Vaison

VAISON. - Ancient diocese and small town on the banks of the Ouvèze, today in the archdiocese of Avignon in France.

It was the ancient capital of the country of the Vocontii; it became a flourishing residence of the Romans, who built there a theater, baths, aqueducts and a bridge still in use. Christianity is attested by its bishops and its monuments. It was sacked by the Barbarians, and flourished again in the 11th century thanks to its bishops, who were, however, opposed in the 12th century by the counts of Toulouse, who erected a castle on the hill situated on the left bank of the Ouvèze, around which the feudal town gradually took shape in the 14th and 15th centuries, little by little abandoning the right bank, where construction was resumed only in the 18th century with the convents of the Cordeliers and the Dominicans.

The pontifical administration of the Comtat Venaissin assured prosperity to the small town until the French Revolution, which also suppressed the diocese. The first bishop seems to have been that Daphnus who took part in 314 in the Council of Arles (G. Morin, Un écrit de st Césaire d'Arles renfermant un témoignage sur les fondateurs des églises de Gaule, in Revue bénédictine, 46 [1934], pp. 190-205). The bishop Auspicius appears at the Councils of Riez in 439, of Orange in 440, of V. in 442; he was succeeded in 450 by Fonteius, who is remembered in documents of 451 and 463 (Jaffé-Wurtenbach, 479, 557) and by Sidonius Apollinaris in 475 (Ep., VI, 7; VII, 4); then Gemellus, who was at the Council of Epaona in 517, Alethius, who took part in the provincial Councils of the years 527, 529, 533 and in that of Orléans in 541; then Theodosius; Quirinus, who was at the Council of Paris in 579; Artemius, present at the Councils of Mâcon in 581 and of Valence in 584; Vincent at that of Paris in 614; Petruinus at that of Chalon-sur-Saône in 650; he founded the monastery of Grasellum (Groseau); the bishop Elias appears in 879 among those present at the meeting of Mantaille. Among the bishops of more recent times, mention should be made of the learned F. M. Suárez (1665-66), d. in Rome on 7 Dec. 1677, a notable collector of Christian inscriptions of Rome (codd. Vat. lat. 9136, 9140; Barb. lat. 1804, 2109, 3017, 3084; Chis. I, VI, 205 ff.; cf. A. Silvagni, Inscr. Chr. Urbis Romae, nova series, I, Rome 1922, pp. XLIX-L).

The ancient cathedral of Notre-Dame stands on an earlier construction of the 6th or 7th century consisting of a building with three naves ending in three apses, where the excavations carried out by Msgr. J. Sautel from 1949-51 have made it possible to recognize that the Christian basilica was erected on the site where a great Roman public building had stood; the main apse and the two side apses rest on remains of a Roman building of the 1st century, of which there remain 23 drums of fluted columns, remains of Corinthian capitals and large blocks of stone; the triumphal arch is supported by Roman marble columns with square bases and large ancient capitals, as are the marble blocks of the presbyterial seat and the episcopal cathedra. Beneath the altar a tomb carved out of a decorated architrave block was found; further on, other conspicuous column shafts were found, for a total of 30, along with remains of painted plaster, tiles, etc. The basilica, ruined in the 9th-10th century, was restored at the beginning of the 11th century and rebuilt in the middle of the 12th century; but, interrupted, it was completed in the 13th century and decorated; on the outside of the north small nave an inscription was carved recalling its works; from that small nave one enters the cloister with twin columns, restored in the 19th century. In the cloister, besides notable Christian inscriptions, there is a carved Christian sarcophagus (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, p. 325). The church, dedicated to the bishop St. Quirinus, was rebuilt by Msgr. G. M. Suárez (1665-66); it has a characteristic apse divided by six columns into a pentagonal form and with two semicircular small apses at the beginning; while on the outside it has a triangular form.

The municipal Museum is precious, with imperial statues including a silver bust; but many statues have emigrated as far as the British Museum, to St-Germain, to Avignon, to Marseilles, to Lyons, to Nîmes, to Grenoble, to Valence, etc.

Enrico Josi