SÉES (formerly Séez), Diocese of. - City and diocese in the department of Orne in Normandy (France). It has the same boundaries as the civil department, with an area of about 6,200 sq km. Its population is 273,181 inhabitants, of whom 271,000 are Catholics, distributed in 5 archpriestures, 36 deaneries and 514 parishes. It has 442 diocesan priests and 4 regulars; major and minor seminaries; 5 male religious communities and 13 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1952, p. 373). It is a suffragan of the archdiocese of Rouen.
It is the ancient city of the Saii. Three 12th-century codices provide the names of the bishops of S., but they give no reliable information before the year 900; moreover, the list is missing two bishops who are certain from the 6th century and two from the 9th. At the Council of Orléans of 511 there appears a bishop Litardus, "Uxomensis" or of Uxoma, that is, of the "pagus" of Exemes in the territory of the diocese of S. He appears as a signatory at the Councils of Orléans of the years 533, 538, 541 and 549, once he is called "Ecclesiae Bescotenae episcopus", twice "Sagensis Ecclesiae". Leodobaudus was at the Council of Paris of 573; Amlacarius at that of Chalon-sur-Saône of 650; Sassobodus was at the Council of Germigny in 843; a letter of Pope John VIII in 878 is addressed to Hildebrand (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 3145); when S. was sacked by the Normans, Hildebrand took refuge at Monciacus (Moussy-le-Neuf [Seine-et-Marne]), with the relics of St. Opportuna, sister of St. Chrodegang of Metz, to whom he later dedicated a church in Paris. His successor Adalelmus wrote the life and miracles of the said Saint. The following bishops are also remembered: Gervasius the Premonstratensian (1220-28), who had dealings with Popes Celestine III, Innocent III and Honorius III; G. Bertout (1607-11), who took part in the conversion of Henry IV; L. d'Aquin (1699-1710).
The diocese was reorganized by virtue of the Concordat of 1801, with the bull of Pope Pius VII Qui Christi Domini. Pope Pius IX, by a brief dated 7 March 1871, raised the Cathedral to a minor basilica.
The original Cathedral was dedicated to the holy martyrs Gervasius and Protasius; it was destroyed by a fire in 1048 in the time of Bishop Ivo of Bellême; the present one, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin (Notre-Dame), constitutes one of the finest examples of Gothic-Norman architecture of the 13th-16th centuries. It was begun by Bishop John de Bernières (1278-92), but because of the poor quality of the ground it underwent many restorations from the 14th century to the present. The façade, with the two towers of the 14th century but rebuilt in the 19th century, was weighed down by buttresses in the 16th century. In the central portal are episodes from the life of the Blessed Virgin. The interior recalls the cathedral of Bayeux; the central nave has cylindrical pillars; the choir and the transept are of the 14th century; the stained-glass windows are of the 14th and 15th centuries; the high altar is decorated with a marble bas-relief representing the discovery of the bodies of Sts. Gervasius and Protasius, the work of Dumont (1784); in the ambulatory the apse chapel contains the much venerated statue of the Madonna under the title of Notre-Dame-des-Champs. Notable are the sepulchral monuments of the bishops of S., Msgr. Rousselet (1881) and Msgr. Tregaio (1895). To the right of the Cathedral, the Episcopal Palace, the work of Brousseau (1776), contains in its gallery the portraits of the former bishops and an artistic chapel.
At the end of the 6th century the abbey of St. Martin was founded there by St. Evroul of Ouche, destroyed by the Normans in the 9th century and rebuilt in 1060 by Roger of Montgomery; when in 1568 S. was sacked, during the wars of religion, by troops led by a Montgomery, the latter spared the abbey out of regard for his ancestor. Then the monastery passed to the Congregation of the Maurists in 1635. Of the ancient building only a few ruins survive; in the 18th century the great Seminary was built in its place; the church of St. Martin has the ancient square tower rebuilt. The church of St. Peter is of the 16th century.
At Alençon, birthplace of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus (v.), the house where she was born was transformed into a chapel. The church of Notre-Dame, erected in the 15th century, restored in the 18th, has a fine "Bamboyant" porch and 16th-century stained-glass windows. In the diocese is the great Trappist monastery of Soligny. In 1848 the parish priest of Montligeon founded an association for the abandoned souls of Purgatory, which Leo XIII established as an archconfraternity Prima Primaria.
Bibliography6 works
Enrico Josi