Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne
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Commune of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne |
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| Location | |
| Coordinates | 45° 16' 39" N 6° 20' 45" E |
| Administration | |
|---|---|
| Country | France |
| Region | Rhône-Alpes |
| Department | Savoie (sous-préfecture) |
| Arrondissement | Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne |
| Canton | Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne |
| Intercommunality | Communauté de communes Cœur de Maurienne |
| Mayor | Roland Merloz (2001-2008) |
| Statistics | |
| Altitude | 489 m–1,200 m (avg. 566 m) |
| Land area¹ | 11.51 km² |
| Population² (1999) |
8,902 |
| - Density | 773/km² (1999) |
| Miscellaneous | |
| INSEE/Postal code | 73248/ 73300 |
| 1 French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries. | |
| 2 Population sans doubles comptes: single count of residents of multiple communes (e.g. students and military personnel). | |
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Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne is a commune in the Maurienne, the valley of the River Arc. It is the capital and name of a canton and an arrondissement (formerly in Haute Savoie) of the present Savoie département, in the southeastern Rhône-Alpes region of France. It was also an episcopal see of Savoy during the Ancien Régime and again from 1825 to 1966. Its original name was simply Maurienne, or Moriana in Latin.
History and Diocese of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne
The oldest possessions of the Counts of Savoy were the countships of Maurienne, Savoy proper (the district between Arc, Isère, and the middle course of the Rhone), and Belley, with Bugey as its chief town.
Saint Gregory of Tours's "De Gloria Martyrum" 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, a native of Valloires, had brought to it from the East a finger of St. John the Baptist. Saint Guntram, King of Burgundy, took from the Lombards in 574 the valleys of Maurienne and Suse (Susa Valley, or Val de Suse), and in 576 founded near the shrine a bishopric, detached from Turin, as suffragan of Vienne. Its first bishop was Felmasius. In 599 Gregory the Great made futile attempts to make Queen Brunehaut listen to the protests of the Bishop of Turin against this foundation.
Pope Leo III made Darantasia a metropolis with three suffragans, Aosta, Sion (=Sitten), and Maurienne, but maintained the primacy of Vienne. A letter written by John VIII in 878 formally designated the Bishop of Maurienne as suffragan of Tarentaise, but for four centuries this primacy was the cause of conflicts between the archbishops of Tarentaise and the metropolitans of Vienna who continued to claim Maurienne as a suffragan see; subsequently under Callistus II (1120) Maurienne was again attached to the metropolis of Vienne.
Local tradition claims as early bishops of Maurienne: St. Emilianus, martyred by the Saracens (736 or 738); St. Odilard, slain by the Saracens (916) together with St. Benedict, Archbishop of Embrun.
After the Saracens had been driven out, the temporal sovereignty of the Bishop of Maurienne appears to have been very extensive, but there is no proof that such sovereignty had been recognized since Gontran's time. At the death of Rudolph III, Bishop Thibaut was powerful enough to join a league against Conrad II of Franconia. The emperor suppressed the See of Maurienne, and gave over its title and possessions to the Bishop of Turin (1038); but this imperial decree was never executed.
Among the later bishops of Maurienne were: St. Ayroldus (1132-46), once a monk of the
Charterhouse of
Among the saints specially honoured in, or connected with, the diocese are: Saint Aper (Saint Avre), a priest who founded a refuge for pilgrims and the poor in the Village of St. Avre (seventh century); Blessed Thomas, b. at Maurienne, d. in 720, famous for rebuilding the Abbey of Farfa, of which the third abbot, Lucerius, was also a native of Maurienne; St. Marinus, monk of Chandor, martyred by the Saracens (eighth century); St. Landry, pastor of Lanslevillard (eleventh century), drowned in the Arc during one of his apostolic journeys; St. Bénézet, or Benoit de Pont (1165-84), b. at Hermillon in the diocese, and founder of the guild of Fratres Pontifices of Avignon; Blessed Cabert or Gabert, disciple of St. Dominic, who preached the Gospel for twenty years in the vicinity of AiguebelIe (thirteenth century).
The chief shrines of the diocese were: Notre Dame de Charmaise, near Modane, Notre Dame de Bonne Nouvelle, near St-Jean-de-Maurienne, which dates from the sixteenth century, and Notre Dame de Beaurevers at Montaimon, dating from the seventeenth century.
The Sisters of St. Joseph, a nursing and teaching order, with mother-house at St-Jean-de-Maurienne, are a branch of the Congregation of St. Joseph at Puy. At the end of the nineteenth century, they were in charge of 8 day nurseries and 2 hospitals. In Algeria, the East Indies, and the Argentine houses were fouded, controlled by the motherhouse at Maurienne. In 1905 (end of the Concordat), the Diocese of St-Jean-de-Maurienne had 61,466 inhabitants, 10 parishes, 76 auxiliary parishes, and 28 curacies, remunerated by the State.
The Duchy of Savoy, which had been a French-speaking province under the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Piedmont, was invaded by Revolutionary France and later permanently annexed. The diocese of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne was formally suppressed in 1801 by the Holy See in accordance with the Napoleonic Concordat of 1801.
In 1825, some years after the territory had been passed back to Piedmont by the Congress of Vienna, Maurienne was restored as a diocese along with Tarentaise, with territory taken from Chambéry. By plebiscite of 22 April 1860, Savoy passed to French sovereignty again.
In 1966 the two dioceses were once more amalgamated with the metropolitan see of Chambéry, to which their titles were at the same time united.
Twin towns
Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne is twinned with:
Miscellaneous
- There is a monument to the Duke of Maurienne in the cathedral of Sassari on Sardinia.
- Thomas de Maurienne was the principal founder of the abbey of Farfa
- Grifo died in this town
See also
Sources and references
- This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913. [1] & passim
- Besson, Memoires pour l'histoire ecclésiastique des diocèses de Genève, Tantaise, Aoste et Maurienne, Nancy, 1739; new ed. Moutiers, 1871
External links
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