BELLEY, DIOCESE OF. — In the department of Ain, between the Rhône and Saône rivers. It has an area of 5,825 sq. km.; it comprises 443 parishes, 718 diocesan priests and 421 regular clergy, with 290,000 Catholics out of a total population of 306,864 (1948). B. is the ancient Vicus Bellicensis (CIL, XII, 2500). Duchesne considers the diocese of B. as the continuation, with reduced territory and transferred see, of the diocese of Nyon, originally in the civitas Ecquemensis, in order to escape the ravages of the Alemanni.
According to others, B. would have been founded either by Vienne, or by Besançon, or by Lyon.
In the library of the cathedral of Besançon there exists a triple catalogue of the bishops of B.; the first two are from the 11th century, the third from the 13th. If the bishop Vinnenzo, present at the Council of Paris in 552, is the same person as the one who became bishop of B. in 570, it means that the city was already subject to the Merovingians. Other bishops were Felix, signatory at the Council of Mâcon in 585; Aquilinus, who attended the Council of Paris in 614; and Florentius, who signed the Council of Chalon-sur-Saône in 650.
Later it passed to the Carolingians and subsequently was included in the kingdom of Burgundy. For a few years in the 16th century it BORGO (v.) with its dependencies. The Constituent Assembly made B. a departmental diocese subject to Lyon. The Concordat of 1801 suppressed it, and it was re-established in 1822 as a suffragan of Besançon.
The cathedral, dedicated to St John the Baptist, mother church of the diocese, is a 12th-century construction with 15th-century modifications.
A centre of frequent pilgrimages is the tomb of St John Mary Vianney (v.) at Ars.
Abbeys. The Cistercian abbey of St Sulpicius was founded by Amadeus III, Count of Savoy, in 1130, with a dependent women’s monastery founded at Bons by his daughter Margaret of Savoy. The Carthusian monastery of Pierre-Châtel, founded by Amadeus VI of Savoy in 1383, whose church is closely connected with the Order of the Most Holy Annunciation (v.). Also notable are the abbey of St Rambert and the Carthusian monastery of Séignac.