MARSEILLE, ARCHDIOCESE OF. - Capital city of the Bouches-du-Rhône department in France.
It has a population of about 900,000 inhabitants. The archdiocese is divided into 4 archdeaconries and comprises 110 parishes, served by 321 diocesan priests and 220 regulars, a minor and a major seminary, 26 male religious communities and 50 female ones (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 M. the privilege of the Sacred Pallium by a decree dated 1 April 1851; Pius XII, by the apostolic constitution Inter conspicuio of 30 January 1948, raised the church of M. to the rank and dignity of archbishopric, promoting the current bishop, Msgr. J. Delay, to archbishop (AAS, 40 [1948], pp. 309-11).
I. HISTORY
Founded by the Phocaeans around 600 B.C., M. is the oldest city in Gaul. From that time its commercial relations with the eastern Mediterranean, the Ionian, Attica, Egypt, and then Magna Graecia and Italy are documented by exports of ceramics. Annihilated by G. Caesar in 49 B.C., 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, which, with its diocese, extended in the 5th century as far as 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 the attacks of the Visigoths, attracted the greed of the Frankish kings, who from the 6th century made it their Mediterranean port. Sidonius Apollinaris, bishop of Clermont, attests in his letters the activity of the port, a commercial emporium of Gaul for exchanges with the Levant. Relations with the coast of Asia Minor make plausible the existence in M., before the Constantinian peace, of a Christian community, as emerges from the inscription found in 1837 in the cemetery south of Lacydon (Saint-Victor), in which there is mention of the torture of fire of two Marseillais, Satrius Volusianus, son of Eutyches, and Fortunatus, who in the other life will enjoy the refrigerium. The Christian character of the inscription is attested by the symbol of the anchor; it may perhaps go back to the persecution of 177 which decimated the Christian community of Lyons and Vienne under Marcus Aurelius.
To the church of M. also belongs the lost epitaph, noted by Peiresc at Aubagne (probably coming from the "locus Gargarius"), which commemorates a Q. Vetinius Eunoctus, with the symbol of the fish, and perhaps a graffito on plaster at Saint-Remy ("locus de Gianum") in the Alpilles with a fish and with the word ἰγθύς twice. The sarcophagus of La Gayolle, representing the fisherman, the Good Shepherd and the anchor, is an imported work of the mid-3rd century, whose provenance is unknown and which was used in a Christian "memoria" of the 6th century at La Gayolle.
The hagiographic legends speak of the martyrdom of St. Victor, an officer of the imperial army, killed under Maximian, later patron of the 5th-century abbey which must probably be identified with Victor of Alexandria. Legend too is that of Lazarus as the first bishop of M., who is said to have landed on the coasts of Provence after the death of the Redeemer, in the company of the holy women Mary Magdalene, Mary of James and Mary Salome.
Oresius, the first certain bishop, attended the Council of Arles in 314; he is accompanied by two representatives of the castellum of Nice which depended closely on M. and would maintain its episcopal independence until the 5th century against the new bishop of Cimiez, capital of the province of the Maritime Alps. The Church of M. suffered the backlash of the ostracism with which the city had been struck under the Empire and remained on the margins of the organization of the new ecclesiastical cities. It formed an enclosed territory within the vicariate of the Gauls, whose prefecture in 395 was transferred from Arles to Trier. Its bishop Proculus (380-428) entered into a conflict of metropolitan jurisdiction first with Aix (v.), which had been elevated to metropolis of the Second Narbonensis, then in 398, at the Council of Turin, claimed the churches of the new province of M. in which certain bishops had been consecrated by him. Lazarus, bishop of Aix, deposed in 411, at the fall of Constantine III, took refuge with Proculus, and was certainly buried in the abbey of St. Victor; to his epitaph (PP. Lazarus), now lost but transmitted by Peiresc, is undoubtedly due the localization at M. of the tradition of St. Lazarus. The same Proculus entered into conflict with Patroclus, bishop of Arles (v.) in 417, appointed by Pope Zosimus as primate of the churches of the Viennese and Narbonensian 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 concerning the paintings in churches; Maurozius 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, the cardinals Guillaume Sudre (1361-66) and Philippe de Cabassole (1356-68) patron of F. Petrarch; Msgr. C. Seyssel, who took part in the Lateran Council of 1513; card. Innocent Cibo (1517-30), Eustache Gault (1639-40) Oratorian and his beneficent brother J. B. Gault (1642-1643); Msgr. De Belzunce who exerted 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 Higher Studies for Paris.
II. MONUMENTS
The great Christian monuments of M. still standing are the Cathedral and the abbey of St. Victor. Their foundation obeys the laws of paleochristian urbanism, which placed the buildings of the new cult in the cities where public life continued in the ancient setting down to the Merovingian era. The Cathedral dedicated to the Madonna is called la 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 Greco-Roman walls near the bend of the Ource, not far from the Porta Gallicana which opened onto the coastal road.
