SAINT-CLAUDE, DIOCESI di. – City and diocese, seat of a subprefecture of the department of Jura
in France, situated on the slopes of Mount Bayard, at the confluence of the Bienne and Tacon rivers. It has the same boundaries as the department of Jura, with an area of 4994 sq. km and a population of 213,533 inhabitants, of whom 190,000 are Catholics, distributed among 393 parishes served by 265 diocesan and 59 regular priests; it has a major and a minor seminary, 4 male and 16 female religious communities (Ann. Pont. 1952, p. 345). The episcopal residence is at Lons-le-Saunier. It is suffragan to Lyon.
The city originated from the abbey of Condat, founded by the two hermits s. Romano and s. Lupicino ca. the 5th century; a village gradually formed around II. At the death of its fourth abbot, Eugendo, ca. 510, it first took the name of St-Oyand and later, ca. the 12th century, that of St-C., after its 12th abbot, Claudio; this name also passed to the city that had arisen around II. The abbey extended its properties so as to form, with its possessions, the « Terre de la Grande Judicature de St-C. », and extended as far as Grandvaux (today St-Laurent-du-Jura), where in 528 the abbot of St-Oyand had erected the monastery suppressed by the Revolution (L. Maillet-Guy, Histoire du Grandvaux, Voiteur 1933). The abbot of St-C. exercised temporal authority over the city, to which he granted a municipal charter in 1310, and later also over Grandvaux and other dependent lands. Later it was granted in commendam.
The diocese was created by Benedict XIV on 22 January 1742 with the 26 parishes surrounding the abbey; others were subsequently added through their separation from the archdioceses of Lyon and Besançon. The abbey was then secularized and the monks formed the Cathedral Chapter. The bishop received the title of count. By the Concordat of 1802, the territory of the diocese was annexed to that of Besançon, but the Concordat of 1817 re-established the diocese, assigning to it the territory of Jura and making it suffragan to Lyon. The abbey was destroyed by fire in 1799. The surviving structure is the abbey church, which became the cathedral (St Peter). Its construction dates from 1340, with an apse having five chapels, completed only in 1726; it retains the Gothic style, while only the façade and the square tower are in the Classical style. The interior, 66 m long, 26 m wide, and 24.50 m high, has three naves divided by octagonal pillars and pointed arches. The 38 choir stalls were carved between 1449 and 1460 by J. de Vitry. In March 1794, the tomb of S. Claudio was destroyed by the revolutionaries. At the altar of St Peter there is a panel by H. Holbein. The Treasury preserves a chalice that belonged to s. Francesco di Sales. The patron of the diocese is s. Claudio. S. Desiderio (d. ca. 415), bishop of Besançon, was born at Lons-le-Saunier; in his honour an abbey was erected there in the 11th century, now the seat of the prefecture, with an attached Romanesque church divided into three naves by pillars and containing a crypt where the sarcophagus of s. Desiderio is preserved. Dôle and Salins are also noteworthy for their religious monuments.
Dôle. – It is perhaps the ancient « Crusinia » indicated in the Tabula Peutingeriana; it was the capital of the « Pagus Amovorum » and later of Franche-Comté, with a Chamber of Accounts, Parliament, University, and Mint, all of which were suppressed at the end of the 18th century. The artistic church of Notre-Dame, in the « flamboyant » style, was erected between 1509 and 1575 with a bell tower originally 82 m high, now reduced to 74. The north portal is decorated with the scene of the Blessed Virgin between two angels. The interior has three naves. The celebrated Collège de l’Arc, founded by the Jesuits in 1582, with a 17th-century chapel, is now occupied by the municipal college, the Library, and the archaeological, painting, and sculpture museums. Dôle was the birthplace of J. de Carondelet, archbishop of Palermo and president of the Grand Council of Flanders (1469–1545), of the Jesuit missionary Fr. J.-D. Attiret, painter to the Emperor of China, and of L. PASTEUR, LOUIS (v.), whose house was transformed in 1923 into the Musée Pasteurien by the local « Société des Amis de la maison natale de Pasteur ».
Salins. – Today called Salins-les-Bains. A diploma of 523 from Sigismund, king of Burgundy, attests that it was
