ANGERS, DIOCESE of. — In western France, a suffragan diocese of Tours, with its see in the city of A., capital of the department of Maine-et-Loire. The diocese approximately comprises the territory of Maine-et-Loire and has a population of 470,000 Catholics, with 416 parishes, 910 diocesan priests, and 135 religious priests. The number of its religious communities and the development of its educational institutions are signs of an intense Christian vitality.
The city is the ancient capital of the land of the Audes or Audecavi, which, after being conquered following the resistance offered to Caesar’s lieutenants, became one of the regions of Lugdunensis III. The capital was then called Juliumagus; but at the time of the disintegration of the empire, when the Audecavi entered the Armorican confederation, the city resumed the name of the ancient people, becoming Audegavia, and the province itself became Anjou (Anjou).
The period in which Christianity was introduced into the region remains unknown; the existence of the diocese has been historically established since the 4th century. The first bishops who brought it distinction were: St. Apotemius, St. Prosper, his successor, St. Maurilius; then St. Renatus and St. Albinus, who in 543 saw the Benedictine abbey of Glandfeuil founded at S. Mauro. These were followed later by the abbeys of S. Sergius, around 646, of S. Florentius, around 650, and of S. Albinus of A., followed in the 11th–14th centuries by numerous monastic foundations. Charles of Anjou, the future king of Sicily, founded there a university that became famous, to which the region later owed its victorious resistance to the Protestant Reformation and to the Jansenism of the Arnauds in the following century.
THE CENTER OF STUDIES. —
I. THE ANCIENT UNIVERSITY
The University of Angers is the outgrowth of the episcopal school, which as early as 1010 was already spoken of as an ancient and well-known institution.The university's founding date is commonly set in 1229, the year in which a group of professors and students from the University of Paris — those of the "English nation" — took refuge in Angers due to disturbances that had occurred there (cf. H. Denifle-E. Chatelain, Chartularium Un. Paris, n. 89, note 2). According to tradition, the episcopal school of Angers was thus transformed into a university. A decree by Bishop Fulco in 1337 refers to the Studium generale Audegavense as "honorable and ancient." During the 14th and 15th centuries, it was enriched with privileges by popes and kings, some of which were solemnly confirmed by John XXIII with the bull Hodie ad of 16 March 1412. Many of its alumni became bishops and chancellors of France; among its students was Pierre Roger de Beaufort, later Pope Gregory XI.
Angers was preeminently a school of law, especially civil law. The other faculties — theology, medicine, and arts — received canonical erection from Eugene IV with the bull In apostolicae dignitatis of 8 October 1432.
The general statutes of 1373 were reformed in 1398 on the model of those of Orléans. The particular statutes of the faculty of theology were published on 14 November 1464; those of the faculty of medicine on 15 March 1484; and those of the faculty of arts in 1494.
By an act of 14 October 1405, the university "aggregated" the house of the Dominicans of Angers. It took official part in the Councils of Pisa (1405), Rome (1412), Constance (1412), and Basel (1434). In 1494, it underwent reforms at the hands of commissioners Nicolas de Hacqueville and Jacques Daniel. Its renown was such that it came to have 10,000 students, divided into ten "nations," six of which — those of Anjou, Brittany, Maine, Normandy, Aquitaine, and France — endured until the French Revolution, which marked the end of the ancient universities (1793). The faculty of theology, which remained free from Jansenist contagion and other errors, reached its greatest splendor in the 18th century, when only that of Paris was considered its superior, so that the University of Angers could be called "the second University of the Kingdom."
The archives were dispersed in the 16th century and during the Revolution. The surviving documents have been published by Marcel Fournier, Les Statuts et privilèges des Universités Françaises depuis leur fondation jusqu'en 1789, I, Paris 1890, pp. 261-436.
id., L'Université de l'Anjou, Angers 1880, as a continuation of Rangeard; H. Denifle, Die Universitäten des Mittelalters bis 1400, I, Berlin 1885, pp. 270-77; H. Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, II, 2nd ed. edited by F. M. Powicke and A. B. Emden, Oxford 1936, pp. 151-60. For the relations between the Seminary of Angers and the faculty of theology: G. Letourneau, Histoire du Séminaire d'A., Angers 1895, passim (cf. index, p. 441).
II. THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY (Université Catholique de l'Ouest, Facultés Catholiques de l'Ouest)
It owes its origin to the initiative of Monsignor Freppel, bishop of Angers (1869-91), who, even before the law of 12 July 1875 on the freedom of higher education was published, committed himself to reviving the ancient university in the new form of a "Catholic University." The faculty of law, solemnly inaugurated on 15 November 1875, was the first of all the "free faculties" established in France after the Revolution: it was approved by Pius IX with a brief of 16 September 1875. The faculty of letters was opened in 1876; that of sciences in 1877; and that of theology in 1879. With the apostolic letter Multiplices inter of 14 August 1877, Pius IX canonically erected the faculties of Angers into a Catholic University.The faculty of medicine, already foreseen in this letter, remained a project; however, its preparatory year is constituted by the course in Etudes physiques, chimiques et biologiques, now attached to the faculty of sciences.
Alongside the aforementioned faculties, the Ecole supérieure d'agriculture et de viticulture (1898) and the Ecole supérieure de commerce (1909), with a Section d'Etudes industrielles (1920), also thrive.
The "university district" of Angers comprises 12 dioceses: Quimper, Vannes, Saint-Brieuc, Rennes, Nantes, Luçon, Angers, Laval, Le Mans, Tours, Poitiers, and Angoulême (cf. the brief Officiosissima of Pius X, 15 August 1913; AAS, 5 [1913], pp. 425-27). The archbishops and bishops of these dioceses hold the title of "protectors" and form the high governing Council of the University (conseil des évêques protecteurs), of which the bishop of Angers is the Grand Chancellor.
The new statutes, conforming to the apostolic constitution Deus scientiarum Dominus (24 May 1931), were approved by the Holy See with a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and Universities on 7 March 1936.
The Catholic University of Angers, which uses the seal of the ancient university, is dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and has as its principal patroness the Virgin Immaculate, whose privilege the ancient University recognized and defended from the outset. Its secondary patron is St. Thomas Aquinas. Its quarterly organ is the Bulletin des Facultés catholiques de l'Ouest.
Another synod—usually not included in the list of councils—was held in A. on 4 April 1062 in the chapel of Countess Hildegard, mother of Geoffrey Martel, Count of Anjou, to condemn the heresy of Berengarius of Tours. Present were the bishops Hugh of Besançon, Bugrinus of Le Mans, and Eusebius of A. Matters
would have taken a bad turn for the heretic had not his former protector, Eusebius of A., succeeded in having a conciliatory formula accepted, as was admitted at Tours in 1065.