The position of the Church of M. from the 4th century onward is attested by the presence of the baptistery, whose ground plan was identified in 1850, when it was demolished to make room for the new cathedral; situated to the north of the church, it was externally square in plan with a central rotunda with vault and dome on eight columns and with a deambulatory inscribed in an octagon 23 m. in diameter. But in the Merovingian era M. was attacked or occupied in turn by Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Burgundians, Franks and Saracens and divided between civil and religious power (lower city and upper city); it took refuge in the best-defended part, that is, the acropolis of the hill of St-Laurent (castrum Bobonii); the episcopal see, most exposed to the attacks of pirates, 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 the ancient see until the end of the 10th century, when William the Liberator, after driving the Saracens from the Moorish coast, was able to restore peace in Provence. The Cathedral, after having been for some time at Notre-Dame des Accoules, at the end of the 10th century rose again from its ruins and was entirely rebuilt on the model of Romanesque churches, around 1150. It is of the Provençal type, with three naves; the crossing of the transept bears a dome; the apse, preceded by a choir communicating with the side naves, is decorated with an arcade resting on small columns. Unfortunately it was mutilated after 1850 to make room for the new Cathedral. Of the ancient construction there remains a marble antependium of the 12th century representing the Virgin seated between St. Lazarus and St. Cannat, bishops of M. 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 encloses its reliquary (1474-81).
The other paleochristian buildings of M. 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; and 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, summoned to M. by Bishop Proculus shortly after St. Honoratus had founded the monastery of Lérins, established two monasteries on the southern bank of the Lacydon, one under the protection of St. Victor, for men; the other, for women, was transferred in the Middle Ages within the city to the site of the Forum, with the name of S. Salvatore.
The abbey of St-Victor comprised two churches, one dedicated to the Madonna, the other to the apostles Peter and Paul: they were consecrated in 440 by Leo the Great. Of this primitive foundation only that of the Madonna remains, which was incorporated into the constructions of a new building at the time of the restoration of the 11th century and the reconstruction of the 13th. It was of basilical form with three naves preceded by an atrium; the roof was supported by granite columns; of small dimensions, it seems to have constituted the "memoria" containing the relics of the founder; it was in communication with the cemetery and with an oratory, hollowed out of the rock, in which the relics of St. Victor were kept; it became famous in the Romanesque age for the legends of St. Lazarus and the Magdalene. In the 14th century William Grimoard, formerly abbot of St. Victor, having become Pope Urban V, began the enlargement of the church (1563). The ancient choir was enlarged by means of a vaulted apse with ogives and with a fortified upper platform. St. Victor was truly the patron of M., 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 constituted a center of religious and intellectual life, to which the tendency later condemned under the name of semi-Pelagianism looked for leadership. Because of the relics venerated in the church, its necropolis (partly explored in 1942) became the rival of the Alyscamps of Arles. Workshops of funerary sculpture maintained during part of the 5th century the plastic tradition of the school of Arles (v.); to them must be attributed the beautiful Christian altar now preserved in the Borély Museum, decorated with doves, lambs and vine branches.
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 Ferrel or of the Augustinians of the end of the 15th century, with vaults redone in the 19th century; 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 of the Reformed, from the ancient convent of the Augustinians, was erected on a design by Msgr. Pouguet between 1849-1890. The church of the Sacred Heart on the Prado erected following the vow of Msgr. H. de Belzunce during the plague of 1720; he consecrated the city of M. to the Sacred Heart on 4 June 1722. The church has only recently been finished and opened for worship.
Among the most venerated sanctuaries in the diocese is remembered that which overlooks the city at 152 m. above the sea, Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, founded in 1214; there a great church was built in 1544, renovated in 1864 by H. Esperandieu.
In the church of St. Victor the statue of Notre-Dame-des-Confessions or des Martyrs is much venerated; furthermore the sanctuary of Notre-Dame-du-Sacré-Coeur at Chateau-Gombert.
Among the public buildings are remembered the Ecole des Beaux Arts and the municipal Library with precious manuscripts and incunabula, the Musée des Médailles with a unique numismatic collection of Massaliot and Provençal coins and of the Order of the Knights of Jerusalem; the museums des Beaux Arts, of natural history, Grobet Labadie, Can'un (1916) or of decorative arts in the Hôtel de Montgrand, du Vieux Marseille in the pare Amable, Chanot de la Marine et de la France d'outre mer, d'Archéologie in the Château Borely, des Pénitents-Noirs founded by the bishop of M. Msgr. Champairer with objects of the ancient confraternities. - See plate XIV.
Bibliography24 works
Fernando Benoit