VALENCE, Diocese of. - Diocese and chief town of the prefecture of the department of Drôme in France, on the left bank of the Rhône, near the confluence of the Isère.
It has an area of 6,522 sq km, corresponding to the department of Drôme, with a population of 268,233 inhabitants, of whom 250,842 are Catholics, distributed in 246 parishes, served by 410 diocesan priests and 85 regulars; it has a major and a minor seminary, 10 male religious communities and 90 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 440).
It is the ancient Ventia, later Iulia Valentia, capital of the Segalauni; Prosper Tiro in his Chronicle calls it "nobilissima civitas." In the Middle Ages the city was under the government of the bishops, who defended it against the counts of Valentinois; from 1276 to 1687 the bishops also held the title of counts of V. In 1450 the Dauphin, later Louis XI, obtained a part of their rights, giving in exchange royal protection and the founding of a university that lasted until 1790 and had among its teachers Cujas, Scaliger, etc. In 1562 the Huguenots, aided by the baron Des Adrets, seized the city, damaging the Cathedral and other religious buildings, especially the abbey of St. Rufus. It was the capital of the Duchy of Valentinois and passed from the Dauphin Louis to Cesare Borgia, to Diana of Poitiers and to Henry Grimaldi, prince of Monaco. Pope Pius VI was for a month a prisoner of the Directory in the citadel and died there on 29 Aug. 1799. A tradition attributes the founding of Christianity in V. to the work of the priest Felix and the deacons Achilles and Fortunatus sent from Lyon, commemorated on 23 Apr. in the Jeronymian Martyrology.
In the third cartulary of Grenoble (Library of Grenoble, ca. mid-12th cent.) there is a list of bishops beginning in the mid-9th cent. The earliest known bishop is Aemilianus, whose name appears in the Council held at V. in 374. Before 417 there was Maximus, whom Pope Boniface, by a letter of 13 June 419, wished to be judged (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 319). Then there is Cariatus, who sent a representative of his to the Council of Vaison of 442; St. Apollinaris, brother of St. Avitus of Vienne, who in 517 was at the Council of Epaona, is commemorated in the Jeronymian on 5 Oct.; Gallus was at the Council of Orléans of 549; Maximus II had himself represented at the Council of Lyon of 570; Ragnolus was at the Council of Lyon and at the two of Mâcon of 581 and 585; Ingildus was at that of Chalon-sur-Saône in 650. No precise place can be assigned to the bishops Salvius, Antonius, Antoninus and Elephas. The bishop [Valdalo] received a donation from Charlemagne (808-14); Lambertus was under Louis the Pious. On 8 and 9 Jan. 855 a Council was held at V. Then there was Repertus (859-79); Isaac was at the Council of Chalon-sur-Saône.
Later there are remembered Godard (1082-95); John I (1141-46), formerly abbot of Bonnevaux; the bl. Humbert of Moribel (1200-20); Gerald, formerly abbot of Cluny, later patriarch of Jerusalem; St. Boniface of Savoy (1240-42), later archbishop of Canterbury; Amedeo II, cardinal of Saluzzo (1383-89); John VI, cardinal of Lorraine (1521); Fr. G. De Casteluan, cardinal of Clermont-Lodève (1524-31); Ch. F. Fr. Cotton (1895-1905). On 4 May 1847 Pope Pius IX, in memory of Pius VI, named the bishops of V. assistants to the throne by right and Roman counts; they also hold the title of bishops of Die and of St-Paul-Trois-Châteaux (v.). The diocese is a suffragan of Avignon. The patron of the diocese is St. Apollinaris.
The Cathedral, St. Apollinaris, is in Romanesque style, with influences of the Auvergne school; it was begun by bishop Godard at the end of the 11th cent., but it was certainly not finished when Urban II consecrated it on 5 Aug. 1095 (inscription in the right side aisle). The whole belongs to the first half of the 12th cent. It was ruined by the Huguenots and restored between 1604-1609; but the choir was disfigured in 1730 and then everything was restored in the 19th cent. The porch is supported by 32 columns. In the south transept there is a fine portal in whose tympanum is carved the Savior between angels and the symbols of the four Evangelists, with traces of ancient polychromy. The interior is a Latin cross of 75 × 18 m; at the transept it measures 35.88 m; it is divided into three naves by square piers with 4 engaged columns. The choir is surrounded by 8 columns, one of which is an ancient milestone; there is preserved a marble monument containing the heart of Pius VI; in the ambulatory 4 apsidal chapels open. In the transept are the tombs of Msgr. De la Tourrette (d. 1840), Chartrousse (1857) and De Gibrigues (1919). The sacristy is Gothic (1488). The adjoining cloister has been destroyed; in its midst stood the surviving characteristic monument created by canon Nicolas Mistral in 1548, called the Pendentif. The church of St. John the Baptist was rebuilt after 1840 in Romanesque style, of which the ancient bell tower of the end of the 12th cent. remains. The ancient Palace of the abbot of St. Rufus is today occupied by the Prefecture.
Pope Pius XI, by a letter of 24 May 1937, conferred the title and privileges of minor basilica on the church of Notre-Dame de Aiguebelle, in the monastery of the Reformed Cistercians, on the occasion of the eighth centenary of the founding of the monastery itself, a splendid monument of Romanesque art; from this abbey seven others were formed (AAS, 29 [1937], pp. 395-96). For the Christian sarcophagi preserved at V., v. Wilpert, Sarcofagi, pl. 215, 3, p. 306; pl. 214, 6, p. 296.