AUCCH, ARCHDIOCESE OF. — In Gascony, on the left bank of the Gers, A., which today has 133,000 inhabitants, is the metropolitan see of the dioceses of Aire, Bayonne, and Tarbes. Formerly called Elinberrun or Eliberrae (New City), it was, at the time of Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, the capital of the Auscii, the most important group of the Aquitani. It seems to have received from the Romans the name of Augusta before adopting from the Auscii the definitive name of Auscia, Auscius, Civitas Ausciensis or Ausciensis. When, toward the end of the 4th century, Aquitaine was divided, A. was one of the twelve *civitates* of Aquitaine III or Novempopulania.
The Christian origins of this region remain very obscure. The first bishop of A. known to history is an Oricuzio who lived in the early 5th century and whose feast is recorded on May 19 in the *Martyrologium Hieronymianum*. The diocese of A. then probably included the entire *Civitas Auscorum*, bounded by the archdiocese of Eauze and the dioceses of Toulouse, Tarbes, and Agen. Toward the middle of the 9th century, when Eauze was destroyed by the Normans, A. inherited, along with the territory of the diocese, the metropolitan title with the suffragan dioceses of Lectoure, Bazas, Aire, Bayonne, Lescar, Oloron, Tarbes, Comminges (St. Bertrand), and Couserans (St. Licerius). It retained these boundaries until the French Revolution. Suppressed in 1801 and united with Agen, the diocese was restored in 1817, and definitively on October 6, 1822, by the bull *Paternae caritatis*. The archbishops, who by the mid-17th century had lost the title of primates of Novempopulania and the Two Navarres, resumed the first of these titles in 1829, to which were added those of the suppressed dioceses of Condom, Lectoure, and Lombez.
The archdiocese coincides with the department of Gers. It has 190,000 Catholic inhabitants, 507 parishes, 232 diocesan priests, and 14 regular clergy. The major seminary was founded in 1667. Among its shrines, that of Notre-Dame des Sept-Douleurs at Cahuzac is famous; its origins date to 1513 and it has long been a frequented pilgrimage site. The Revolution of 1789 plundered the chapel, which was restored in 1821 and thereafter regained its former splendor. It is served by the Assumptionists.