[6] Scholars have suggested that more than one figure came to melt into the tale of St. Evasius, thus making it extremely difficult to use the existing material as an historical source.
Bishop Audax (904-926) obtained the confirmation of the liberties of the Church of Asti from King Berengarius, and was a friend of Rudolph of Burgundy.
Galeozzo Visconti gave Asti to Louis of Valois, Duke of Orleans, son of King Charles V of France.
During the French occupation, between 1802 and 1805, Piedmont was annexed to metropolitan France and divided into six departments: Ivrea or Doire (Dora), Marengo, Po or Eridan, Sofia, Stura, and Tanaro.
As in metropolitan France, the government program also included reducing the number of bishoprics and making them conform as far as possible with the civil administration's "departments".
In accordance with the Concordat of 1801, and at the demand of the First Consul N. Bonaparte, Pope Pius VII was compelled to issue the bull Gravissimis causis (1 June 1803),[15] in which the number of dioceses in Piedmont was reduced from seventeen to eight: Turin, Vercelli, Ivrea, Acqui, Asti, Mondovi, Alessandria and Saluzzo.
The details of the new geographical divisions were left in the hands of Cardinal Giovanni Battista Caprara, the Papal Legate in Paris.
With the end of the French Empire, Dejean was expelled from Asti, which he had been holding illegitimately; he was sent to Ivrea, where he remained for a year before being repatriated to France, where he died in 1820.
The confused situation of the dioceses in Piedmont was addressed by Pope Pius VII in his bull Beati Petri (17 July 1817),[19] as far as the redrawing of diocesan boundaries was concerned.
Pope Pius VII had him relegated to a monastery, and Faà never took possession of his diocese, as he records in his own memorial inscription in the Gesù in Rome.
[28] Bishop Hilduinus had been present at the election of the Emperor Charles the Bald as King of Italy in 876, and had consented to the regulations enacted at the time.
One of them declared that bishops should provide next to their cathedral an enclosed space (claustrum) in which they and their clergy should serve God according to a Canonical Rule.
[30] On 25 July 1169, the Canons themselves obtained a papal bull from Pope Alexander II, taking their corporation and its property under the protection of the Holy See.
[31] One of the celebrated members of the Chapter was the Archpriest Uberto de Cocconato, who became a Cardinal in 1261 and participated in four papal elections and the Second Council of Lyon (1274).
[38] The Council of Trent in its 23rd Session, meeting on 15 July 1563, issued a decree whose 18th chapter required that every diocese have a seminary for the training of clergy.
Initial funding came from a 10% tax on all benefices in the diocese (cancelled in 1588), but eventually an endowment was created by attaching fourteen churches to the seminary to provide incomes for the clerics.
Bishop Innocenzo Milliavacca (1693–1714), at the diocesan synod of November 1695, issued a set of statutes for the seminary and undertook repairs, and in 1699 the building was rededicated.
[40] A list of the 107 parishes of the diocese, arranged by Vicariate as they were in 1894, was printed by Getano Bosio in Storia della Chiesa d'Asti.