SAN GIOVANNI DI MORIANA (MAURIENNE), DIOCESE of. — City and diocese in the southern part of the department of Savoy; seat of a subprefecture.
It has an area of 2,090 sq. km. and 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 a minor seminary and one women’s religious community (Ann. Pont. 1952, p. 354). The diocese has been a suffragan of Chambéry since 1817, and previously was one of Vienne; its patron is St. John the Baptist.
Gregory of Tours (In gloria martyrum, 13) relates that a pious woman, “Tyrgis,” a native of the region, is said to have gone to the East and obtained a relic consisting of a finger of St. John the Baptist which, brought back to her homeland, was venerated in a church that became a pilgrimage center; and the city came to be called “S. Johannes Garocellius.” The area, situated in the Cottian Alps, belonged to the diocese of Turin. After it passed under the Franks, King Gontran secured the establishment of a diocese. Its first bishop was Felmasius. Iconius took part in the Councils of Mâcon in 581 and 585 and in the translations of the relics of SS. Orsus and Victor (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 1754–55); Leporius was present at the Council of Chalon-sur-Saône in 650. The territory of the diocese was plundered by the Saracens; later Conrad II gave it to the bishops of Turin; the counts of Savoy seized it in 1327; it passed to France in the first half of the 16th century, but Emmanuel Philibert recovered it in 1559; it passed again to France at the end of the 18th century and during the Napoleonic Empire; it returned under the House of Savoy until 1859, when all Savoy 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 artistically carved choir stalls, and the tabernacle is made of alabaster. It contains the tomb of Bishop P. de Lambert (d. 1580). The bishops of S. G. di M. minted coins, and the “Tour Bossue” of the 15th century remains from the old mint.