PÉRIGUEUX, DIOCESE OF. — A city and diocese, chief town of the prefecture of the Dordogne department in south-western France. The city is situated in a valley on the right bank of the Isle. The diocese covers 9,182 sq. km. with a population of 386,000, of whom 381,000 are Catholics, distributed in 536 parishes served by 334 diocesan priests and 25 regular clergy; it has a major seminary and two minor ones.
P. is the ancient *Vesunna Petrocoriorum*; of a temple dedicated to Tutela Vesunna there remains the cell now called the *Tour de Veson*. The city suffered greatly from the invasions of the Vandals, Visigoths, Franks, Saracens, and Normans. Later, the authority of the bishops and counts of Périgord became established there. In 1536 the English settled there; Calvinists occupied it from 1575 to 1581, devastating its churches. Christianity must already have been established there by the 4th century, since Sulpicius Severus attests that in 361 its bishop, named Paterno, was deposed for heresy. Tradition makes St Front the first bishop of P. He is said to have been succeeded by Anianus and Pegasus, mentioned by Gregory of Tours (*Historia Francorum*, II, 13). Sidonius Apollinaris writes that, in the time of King Henry, P. was without a shepherd (*Ep.*, VIII, 6). The bishops Cronopius, whose epitaph was composed by Venantius Fortunatus (418), were present at the Councils of Agde (506) and Orléans (511 and 533); Carterius and Saffarius appear at the Councils of Mâcon in 586 and 590 respectively, while Aggo is found at the Council of Paris in 614; Ermenomaris attended Bordeaux in 673–75. As for St Front, St Gangeric of Cambrai attests to having visited the confessor’s tomb in a church (*Anal. Boll.*, 7 [1888], p. 394). Rabanus Maurus in his Martyrology lists him as a bishop. On 13 January 1818, John XXII dismembered the diocese, removing 210 parishes to elevate the Benedictine abbey of the Holy Saviour of Sarlat (now a sub-prefecture), founded in the 8th century under the patronage of St Sacerdos or Serdot (bishop of Limoges), as the church is still called, cathedral from 1317 until the suppression of the diocese in 1790. Of the Romanesque building of the 12th century, the façade tower with its portico remains; the five statues in the portal were mutilated; the rest was rebuilt in the 16th and 17th centuries. The interior is a single nave with a 17th-century cathedral. By the Concordat of 1801, the dioceses of P. and Sarlat were united with that of Angoulême; the diocese of P. was restored in 1821. The church of P. is the only one in France that celebrates the feast of Charlemagne on 28 January. More recent bishops of P. were Raymond V.
In 1140 a confraternity had been established in honour of a relic said to be the Holy Shroud brought back from the First Crusade by a Pierre Raoul or Gérard of Périgord (J. Mayjonade, *Le St. Suaire de Cadouin*, Paris 1905). But ecclesiastical authority has recognised that the relic is not authentic; it is a precious fabric with an inscription in Cufic characters from the late 11th and early 12th centuries.