MARSEILLES, ARCHDIOCESE OF. - The chief city of the department of Bouches-du-Rhône in France.
It has a population of approximately 900,000 inhabitants. The archdiocese is divided into 4 archdeaconries and comprises 110 parishes, served by 321 diocesan priests and 220 regular clergy, a major and minor seminary, 26 male and 50 female religious communities (Ann. Pont., 1951, p. 265).
The diocese was first a suffragan of Arles, then of Aix, suppressed by the French Revolution in 1801 and re-established in 1822. Pius IX granted the bishop of Marseilles the privilege of the sacred pallium on 19 April 1851; Pius XII, with the apostolic constitution Inter conspicuas of 30 January 1948, elevated the church of Marseilles to the rank and dignity of an archbishopric, promoting the current bishop, Mons. J. Delay, to the office of archbishop (AAS, 40 [1948], pp. 309-11).
I. HISTORY
Founded by the Phocaeans around 600 BC, Marseilles is the oldest city in Gaul. From that time onwards, its commercial relations with the eastern Mediterranean, the Ionian Sea, Attica, Egypt, and thus Magna Graecia and Italy are documented by the export of pottery. Destroyed by Julius Caesar in 49 BC, it did not flourish during the Empire and retained only its port of Nice, while the rest of the territory had passed under the colony of Arles, founded in 46 BC, which, with its diocese, extended in the 5th century to the coast of Hyères.
In 310 Constantine took possession of it, and from then on the importance of its port grew until the Merovingian age, to the detriment of Arles, Narbonne, and Fréjus, until the city, immune from Visigothic attacks, attracted the greed of the Frankish kings who, from the 6th century onwards, made it their Mediterranean port. Sidonius Apollinaris, bishop of Clermont, attests in his letters to the activity of the port, a commercial emporium of Gaul for trade with the Levant. Relations with the coast of Asia Minor make it plausible that there was a Christian community in Marseilles before the Constantinian peace, as evidenced by the inscription found in 1837 in the cemetery south of Lacydon (Saint-Victor), which mentions the fiery execution of two Marseillais, Satrius Volusianus, son of Eutyches, and Fortunatus, who in the afterlife will enjoy the refrigerium. The Christian character of the inscription is attested by the symbol of the fish (v.) in 417, when Pope Zosimus constituted it as the primatial see of the churches of the Viennese and Narbonnese provinces.
Among its most distinguished bishops are remembered Venerius (431-52), Honoratus (c. 495), St Theodore (566-91), Serenus (596-601), admonished by St Gregory regarding paintings in churches; Maurontius in the 8th century; Honoratus II who began the restoration of the abbey of St Victor; Peter of Montlaur (1214-29) who founded in 1214 the first chapel of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde; Cardinals William Sudre (1361-66) and Philip of Cabassoles (1356-68), patron of F. Petrarca; Mons. C. Seyssel, who intervened at the Lateran Council of 1513; Cardinal Innocent Cibo (1517-30), Eustace Gault (1639-40), Oratorian, and his beneficent brother J. B. Gault (1642-43); Mons. de Belzunce who distinguished himself during the plague of 1720; J. B. de Belloy (1755-1801), later cardinal archbishop of Paris; E. de Mazenod (1837-61), founder of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate; P. Cruice (1861-65), founder of the Institute of Advanced Studies for Paris.
II. MONUMENTS
The great Christian monuments of Marseilles still extant are the Cathedral and the abbey of St Victor. Their foundation obeys the laws of early Christian urban planning, which placed the new places of worship in cities where public life continued in the ancient environment until the Merovingian era. The Cathedral dedicated to the Madonna is called the Major, to distinguish it from another church also dedicated to the Virgin, Notre-Dame des Accoules, built on the outskirts of the city, at the end of the Greek-Roman walls near the Ource inlet, not far from the Gallic Gate which led to the coastal road.The position of the Church of Marseilles from the 4th century is attested by the presence of the baptistery, whose plan was recognised in 1850 when it was demolished to make way for the new cathedral; located to the north of the church, it was externally square in plan with a central rotunda vaulted and domed on eight columns, and a deambulatory inscribed in an octagon 23 m in diameter. But in the Merovingian era Marseilles was attacked or occupied in turn by Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Burgundians, Franks, and Saracens, and divided between civil and religious power (lower and upper city); it took refuge in the better-defended part, namely the acropolis of the hill of St Laurent (castrum Babonis); the episcopal see, more exposed to pirate attacks, seems to have been transferred to the site of the abbey of St Victor, south of Lacydon, where the church is known as 'Notre-Dame et St-Victor'. The Chapter did not return to its ancient seat until the end of the 10th century, when William the Liberator, after having driven the Saracens from the Moorish coast, was able to restore peace to Provence. The Cathedral, after having been for some time at Notre-Dame des Accoules, at the end of the 10th century rose again from the ruins and was entirely rebuilt in the Romanesque style around 1150. It is of Provençal type, with three naves; the crossing of the transept carries a dome; the abbey, preceded by a choir in communication with the minor naves, is decorated with an arcade resting on small columns. Unfortunately, it was mutilated after 1850 to make way for the new Cathedral. Of the ancient structure there remains a 12th-century marble altarpiece representing the Virgin enthroned between St Lazarus and St Cannat, bishops of Marseilles. In the 15th century Francesco Laurana and Tommaso di Como, sculptors at the court of King René, built for the Chapter the altar of St Lazarus which houses its relic (1474-81).
