Gallia Christiana

The Gallia Christiana, a type of work of which there have been several editions, is a documentary catalogue or list, with brief historical notices, of all the Catholic dioceses and abbeys of France from the earliest times, also of their occupants.

On 13 September 1656, the Sainte-Marthe brothers were presented to the assembly of the French Clergy, who accepted the dedication of the work on condition that a passage suspected of Jansenism be suppressed.

As early as 1660, the Jesuit Jean Colomb published at Lyons the Noctes Blancalandanæ, which contains certain additions to the work of the Sammarthani, as the brothers and their successors are often called.

Michel Toussaint Chrétien Duplessis [fr] united his efforts with Hodin and Brice, and the ninth and tenth volumes, both on the province of Reims, appeared in 1751.

Barthélemy Hauréau published (in 1856, 1860 and 1865), for the provinces of Tours, Besançon and Vienne, respectively, and according to the Benedictine method, the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth volumes of the Gallia Christiana.

The province of Utrecht alone has no place in this great collection, but this defect has been remedied in part by the Bullarium Trajectense, edited by Gisbert Brom, and extending from the earliest times to 1378 (The Hague, 1891–96).

In 1774, Hugues Du Tems [fr], vicar-general of Bordeaux, undertook an abridgement of the Gallia under the title Le clergé de France.

Albanès, who was one of the first scholars to search the Lateran and Vatican libraries, in his efforts to determine the initial years of some episcopal reigns, found occasionally either the acts of election or the Bulls of provision.

Through the use of his notes and the efforts of Ulysse Chevalier three addition volumes of this Gallia Christiana (novissima), treating Arles, Aix, and Marseilles, appeared at Montbéliard.