SAINT-BRIEUC, DIOCESE OF. - City and diocese in the department of Côtes-du-Nord in France.
The diocese has the same dimensions as the civil department, with an area of about 7,000 sq km and a population of 509,898 inhabitants, of whom 509,000 are Catholics. The diocese is divided into two archdeaconries, those of St-B. and of Tréguier; it comprises 6 archpriestures which are subdivided into 48 deaneries and 412 parishes, served by 956 diocesan priests and 50 regulars; it has a major and a minor seminary, 16 male religious communities and 330 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1952, p. 345).
According to tradition, St. Brieuc, a monk from the country of Wales, would have come in the 5th century from the region of Cardigan into Gaul together with about 80 of his brethren to evangelize Armorica. He first founded the monastery of Tréguier on the river Jandy, leaving its direction to his nephew Pabu Tugdual; then he went to the right bank of the Gouet and on the place called Champ-de-Rouvre built a basilica around which there first grew up a monastery, then a city which took its name from him. Only an inscription placed at St-Serge-d'Angers, where his body would have been translated around 851-57, gives St. Brieuc the title of bishop; the first bishop whose name is known before the 11th century is Felix or Garnobius.
The city was decimated by the plague in 1240 and in 1601. From 1602 to 1768 it was the seat of the assemblies of the States of Brittany. It was prey to bloody struggles during the French Revolution. The diocese is a suffragan of Rennes and has as its patrons St. Brieuc and St. William. The bishop has united the title of Tréguier.
The Cathedral, St. Stephen, was rebuilt in 1220 by Bishop William Pinchon, who died in 1234 and was canonized in 1247 by Pope Innocent IV. The building was restored in the 14th century and modified in the 18th and at the end of the 19th. The facade with portico is flanked by two towers; the interior measures 73 x 41 m in width and 19 in height; the transept and the choir are still of the 15th century. St. William Pinchon is laid in a modern granite sarcophagus and is represented in a 15th-century statue; there are also the sepulchral monuments of the bishops of St-B., Msgr. Boisgelin (d. 1633); Msgr. Caffarelli (d. 1815); Msgr. Le Groing de la Romagère (d. 1841); Msgr. Le Mée (d. 1858); Msgr. Martial (d. 1863); Msgr. David (d. 1882). Modern are the basilica of Notre-Dame-d'Espérance, much venerated in the region and a place of pilgrimage every year on May 31; the church of St. Michael is of the 19th century, with a facade with two corner towers.
The fountain of St-B., because erected by him, was redone in 1429; it leans against the small oratory of Notre-Dame-de-la-Fontaine and the chapel containing the tombs of the last two bishops of St-B.
Tréguier. - It was at first a monastery at the confluence of the Jandy with the Guindy, created by St. Brieuc and entrusted to Tugdual, whose biography is of the 9th century. The bishop Gorennanus would have been driven from Tréguier by the Normans in the 10th century; he would have transported the relics of St. Tugdual to Château-Ladon and to Chartres.
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Enrico Josi