Gallia Christiana

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Copy from the Lyon City Library

The Gallia Christiana ("Christian Gaul ") is a Latin encyclopedia in 16 volumes on the history of the Roman Catholic Church in France ; it was published in several editions between the 17th and 19th centuries. It contains a history of almost all French dioceses and abbeys , supplemented by biographical lists of the bishops and abbots . Since it ends “Gaul” on the Rhine, it also covers the areas on the left bank of the Rhine in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands.

The Samarthani

In 1621 Jean Chenu , lawyer in the Parlement of Paris, published the incomplete book Archiepiscoporum et episcoporum Galliæ chronologica historia ("Chronological history of the archbishops and bishops of Gaul"). Claude Robert, a priest from Langres , published a first Gallia Christiana in 1626 with the approval of Cardinal Cesare Baronio .

The brothers Scévole (1571-1650) and Louis de Sainte-Marthe (1571-1656) - in Latin: Samarthanus - who had been appointed royal historiographers in 1620, had supported both Chenu and Robert in their work. At the Assemblée du Clergé ( clergy meeting ) of 1626, the brothers were asked by some prelates to expand the work. Both died before publication, which was carried out in 1656 by Scévole's sons Pierre (1618–1690), himself a royal historiographer, Abel (1620–1671), theologian, and Nicolas-Charles (1623–1663) under the title Gallia Christiana, qua series omnia archiepiscoporum, episcoporum et abbatum Franciæ vicinarumque ditionum ab origine ecclesiarum ad nostra tempora per quattor tomos deducitur, et probatur ex antiquæ fidei manuscriptis Vaticani, regnum, principum tabulariis omnium Galliæium cathedral , all in which the archbish christian cathedral et abbatari and abbots of France and neighboring districts from the beginning of the churches to our time in four volumes and is documented from manuscripts of ancient credibility of the Vatican, the kings and princes and from the document collections of all cathedrals and abbeys of Gaul "): four volumes, of which the the first for the archbishopric, the second and third for the dioceses and the fourth for the monasteries. A corrected and expanded new edition was announced for this work, but it never appeared.

The Mauriners

In 1710, the Assemblée du Clergé offered the Mauritian Denis de Sainte-Marthe (1650–1725) 1,000 livres so that he could bring a revised edition of the Gallia Christiana to a close. The first volume appeared in 1715, the second in 1720 and the third in 1725. Since it was ensured that the work would be continued after the death of Denis de Saint-Marthe, two more volumes could appear (1728 and 1731) before the dispute over the papal bull Unigenitus Dei filius reached the authors: Dom Félix Hodin and Dom Etienne Brice were expelled and could only continue working in 1739. Volumes 6 to 13 appeared in the following years, and now it was the Revolution that prevented the work from being completed. Between 1856 and 1865 three more volumes were published by Jean-Barthélemy Hauréau , and only the last volume for the ecclesiastical province of Utrecht was not completed (this gap could be closed by Gisbert Broms Bullarium Trajectense 1891-1896 by at least 1378).

Later work

In 1774 Abbé Hugues du Temps, Vicar General of Bordeaux, published an excerpt from the Gallia Christiana under the title Le clergé de France , of which only four volumes appeared. Around 1867, the historian Honoré Fisquets (1818–1883) published La France pontificale (Gallia christiana)… a French-language church history in which he relied on the Gallia Christiana for the older times, but continued the description into modern times; 22 volumes of this work have appeared.

Finally, Canon Albanès planned a complete revision of the Gallia Christiana. He was one of the first researchers to visit the Vatican Apostolic Library in the hope of supplementing the previous authors' assumptions with documents, especially for the early days, but died in 1897 before the publication of the first volume. The evaluation of his notes by the canon Ulysse Chevalier then led to the publication of three volumes of a Gallia Christiana (novissima) on Arles, Aix and Marseille.

The individual volumes

The Gallia Christiana of the Samarthani:

The Gallia Christiana der Mauriner: The work is sorted alphabetically according to the church provinces :

Hauréaus subsequent volumes:

literature

  • Jean-François Dreux du Radier, Bibliothèque historique et critique du Poitou , Paris, 1754
  • Gallia Christiana , Volume IV, Foreword
  • Gallia Christiana (novissima) , Montbéliard, 1899
  • Longuemare, Une famille d'auteurs aux seizième, dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles; les Sainte-Marthe , Paris, 1902
  • Victor Fouque, Du "Gallia christiana" et de ses auteurs: étude bibliographique , Paris, 1857; Bibliothèque nationale de France , Gallica : online

Web links