ELNE. - A city in France in the eastern Pyrenees, an episcopal see from the 6th century to 1601. It is the ancient "Illiberia," named from the river of the same name, situated on the coastal road between Gaul and Spain, 6 km from the Mediterranean, near the promontory "Pyrseneum," on a height in the great plain of Roussillon, 13 km from Perpignan. Already much diminished in importance in the time of Trajan (Pliny, Nat. hist., III), it flourished again in the 4th century under the name "Helena," whence the present E.
The existence of the diocese is attested in the year 571 by the chronicle of John of Biclaro, who records in that year the bishop Domino (PL 72, 864). Then a group of bishops of E. is known who took part in various Councils of Toledo, such as Benenatus in 589, Acutulus in 633 and 638, Clarus in 683; Solomon is mentioned in a diploma of Lothair of 834 and in one of Louis the Pious of 836; then there is a long episcopate of Riculfo at least from 886 to 915 (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 3554).
The city, subject to the incursions of the Saracens, was rebuilt by the bishops Berengar IV to Arnold I, but was sacked by Philip the Bold in 1285.
The cathedral of E., dedicated to St. Eulalia of Merida, was built in the 12th century on the site of an earlier building that seems to have imitated the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. In the adjoining cloister are sarcophagi and remains of other monuments. The episcopal residence was transferred by Clement VIII to Perpignan on 1 September 1601.
In the territory of the diocese flourished the abbey of St. Mary of Arles-sur-Tech, founded by the Benedictine Castellanus near an ancient bath building in 738. The abbey was enriched with privileges by Louis the Pious in 821, by Charles the Bald and by Louis the Stammerer. Pope John VIII made the abbey immediately subject. Under the abbot Almericus the abbey church was consecrated in 937, where his successor Arnulf brought, in the same year, the relics of the martyrs Abdon and Sennen. The building was rebuilt in the 11th century and consecrated in 1046; only the facade remains; a new Romanesque church was consecrated in 1157; the beautiful adjoining Romanesque cloister is of the 13th century.
Clement VIII in 1392 united to the abbey that of St. Andrew of Soride. From 1722 it was united to the episcopal mensa of Perpignan and suppressed in 1790.
To the abbey belongs the missal of the 12th century, today in the Library of Perpignan (ms. no. 4; G. M. Touar, Les anciens missels du diocèse d'É., in Mémoires de la Société nationale des antiquaires de France, 46 [1885], pp. 32-44).
Bibliography3 works
Enrico Josi