The French Roman Catholic diocese of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne (San Giovanni di Moriana in Italian) has since 1966 been effectively suppressed, formally united with the archdiocese of Chambéry.David M. Cheney, Catholic-hierarchy.org, Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne (Diocese). ] While it has not been suppressed, and is supposed to be on a par with Chambéry and the diocese of Tarentaise, it no longer has a separate bishop or existence.
History Gregory of Tours's De gloria martyrum Book I, chapter 14, in Patrologiae Latinae Tomus LXXI (Paris: J.P. Migne 1858), p. 719. relates how the church of Maurienne, belonging then to the Diocese of Turin, became a place of pilgrimage, after the holy woman Thigris or Thecla,Billiet (1861), Mémoires... Maurienne, pp. 290-291; 293-294, places the dramatic date of Thecla 545–550. R.L. Poole, p. 4, places the insertion of Thecla into Gregory of Tours' narrative between 907 and 915. a native of Valloires, had brought to it as sacred relic from the East a fingerThe cathedral of Troyes possessed another finger; another was held at Brienne-le-Château; the entire right hand was at Cîteaux until the French Revolution. Pierre-Marie-Jean-Baptiste Gauthier, La Légende de Saint Jean-Baptiste, (Plancy: Société de St-Victor, 1850), pp. 177-183. Jacques Albin Simon Collin de Plancy, Grande vie des saints, , Volume 16 (Paris: Louis Vivès 1878), pp. 663-665. There were three heads of the Baptist in Italy, in Rome, Florence, and Reggio: S. I. Mahoney, Six Years in the Monasteries of Italy, and Two Years in the Islands of the Mediterranean and in Asia Minor (Boston: Jordan, Swift and Wiley, 1845), p. 217. There was another at Amiens: Charles Salmon, Histoire du Chef de Saint Jean Baptiste conservé à Amiens depuis 1206, , Amiens: Langlois, 1876. of John the Baptist,Duchesne, p. 240. the same figure which touched Jesus Christ during his baptism.Billiet & Albrieux, Chartes du diocèse de Maurienne p. 289: "...videlicet proprii manus digiti qui Christum baptizando tetigerunt." The Latin text appears to state that Maurienne possessed more than one finger. The pope owned another. Jacob of Voragine, who is using the work of Gregory, says that the finger of John the Baptist suddenly appeared on the altar of the church at Maurienne, after a Gallic matron earnestly prayed God to give her a relic of the Baptist.Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea (the Golden Legend, ed. Th. Graesse, 1890), ch. 125. 2: "Apud Mariennam urbem Galliae matrona quaedam Johanni baptistae valde devota Deum instantius exorabat, ut sibi de reliquiis Johannis aliquando donaretur aliquid. Cum autem orando nihil proficere se videret, sumta de Deo fiducia juramento se adstrinxit, quod hactenus non comederet, donec, quod petebat, acciperet. Cum autem diebus aliquibus jejunasset, pollicem super altare miri candoris vidit et Dei donum laeta suscepit...." Bishop Étienne de Morel (1483–1499) procured for the cathedral a finger of the right hand of Saint Peter.Besson, p. 302. Guntram, King of Burgundy, took from the Lombards in 574 the valleys of Maurienne and Suse, and in 576 founded near the shrine a bishopric, detached from the then Diocese of Turin (in Piedmont, northern Italy), as suffragan of the Archdiocese of Vienne, also comprising the Briançonnais.Duchesne, pp. 239-240.
Its first bishop was Felmasius, known from a document on the Baptist relic's first miracle.Jean-Barthélemy Hauréau, Gallia christiana, vol. XVI, Paris 1865, coll. 611-654 In 599, Gregory the Great failed to make the Merovingian Queen Brunehaut oblige the protests of the Bishop of Turin against this foundation.
Leo III (795-816) made Darantasia (Tarantaise, Loire) a Metropolitan archbishopric with three suffragans, Aosta, Sitten, and Maurienne, but maintained the Ancient primatial status of Vienne.
