AUXERRE. - Capital of the department of Yonne (France). Near the settlement of the Gallic Senones, called Autricum, the Romans built a new city, Autessiodorum, furnished with temples, baths, walls, etc., which became a notable center of communication with the north.
The oldest documents for the history of the diocese of A. are the lives of St. Germanus and St. Amator; the first attributed to the Lyonese priest Constantius, surviving in an interpolated form, the second arranged for a priest Stephen by St. Aunacharius at the end of the 6th century, to which age belongs a calendar with the names of the bishops of A. inserted in the compilation of the Jeronymian Martyrology. The first bishop, Peregrinus, according to local tradition and the said martyrology, is honored as a martyr, on May 16; the third, Valerianus, mentioned in the biography of St. Amator, appears in 346; the fifth, St. Amator, died in 418: over his tomb a basilica arose shortly afterward. The sixth, Germanus, died at Ravenna in 448. Aunacharius is the eighteenth, who died in 605. In his time, 8 km. from A., there existed a monasterium Cociacense, erected, according to a tradition of the 9th century, near the place where many Christians fleeing from Besançon in the time of Aurelian were said to have been killed. There Bishop Germanus is said to have erected two churches, one over their tomb, the other on the place where the head of the most notable martyr of the group was found: St. Priscus.
In the Merovingian and Carolingian periods, and especially toward the close of the 12th century, through the work of Peter of Courtenay, until 1359, when the city was occupied by the English, the abbeys and sacred buildings of A. flourished.
Of the abbey church of St. Germanus there still remains part of the crypt adorned with Carolingian paintings of the 9th century. Above it a new building was constructed in the 13th century. The cathedral was erected by Bishop William of Seignelay (1215-34) on the remains of the previous one, whose crypt survives beneath the present choir.
The abbey church of St. Eusebius, at present a parish, was built in the 12th century; the choir is of the Renaissance.
The church of the ancient Augustinian abbey of A., St. Peter in the Valley, is of the 16th century. The Premonstratensian abbey of St. Marianus was demolished in 1570.
The concordat of 1801 suppressed the dioceses of A. and of Sens, forming the diocese of Troyes. The concordat of 1817 re-established the diocese of A. But the bull of Pius VII, Paternae charitatis, of Oct. 10, 1822, suppressed it again, assigning its territory to the diocese of Sens. A brief of the same Pontiff, dated June 3, 1823, added to the Archbishop of Sens the title of Bishop of A.
Bibliography3 works
Enrico Josi
COUNCIL OF AUXERRE
On a date not specified, but certainly later than 23 Oct. 585, a provincial Synod was convened for the notification of the canons published at the second Council of Mâcon. Bishop Aunacarius presided over it, surrounded by seven abbots, thirty-three priests and three deacons. From it 45 canons survive, the first of which condemn certain superstitious practices, and the others relate to Baptism, the celebration of the Mass, the sacrament of Penance, burial, fasting, etc. - See Pl. XXXIV.
Bibliography3 works
Romualdo Souarn