NÎMES, DIOCESI di. — City and diocese in the department of Gard, at the foot of the Garrigues hills, in southern France.
Its boundaries correspond to those of the department of Gard, and it extends over 5,825 sq. km., with a population of more than 395,000 inhabitants, of whom 296,000 are Catholics, distributed among 289 parishes and 35 vicariates served by 407 diocesan priests and 48 religious priests; it has two seminaries, major and minor, the presbyteral schools of Alès and Le Vigan; 9 male and 31 female religious communities.
The origin of the city is represented by the famous fountain whose genius, Nemausus, gave it its name. It was the capital of the Volci Arecomici, or inhabitants of the flat country; around it Strabo records 24 oppida. The Volci submitted to the Romans ca. 120 B.C. Augustus founded the “Colonia Augusta Nemausensis,” distributing the lands to his veterans after the victory in Egypt; they introduced the cult of Isis and Serapis there. Hadrian, returning from Britannia, stopped there and erected a basilica in honour of Plotina. N. reached its apogee under Antoninus Pius. It passed under the Franks in 737 and was united to the crown of France by Louis VIII. It suffered greatly in the religious struggles
of the 16th and 17th centuries, and a large part of its churches was damaged by the Huguenots.
Christianity in N. is attested first of all by the martyr Baudilio, commemorated on 20 May in the first recension of the Hieronymian Martyrology: Nemauso Baudilis martyris. An inscription bears the date 21 May and invokes the martyr’s protection for the deceased: martyr Baudelias per passionis die Domino dulcam suum commendat aluminum (E. Le Blant, Inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule, Paris 1857, p. 708). An entire chapter of St. Gregory of Tours is devoted to his “glorious tomb” (In gloria martyrum, 77). The cult of St. Baudilio was also widespread in Spain (E. Hübner, Inscriptions Hispaniae christianae, Berlin 1871, p. 255; F. Fita, in Boletín de la Academia de la Historia, 25 [1894], p. 143). An incomplete and disordered episcopal catalogue of N. is preserved in a 13th-century lectionary, formerly belonging to the Cathedral and now in the Civic Library (no. 14, f. 218); L. Duchesne re-established the succession of the bishops, the first of whom is Sedatus, who was at the Council of Agde in 506; then Giovanni, in the time of Theodoric (Gregory of Tours, In gloria martyrum, 77); Pelagius, present at the Council of Toledo in 589, where he was Remessarius at that of 633.
The Cathedral (Notre-Dame-et-St-Castor), according to tradition, was built over an ancient temple of Augustus. It was consecrated in 1096 by Urban V, returning from Clermont, who held a Council there (1096). Inside is a Christian sarcophagus from Arles with Jesus Christ among the twelve Apostles (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, pl. 43, 5, p. 48), and beside it stands the monument of Cardinal F. J. de Bernis.
A 4th-century cemetery, used until the Carolingian period, was identified in the Place du Vieux-Chapitre near the Cathedral. It may form part of the same cemetery discovered in 1920, in which it was established that the present Cathedral was built over an ancient three-naved church, divided by columns and adjoining a cemetery area (E. Esperandieu, Fouilles de 1920 sur la place aux Herbes, in Le vieux N., 1932, pp. 1-8; H. Beauquier, Le vieux N., in Bull. de la Commiss. municip. d’archéol., 1940, no. 16; R. Lantier, Rsch. archéol. en 1940, 1941, 1942, in Gallia, 3 [1944], pp. 288-89).
The diocese was suppressed in 1801 and restored in 1821. The bishop of N. is also titular of the two suppressed dioceses of Alais and Ugès. Alais (since 1926, Alès), ancient Aristum, was established as a diocese ca. 570; suppressed in the 8th century, reconstituted in 1690, and definitively suppressed with the French Revolution. The Cathedral was dedicated to St. Giovanni. Uzès, ancient Ulcétia, had as its first known bishop Constantius, present at the Council of Vaison in 442. The Cathedral was dedicated to the patron saint, St. Theodoret (L. Duchesne, Fastes épisc. de l’ancienne Gaule, I, 2nd ed., Paris 1907, pp. 314-16 ff.).
Sanctuaries venerated in the diocese of N. are Notre-Dame-de-Grâce at Rochefort, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce at Laval, Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours of Prime Combe, Notre-Dame-de-Bonheur near Vallerangues; Notre-Dame de Vauvert; Notre-Dame de Belzevet on Mount Audaire. The Museum contains fragments of Christian sarcophagi (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, p. 123, 306 and pl. 238, 3). A fragment of a Christian sarcophagus is at the Meunier de Salinelles property (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, pp. 247, 249, pl. 216, 8); other fragments are known through a copy by Rulmann (id., ibid., p. 319, fig. 200). An epigraphic fragment, not earlier than the 6th century, commemorates two spouses who “in matrimonio gesserunt inter se confidentes in Deo pietate, amore, caritate, castitate” (CIL, XII, 4057).
The following were born in N.: Domitius Afer, Quintilian’s teacher; Castor, bishop of Apt (d. in 419); J. Nicot, who introduced tobacco into France (1560); the historians F. Guizot (1787-1880) and E. Denis (1849-1921); A. and E. Daudet, and the archaeologist G. Boissier (1823-1908). Pope Clement IV (1265-68), who showered the city’s monasteries with favours, belonged to the diocese of N., namely to St-Gilles.
The amphitheatre, now called “les Arènes,” was built in the 1st century A.D.; transformed into a fortress by the Visigoths; in the Middle Ages defended by the “Chevaliers des Arènes”; in the 13th century, 2,000 inhabitants settled there, and they also had a chapel.
The so-called Maison carrée was erected by Agrippa in honour of Gaius and Lucius, the nephews of Augustus. It was called Capduel (a corruption of Capitolium) and only from the 16th century maison carrée, an improper designation because the building is longer than it is wide. From the 11th century it served various purposes; it now houses the
Musée des Antiquités, with very rich Gallo-Roman collections. The so-called “Temple of Diana” is part of a Roman thermal complex dating from the Hadrianic period (117-30); in the Middle Ages it became the church of a Benedictine nuns’ abbey.
The former Jesuit college is now partly a lycée and partly an archaeological museum containing a rich epigraphic collection in 10 rooms. The Jesuit chapel (1678) has been transformed into a gallery of ancient sculpture. N. has an academy to which Louis XIV granted the same privileges as those of the Académie de France. Nineteen kilometres from N. lies St-Gilles, ancient Vallis Flaviana, the site of an abbey founded by St. Egidius on land donated in the 8th century by the Visigothic king Wamba. The abbey church, dedicated to St. Egidius, was begun in 1116 and is a notable example of Gothic art in southern France; in the crypt it preserves the tomb of St. Egidius with the 11th-century inscription: in hoc tumulo quiescit corpus beati Aegidii.