A letter written by John VIII in 878 acknowledged the claim of Archbishop Teutrannus of Tarantaise that the Bishop of Maurienne was suffragan of Tarentaise, but ordered the archbishop to settle his claim with the Archbishop of Vienne.J.P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae Series Latina Tomus 126 (Paris 1855), p. 781-782; Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Epistolarum Tomus VII (Berlin: Weidmann 1928), p. 107, no. 117: "... Innotescimus denique quia venerabilis frater et coepiscopus noster Bernarius, nostram nuper audiens praesentiam, reclamavit se super fratre Adalberlo suffraganeo tuo, de quo jam Romae proclamaverat et libellum suae reclamationis ostenderat. Unde tibi et Viennensi arcbiepiscopo epistolas direximus, ut amborum querimonias ventilantes, quae canonum sunt instituta dijudicaretis...." For four centuries this supremacy was the cause of conflicts between the archbishops of Tarentaise and the Metropolitans of Vienne, who continued to claim Maurienne as a suffragan see.
In 904 or 908, Pope Sergius III purportedly wrote to Archbishop Alexander of Vienne, according to Cardinal Billiet, confirming that the diocese of Maurienne was a suffragan of the archbishop of Vienne.Billiet (1861), Mémoires... Maurienne, p. 328, quoting an unpublished document: "Utque largiter admodum Guntramnus ecclesiam maurianensem per concessum apostolicæ sedis cum omnibus pagis suis subjectam jure perenni sanctæ viennensi fecit ecclesiæ, ità unà cum ecclesia Secusina et ecclesiis de eadem valle ad eam pertinentibus cum omnibus pagis integram eam illi subjectam esse firmamus." The document, however, is one of the notorious "Vienne Forgeries."R.L. Poole (1916), p. 5. Wilhelm Grundlach, "Der Streit der Bisthümer Arles und Vienne um den Primatus Galliarum. (Zweiter Theil. )," , in: Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für Ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde 15 (Hannover: Hahn 1890), 9-102, esp. pp. 58, 71-77.; Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Epistolarum Tomus III. Merowingici et Karolini aevi, I (Berlin: Weidmann 1892), pp. 100-102, no. 23.
In an apostolic brief of 26 April 1123, addressed to Bishop Amedeus, Pope Callistus II affirmed that Maurienne was a suffragan of the metropolis of Vienne, as it had been when he himself was archbishop of Vienne (1088–1119); he also ruled that the city of Susa belonged to the diocese of Maurienne.Billiet (1861), Mémoires..., pp. 332-333. Billiet & Albrieux (1861) Chartes du diocèse de Maurienne: Documents recueillis, pp. 24-26, no. 14.
As its first see, a cathedral of John the Baptist was built in the 6th century, destroyed by invading Saracens in 943 and rebuilt in the 11th century.Saturnin Truchet, Saint-Jean de Maurienne au XVIe siècle, , pp. 25-42.
S. Jean-de-Maurienne was twice sacked by the Saracens, in 732 and 906.Saturnin Truchet, Saint-Jean de Maurienne au XVIe siècle, , p. 25. After the Saracens had been driven out, the temporal sovereignty of the Bishop of Maurienne appears to have been very extensive. By the beginning of the 11th century, according to Cardinal Billiet, the bishop was temporal ruler of 19 parishes on the left bank of the River Arc, the parish of S. Jean at Valmeinier, and two or three on the right bank.Billiet (1861), Mémoires... Maurienne, p. 320. But there is no proof that such sovereignty had been recognized since Gontran's time.
Imperial and royal influence At the death in 1032 of Rudolph III of Burgundy, the last ruler of the independent Kingdom of Burgundy, Bishop Thibaut was powerful enough to join a league against Holy Roman Emperor Conrad II of Franconia.Billiet (1861), Mémoires... Maurienne, p. 324. In 1033 the city of Maurienne was destroyed by imperial troops.Besson, p. 285. The bishopric lost part of its territory (the Susa valley) to the diocese of Turin, which was promised all.
