V with the bull In eminentis of 9 December 1409, on the basis of ancient local theological schools. Confirmed by Louis II of Anjou, king of Sicily and of Jerusalem and count of Provence (letter of 31 December 1413), the University was greatly favored by his son René I of Anjou (ordinance of 7 November 1460). Its chancellor was the archbishop. From the outset it had the faculties of theology, of canon and civil law, and from 1462 also that of medicine.
An expression of the Provençal soul and culture, the University was reconfirmed in the 17th century by the king of France. Suppressed by the Revolution (1793), in 1808 Napoleon transformed it into an Academy of the Imperial University of France. Today it forms a single university with that of Marseilles (*Université d'Aix-Marseille**), whose faculties of law and of letters are located in A., those of sciences and of medicine-pharmacy in Marseilles.
(by K. Porter, Roman, sculpt.)
A large part of its medieval documents were burned, in 1536, in the invasion of Charles V. The ancient statutes, drawn up in the years 1420-40, were published for the first time by Boniface Blancas (Almae Aquarum Sextiarum Universitatis vetera et nova Statuta, Constitutiones et Consuetudines, Aix 1667) and again, together with the other surviving documents, by Marcel Fournier (Les Statuts et Privilèges des Universités Françaises depuis leur fondation jusqu'en 1789, III, Paris 1892, pp. 1-32).
Bibliography4 works
Igino Cecchetti
(from M. Hartmann, La France)