AMIENS, DIOCESE OF. — In northern France, a suffragan of Reims. It comprises the entire territory of the department of the Somme (6,277 sq. km. and 473,916 inhabitants). Catholics number 400,000, with 771 parishes, 340 diocesan priests, and 35 regular clergy.
The city of Amiens is the ancient Samarobriva (Bridge on the Somme), so named because it was built on the two opposite banks of the Somme, which was the principal center of one of the most important tribes of Gallia Belgica, the Ambiani. The Gallo-Roman name Ambianum must have prevailed before the end of the 4th century. It is probable that within this tribe there existed a Christian community already by the end of the 3rd or the beginning of the 4th century. To this period dates the diocese, which recognizes, on the basis of the *Passio s. Firmini*, a very late source, as its patron the first bishop, St. Firmin, who was probably martyred in the time of the emperors Maximian and Diocletian (284–305). The episcopal list, incomplete, numbers 95 names, of whom 7 are venerated as saints. The boundaries of the diocese were those of the *civitas Ambianensium*. Since it was part of the Second Belgica, of which Reims was the capital, it was always united to that metropolitan see.
Famous abbey-parishes have adorned this diocese: among others, that of Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux of the Augustinians, that of St. John of the Premonstratensians, and that of Our Lady of Paraclete of the Cistercians. The principal monument of Amiens is the cathedral of Notre-Dame, the largest church in France, at the same time a perfect model of 13th-century Gothic architecture. It was begun in 1220.