BAYEUX. - City on the river Aure, in the department of Calvados; it had various names in antiquity: Ptolemy calls it Arigenus Biducosiorum, the Peutinger Table: Arogenne, then Baiocum, Iulobona, Biduatium. Conquered by the Romans, it formed part of the second Lyonnaise province. Taken by Clovis, under the Franks it constituted the comitatus Baiocensis. It was several times devastated by the Normans.
The origins of the diocese of B. are uncertain. Both the two earliest redactions of the Hieronymian Martyrology and the Martyrology of Ado do not recall any saint of this diocese; in the incomplete one of Usuard only the bishop St. Vigor is mentioned, who is found again in a 10th-century manuscript of the Hieronymianum together with the bishop John. As for tradition, it is summed up in three legends, of which the oldest may go back to the 8th century. The episcopal lists that have come down to us go back to the 12th century; the first bishop remembered is Exuperius, whose name is engraved on a silver tray that he donated to the church (cf. G. Morin, Missorium de Saint-Exupère. Note sur un plateau offert à l'Eglise de B. par son premier évêque, in Mélanges d'arch. et d'hist., 18 [1898], pp. 363-79). In modern times B. is often called the diocese of the Saints, because it numbers more than thirty of them, among whom St. John Eudes was recently canonized.
The Cathedral, built in the 6th century, burned in 1105; the capitals of the crypt and of the towers of the facade survive, from the 12th century, to which age also belong ida J. Clédat, Le monastère et la nécropole de Baoult, in: Mémoires publiés par les membres de l'Inst. franc. d'arch. orient., XII, Cairo 1911
BĂWĪT - Paintings of Chapel XVII (ca. 12th century).
the arcades of the central nave with panels that show an Anglo-Saxon or Oriental inspiration, the pillars and the ribs of the side aisles and the southern portico. The ambulatory around the choir leads into nine radiating chapels; the upper level of the nave and the transept are later (13th-14th centuries). The surviving frescoes are from the 14th century; the chapter house of the 13th-14th centuries contains a substantial treasury with a series of liturgical manuscripts. In the bishop's palace is preserved a wool tapestry on canvas of Queen Matilda (1077), representing the Roman conquest of England.
The diocese comprised twelve male abbeys, among which five Benedictine (the oldest was that of St. Vigor at Cerizy-la-Forêt); two abbeys and five female conventual houses.
Since 1855 the bishop is also titular of the diocese of Lisieux (v.).
At present the diocese of B. counts 380,000 Catholics out of 396,318 inhabitants, 718 parishes, 7,488 diocesan priests and 50 regulars (1948). It is divided into two archdeaconries; the 1st of B., comprising the city of Caen (v.), the most important center of the diocese; the 2nd of Lisieux. It has a major seminary at B. and the minor seminary of the Maladrerie at Caen.
Bibliography2 works
Enrico Josi