The other early Christian buildings of Marseilles arose in its suburban cemeteries. One of them, that of the 'plaine de St Michel' on the road to Italy, was situated around the church of St Stephen; it is known for the meeting that took place there in 581 between Duke Gundulf and the rector Dynamius. On its ruins, in the 16th century, the church of Notre-Dame-du-Mont was built. More famous is the abbey of St Victor, founded by John Cassian for the relics of St Victor. Cassian, called to Marseilles by Bishop Proculus shortly after St Honoratus had founded the monastery of Lérins, established two monasteries on the southern bank of Lacydon, one under the protection of St Victor for men; the other for women was transferred in the Middle Ages within the city on the site of the Forum, under the name of St Salvatore.
The Abbey of St-Victor comprised two churches, one dedicated to the Madonna and the other to the apostles Peter and Paul; they were consecrated in 440 by Leo the Great. Of this original foundation only the church of the Madonna remains; it was incorporated into the buildings of a new structure at the time of the 11th-century restoration and the 13th-century reconstruction. It was basilican in form, with three naves preceded by an atrium; the roof was supported by granite columns; small in size, it seems to have been the “memorial” containing the relics of the founder; it communicated with the cemetery and with a rock-hewn oratory in which the relics of St Victor were preserved. It became famous in the Romanesque age for the legends of St Lazarus and St Mary Magdalene. In the 14th century William Grimoard, already abbot of St Victor and later Pope Urban V, began the enlargement of the church (1363). The ancient choir was extended by means of a ribbed apse with an upper fortified platform. St Victor was truly the patron of Marseilles, which in the Middle Ages bore the motto “Massiliam vere Victor civesque tuere.”
The importance of the Abbey overshadowed that of the episcopal see. Its school of theology and literature formed a centre of religious and intellectual life, to which adhered the tendency later condemned under the name of semi-Pelagianism. On account of the relics venerated in the church, its necropolis (partially explored in 1942) became the rival of the Aliscamps of Arles. Funerary sculpture workshops maintained for part of the 5th century the plastic Arles (v.); to them is to be attributed the fine early-Christian altar now in the Borbély Museum, decorated with doves, lambs and vine tendrils.
Other churches to be remembered are: the church of St Cannat or of the Preachers, with apse and bell-tower of the 17th century; the church of St Ferréol or of the Augustinians, late 15th century, with vaults redone in the 19th; the church of Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel (16th–17th centuries); the church of St Theodore. The church of St Vincent de Paul, also called that of the Reformers, built on the site of the former Augustinian convent, was erected to a design by Monsignor Pouquet between 1849 and 1880. The church of the Sacred Heart on the Prado was erected in consequence of a vow made by Monsignor H. de Belzunce during the plague of 1720; he consecrated the city of Marseilles to the Sacred Heart on 4 June 1722. The church has only recently been completed and opened to worship.
Among the most venerated shrines in the diocese is that which overlooks the city at 152 m. above sea-level, Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, founded in 1214; a large church was built there in 1544 and renewed in 1864 by H. Esperandieu.
In the church of St Victor is much venerated the statue of Notre-Dame-des-Confessions or des Martyrs; there is also the shrine of Notre-Dame-du-Sacré-Coeur at Château-Gombert.
Among public buildings are to be mentioned the School of Fine Arts and the Municipal Library with precious manuscripts and incunabula; the Musée des Médailles, with a unique numismatic collection of Massilian and Provençal coins and of the Order of the Knights of St John; the museums of Fine Arts, of Natural History, Grobet Labadie, Can’un (1916) or of Decorative Arts in the Hôtel de Montgrand, the Vieux Marseille in the Parc Amable, and Chanot de la Ma-