SENS, ARCHDIOCESE OF. – A city in the department of the Yonne in France. It has a population of 271,685 inhabitants, of whom 25,000 are Catholics. The present diocese of Sens is divided into 5 archpriestships: Sens, Joigny, Auxerre, Tonnerre, Avallon (the last two having been constituted approximately from portions of territory belonging to the ancient dioceses of Langres and Autun), 37 deaneries, 49 parishes with 442 chaplaincies and 22 chaplains. The former chapters of the ancient dioceses mentioned above have all been suppressed, and only the metropolitan chapter with ten titular canons remains. None of the abbeys erected in the ancient region have survived; of the old convents, only that of the Carmelite nuns of Sens has risen from the ruins; in compensation, new institutions have arisen, including the two founded by Fr. G. B. Nuard, namely the Congregation of the Fathers of St. Edme of Pontigny and the Benedictine abbey of La Pierre-qui-Vire; in addition, the Congregation of the Sisters of Providence of Sens and the community of the Dominicans of the Eucharist. Non-diocesan orders direct some schools and several charitable works. Until 1903 the major diocesan seminary was directed by the Lazarists, while it is now entrusted to diocesan secular priests.
In the absence of documents, Monsignor Duchesne considered that the episcopal list provides solid elements, since the fourth bishop mentioned, Severinus, is identified among the 34 bishops of Gaul who gave their adhesion to the encyclical letter of the Council of Sardica. This precision allows one to think that Sens was endowed with a bishop’s see before the end of the 3rd century. Moreover, the list may, like many others, have remained incomplete; the first-named bishop is Sabinianus, long venerated in Sens as a martyr. As L. Duchesne has shown, the Senonia was truly the heart of ancient France. Sens became around 385 the capital of the Fourth Lyonnais, having under its jurisdiction Chartres, Auxerre, Meaux, Paris, Orléans, and Troyes. The civil district thus served as the natural framework for the ecclesiastical organization of the province when, in the 5th century, the metropolitan system was introduced into the religious organization of the Gauls, and the see of Nevers, founded later, was placed under the jurisdiction of Sens. However, the importance of the metropolitan Church of Sens was affirmed only in the 8th century, when the Vicar of Sens in 769 was at the head of the Frankish episcopal mission that was to take part in the Roman Council charged with judging the intruder Constantine II.
In the following century, John VIII enhanced the prestige of the see of Sens. When Charles the Bald wished to reconstitute the Empire of Charlemagne, he had obtained that the Pope favour the religious union of the Frankish and Germanic kingdoms, uniting them under the high authority of a prelate devoted to his cause; thus in 876 John VIII conferred on Ansegisus, archbishop of Sens, precise functions that placed him in a position to exercise his authority over the bishops of both countries. But this primacy, claimed by the successors of Ansegisus, was lost two centuries later when, in 1079, Pope Gregory VII conferred on G. G. G. G. G. G. G. G. G. G. G. G. G. G. G., archbishop of Lyon, the primacy of Gaul. Nevertheless, for a long time the archbishops of Sens continued to bear, as a purely honorary title, the title of Primate of the Gauls and Germany. But in the 12th century the primacy of Sens came to the fore again when, in 1163–64, Pope Alexander III, then in conflict with Frederick Barbarossa, established his residence in Sens. The Church of Sens, however, continued to be the ecclesiastical metropolis of Paris; when in the 14th century this superiority was threatened, two Popes defended it with their authority: Clement VI, who had been its titular as Archbishop Peter Roger in 1330, and Gregory XI, who had been its archdeacon. Charles VIII also defended the old metropolis against the claims of Monsignor L. De Beaumont, bishop of Paris. In the 16th century the see of Sens was held by some of the most illustrious ecclesiastical figures of the kingdom, thus remaining secure from rivalry with Paris, which was elevated to metropolitan status by Gregory XV in 1622, assigning to it as suffragans the dioceses of Chartres, Meaux, and Orléans.
Enciclopedia Cattolica