SAN GIOVANNI DI MORIANA (MAURENNE), DIOCESE OF. – A city and diocese in the southern part of the department of Savoie; seat of a subprefecture.
It has an area of 2,000 sq. km. with a population of 41,615 inhabitants, of whom 40,000 are Catholics, distributed among 89 parishes served by 125 diocesan priests; it has a major and minor seminary and 1 women’s religious community (Ann. Pont. 1952, p. 354). The diocese has been a suffragan of Chambéry since 1817, and before that of Vienne; its patron is St John the Baptist.
Gregory of Tours (In gloria martyrum, 13) reports that a pious woman, “Tygris,” a native of the region, went to the East and obtained a relic of a finger of St John the Baptist, which, brought back to her homeland, was venerated in a church that became a centre of pilgrimage; and the city was called “S. Johannes Garocellius.” The area situated in the Cottian Alps belongs to the diocese of Turin. After passing under Frankish rule, King Guntram obtained the creation of a diocese. The first bishop was Felmasio. Iconius attended the Councils of Mâcon in 581 and 585 and the translations of the relics of SS Ursus and Victor (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 1754–55); Leporius was at the Council of Chalon-sur-Saône in 650. The territory of the diocese was sacked by the Saracens; later Conrad II gave it to the bishops of Turin; the counts of Savoy took possession of it in 1327; it passed to France in the first half of the 16th century, but was regained by Emmanuel Philibert in 1559; it reverted to France at the end of the 18th century and during the Napoleonic empire; it returned to the House of Savoy until 1859, when all of Savoie was ceded to France.
The cathedral was built in the 12th century, enlarged in the 15th, and restored in the 19th; the crypt is ancient; it has artistic stalls in the choir and the tabernacle is of alabaster. There is the tomb of Bishop Mgr P. de Lambert (d. 1580). The bishops of S. G. di M. struck coinage, and of the old mint there remains the “Tour Bousse” of the 15th century.