SAINT-DIÉ, Diocese of. - Diocese and city, seat of a subprefecture in the department of the Vosges in France, situated on the banks of the river Meurthe.
It has the same dimensions as the department of the Vosges, with an area of 5,903 sq km and a population of 342,000 inhabitants, of whom 339,000 are Catholics, distributed in 485 parishes, served by 488 diocesan priests and 20 regulars; it has a major and a minor seminary, 5 male religious communities and 145 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1952, p. 345). The patron of the diocese is St. Deodatus.
from Petit de Jufcille, Histoire de la littér. française, VII, Paris 1889, plate after p. 661
SAINTE-BEUVE, CHARLES-AUGUSTIN de. Portrait.
by St. Romaric, monk of Luxeuil; there was a monastery of monks and one of nuns. Lendino Bodo, bishop of Toul, founded the monastery of Bonmoutier to the south of Etival.
The Benedictine abbey of Senones was founded in 640 by St. Gondebert, archbishop of Sens, who gave it the name of Senoria. It was suppressed by the Revolution; the abbey church, transformed into a parish church, was rebuilt in Romanesque style in 1860; the monastic building, rebuilt in the 18th century, is today private property. One of the last abbots was d. Calmet, who died in 1757. The monk Richer belonged to the monastery, and in the 13th century he wrote the chronicle known as that of Senones. The abbey of Moyenmoutier was founded by St. Idulf, bishop of Trier, at the end of the 12th century. The name derives from its situation among the four abbeys of St-D., Bonmoutier, Etival and Senones. Etival is situated at the mouth of the Valange valley; it was originally a priory of the abbey of Ardlau (v. STRASBURG), and in 1146 it became a Premonstratensian abbey, suppressed in 1790. The ancient abbey church suffered greatly in the last war; it is in Cistercian style of the 12th century; the apse was redone in 1516, the naves are divided by pillars.
In the 16th century, given the long period of vacant see in the diocese of Toul, the abbots of these monasteries assumed an almost episcopal jurisdiction and, in the 18th century, the erection of each of them as an abbey nullius.
The diocese was created by Pope Clement XIV in 1777 by detachment from the diocese of Toul, with the ancient monastic territories of St-D., Etival, Senones and Moyenmoutier. Suppressed in 1801, it formed part of the diocese of Nancy; it was re-established by Pius VII in 1822. It was first a suffragan of Trier; since 1822 it is under the metropolitan of Besançon. Bishop of St-D. from 1849 to 1876 was Msgr. L. Caverot, later cardinal archbishop of Lyon.
The cathedral known as "Grande-Eglise" was blown up with dynamite in Nov. 1944 by the Germans; the facade with the two towers erected in 1711 remained undamaged. The interior has three naves, the two lesser ones erected after the fire of 1155, with Romanesque pillars; the apse has 5 chapels, the choir and the transept are of the 14th century, the side chapels of the 15th and 16th centuries. The frescoes that decorated the walls were of the 16th century and have been destroyed. The adjacent cloister dates back to the 14th century; to the south of it is the church of Notre-Dame known as "Petite-Eglise", a typical Romanesque church of Rhenish style of the 12th century in red limestone. It has three naves; in the facade the portico and the bell tower seem earlier. The church of St. Martin, burned in 1895, has been rebuilt. Notable is the municipal Library formed from the collections of the religious communities both of the city and of the region, especially of Etival, Moyenmoutier and Senones, and with donations from Taurant, Elbel and Baldensperger. It possesses 132 manuscripts, some illuminated, 139 incunabula and more than 60,000 volumes.
Around 1495 the Gymnasium Vogesiense was established in St-D. by some scholars and one of the first printing houses of Lorraine was founded, from which issued the Cosmographiae introductio, in which the new world was for the first time given the name of America.