In 1038, it is claimed, the Emperor Conrad suppressed the see of Maurienne altogether, giving over its title and possessions to the Bishops of Turin.Besson (1759), pp. 344-345, no. 6: "...sanctae Ecclesiae Taurinensi... donamus, Episcopatum scilicet Maurianensis civitatis, domos cum omnibus ædificiis suis; curtem videlicet... decimas quoque ipsius Episcopatûs, nec non Ecclesias eidem Episcopatui pertinentes, montes verò et valles, aquas, molendina, piscationes, foresta, sylvas, pascua; buscalia omnia in integrum, quidquid videtur esse de appenditiis supradictæ civitatis Moriennæ, donamus, concedimus atque delegamus jam dictæ Ecclesiæ S. Joannis-Baptista Taurinensis sedis...." This imperial decree was never executed though, due probably to the death of Conrad on 4 June 1039. At the death of Bishop Guido of Turin in 1044, it is stated, Bishop Thibaud was fully reinstated at Maurienne. The imperial diploma concerning the handing over of Maurienne to Turin, however, has been shown to be a forgery, and thus the entire story is called into question.H. Bresslau, Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Diplomatum Regum et Imperatorum Germaniae , Tomus IV: Conradi II Diplomata (Hannover: Hahn 1909), pp. 411-413, no. 291. If the diploma is a forgery, then the transfer of Maurienne to Turin did not take place, which explains why Conrad's decree did not go into effect, and why Maurienne continued independent after 1044. Harry Bresslau, Jahrbücher des deutschen Reichs unter Konrad II, , Volume 2 (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1884), pp. 475-476. R.L. Poole, p. 1: "The influence of the fabrications of the church of Vienne has not been finally extirpated; the forged charter of King Boso (887) is still appealed to as an authority; and the spuriousness of the diploma of the Emperor Conrad II (1038) has not yet everywhere been recognized." On the Boso charter being a forgery, see also: Réné Poupardin, Le royaume de Provence sous les Carolingiens (855-933?), , (Paris: É. Bouillon, 1901), p. 111 with note 2: "La donation, faite par Boson à l'église de Maurienne, du château d'Hermillon (Hist. de Fr., t. IX, p. 672) est un faux datant probablement du XIe siècle."
Maurienne in the 15th century Arvan In February 1440, a major flood from the Bonrieu river to the west, overran the entire city of Maurienne. In a 1447 report of Canon Hugo de Fabrica, the vicar-general, to Bishop Louis de La Palud, the Cardinal de Varambone, a great part of the houses of the city as well as the cathedral were ruined. The cathedral was so badly damaged that the upper church had to be completely rebuilt, and the lower church was filled with debris and unusable. A bridge over the flooding Arvan river was washed away, as well as another bridge over the Arc river, which was also in flood.Truchet, Saint-Jean de Maurienne au XVIe siècle pp. 27-28. Billiet & Albrieux, Chartes du diocèse de Maurienne pp. 258-260.
During much of the fifteenth century, the administration of the diocese was neglected. Saturnin Truchet notes that from 1441 to 1483 the bishops were non-residential, with the exception of the last five years of the life of Cardinal Louis de La Palud (1441–1451), the Cardinal de Varambon. The decima tax of the bishops was frequently not paid or was irregularly collected, due to the inattention and lack of supervision of the collectors.Truchet (1887), Saint-Jean de Maurienne au XVIe siècle, p. 247. Cardinal Guillaume d'Estouteville (1453–1483) was particularly remiss."Guillaume d'Estouteville n'y avait jamais résidé . Les droits de l'évêché avaient été fort mal défendus; ses revenus avaient même été réduits sous la main de l'Etat pendant la plus grande partie de l'épiscopat de Guillaume d'Estouteville."