NARBONNE. - Ancient diocese and city in southern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Aude. Occupied first by the Ligurians, the Iberians and the Celts, N., under the name Narbo Martius, was the first Roman colony in Gaul and became the capital city of Gallia Narbonensis Prima throughout the Roman period. Under Claudius it took the name Colonia Iulia Paterna Claudia Narbo Martius. A fire devastated it and it was restored by Antoninus Pius, but already in the 3rd century it was no longer so flourishing. Antony and Sidonius Apollinaris, however, extol its public buildings.
With the conquest of 413 N. formed part of the Visigothic Kingdom until 759. In the 6th century N. was still a flourishing colony of merchants from Syria; canons 4 and 14 of the Council of N. of 589 mention among its inhabitants the Goths, the Romans, the Syrians, the Greeks and the Jews. Then it passed to the Carolingians, then to the Capetians and from these to the counts of Toulouse, who became dukes of N. Then to the house of Foix until 1509, when it passed definitively to the French crown. It gave its name to the ecclesiastical province of Narbonne, more or less identical with the civil province of the time of Honorius, and it comprised the territories of five cities: N., Nîmes, Toulouse, Lodève and Béziers. Following the conquests of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious the territories of the dioceses of Urgel, Vic, Girona and Barcelona and then Ampurias and Egara were annexed to France and, passing under the province of N., remained there until the end of the 11th century.
Paul is the first known bishop, indicated in the Jeronymian Martyrology under 22 March, and assigned by Gregory of Tours to the middle of the 3rd century (Historia Francorum, I, 30). Prudentius seems to number him among the martyrs (Peristephanon, IV). The bishop Hilary is mentioned in letters of the popes Zosimus and Boniface (Jaffé-Wattenbach, pp. 332, 349, 362). Rusticus (426-61) is attested by inscriptions (CIL, XII, 5336-38) and by letters of the popes Sixtus III and Leo I (Jaffé-Wattenbach, pp. 434-79, 480, 544). His successor was Hermes, who however was deprived of the rights of metropolitan by pope Hilary (ibid., 554-55). Megetius took part in the Councils of Toledo of 589 and 597; at the beginning of the 7th century there is the bishop Sergius, then Selva, present at Toledo in 633 and 638, where Scunifred went in 683, 684, 688. The bishop Daniel took part in Rome in 769; Nebridius at Urgel in 799 and 800; Bartholomew at Toulouse in 828; but he was deposed in 835.
The archbishops were primates of Gallia Narbonensis and ex officio presidents of the States of Languedoc. In Lent of 1227 a council was held at N. for the searching out and denunciation of heretics (Hefele-Leclercq, V, II, p. 1454). In 1229 there was at N. the archbishop Peter Amelius, who on 1 Oct. 1234 issued statutes together with the legate of Gregory IX, John of Bernin, and the bishops of Nîmes, Béziers, Toulouse, Elne, renewing the provisions of the Council of Toulouse. Until 1317 the diocese of Toulouse was a suffragan of N. Two archbishops of N. ascended the chair of Peter: Guy Foulquoys, who became
Clement IV (1265-68), and Giulio de Medici, later Clement VII (1523-34).
The diocese having been suppressed in 1790 by the French Revolution, pope Pius VII with the Concordat of 1801 united the diocese of N. with that of Toulouse and in 1822 added to the archbishop of Toulouse the title of bishop of N. From the inscription of the bishop Rusticus (CIL, XII, 5336) it is gathered that the Cathedral rebuilt in 445 replaced on the same site the one that had burned down and that perhaps went back to the 4th century. The text is very important because it records the demolition of the walls of the old church, the laying of the first foundation stone, when the apse was finished, the contribution of the prefect of the Gauls of the time, Marcellus, "devoted to the worship of God", who paid the workmen during the two years of his administration, and it reports oblations received from other bishops. The epigraph was placed in the Cathedral by card. de Bonzy in 1681 and is now in the Lamourgnier Museum. The present former Cathedral, dedicated to St. Justus and begun in 1272, is unfinished.
There are the tombs of the archbishop B. de Farges (d. 1341), of the cardinals Peter la Jugie (d. 1376) and Briçonnet (d. 1514), of the archbishop L. de Vervins (d. 1628). In the treasury are preserved Flemish and Aubusson tapestries; polychrome stone statues of the 14th century of the apostles Peter and Paul; a missal and an evangeliary of the 11th century; the pontifical of card. Jugie; an ivory cover of a liturgical book of the 12th century, with eight scenes from the life of Jesus Christ and at the center his Crucifixion. Of the 11th-century Cathedral only the bell tower remains; the site is now occupied by the cloister (1350-1417). The church in honor of St. Sebastian, of a Narbonne father, was erected by the archbishop J. D'Arcourt (1436-51) on the site of an oratory that arose, according to tradition, on his paternal house. The church (of the 14th century) of the ancient Benedictine priory of Lamourgnier or la Mourgnie, in the 11th century, is today transformed into a lapidary museum; the epigraphic collection is rich, including the inscription of Agroecius of the 4th century. The church of St. Paul rises above an ancient oratory near the Via Domitiana, in the locality then called ad albolas, where an ancient Christian cemetery formed, from which come the sarcophagi today preserved in the Gothic church which, begun in 1224, was a collegiate church; a fire devastated it in 1364; it was extended in the 15th century, reinforced in the 16th and 19th. The excavations begun in 1948 have brought to light numerous sarcophagi of the 4th and 5th centuries. The tomb of St. Paul was venerated in the 4th century; it is known from Prudentius that Paul had become the glory and the ornament of the province. "Surget et Paulo speciosa Narbo" (Prudentius, Peristephanon, IV, 34). The Jeronymian Martyrology mentions Paul under 22 March. Gregory of Tours recalls him in the group of the seven bishops who would have evangelized Gaul in the middle of the 3rd century (Historia Francorum, I, 38: PL 71, 175-76). The excavations carried out from 1942 have demonstrated the existence of a cemetery around the venerated tomb; in the sarcophagi coins of Constantine II have been found. In the locality St-Loup-
an ancient Christian cemetery was found with a burial chapel dedicated to the bishop Rusticus.
The ancient archbishop's palace is today used as town hall and museum. This contains the Library and a collection of Roman, Christian, Visigothic and medieval inscriptions; one of the finest collections in France, of ceramics of antiquity, paintings of the French, Italian and Flemish schools. There is furthermore a reproduction of the aedicule containing the Holy Sepulchre as it existed at the time of the Crusades. Some Christian sepulchral inscriptions bear the dates of the years 508 (CIL, XII, 5339), 527 (ibid., 5340), 541 (ibid., 5344), 568 (ibid., 5344), 593 (ibid., 5345); in an inscription of the 7th century the priest Adroarius commends himself to all those who will enter the church; one commemorates a subdeacon Adelfus (ibid., 5346), another a Maria abbatissa (ibid., 5352). The Christian sarcophagi of N. were studied first by E. Le Blant and then by G. Wilpert (Sarcofagi, t. 26, 3; 45, 2; 106, 1; 122, 2; 124, 3; pp. 38, 116, 118, 124, 128, 167, 188). In the Library of N. are preserved Merovingian capitals reproducing Roman models (D. Fossard, Chapiteaux mérovingiens, in Cahiers archéologiques, 2 [1947]).
Bibliography13 works
Enrico Josi