The diocese was already in existence in 314, since Genialis, a deacon of the Church of Gabalum (Gévaudan), was present at the Council of Arles in that year.

[2] The notion that a Saint Severianus was the first apostle of the Gevaudan, or that Privatus held the same honor, and that the whole country was converted to Christianity in one stroke, has long been exploded, by a demonstration that the legends are based on representations made to Pope Urban V in the 14th century to obtain indulgences.

[4] Before the French Revolution, the Cathedral Chapter consisted of a Praepositus (Provost), the Archdeacon and the Precentor (the dignities, dignités) and fifteen canons.

Martial, he passed through the territory of the Gabali (Gévaudan) of which Mende is the capital, and appointed as its first bishop, St. Severian his disciple, about the beginning of the first century.

The first bishop known to history is Saint Privatus, who according to Gregory of Tours, died in a grotto of Mount Mimmat, a victim of the ill treatment he suffered at the time of the invasion of the Alamanni under their King Chrocus.

Louis Duchesne, however, places the invasion of Chrocus and the death of St. Privatus at the beginning of the reign of Constantine, c. 312, perhaps before the Council of Arles.

[7] Other bishops of the Gabali, who doubtless resided at Javoulx, near Mende, were: Hilarius, present at the Council of Auvergne (Clermont) in 535,[8] and founder of the monastery of Sainte-Enimie, and whose personality has been wrongly described in certain traditions concerning Saint Illier [clarification needed]; and St. Frézal of Canourgue (ninth century), assassinated, it is said, under Louis le Débonnaire.

Under Bishop Aldebert de Tournel (1151–1186), Pope Alexander III passed some days at Mende in the last two weeks of July 1162.

[18] Elected pope in 1362 under the name of Urban V, he administered the Diocese of Mende himself from 1368 to 1370, since it had been left vacant by the transfer of his nephew to the See of Avignon.

On 21 April 1504 the Canons held a chapter meeting in an open field along the Lot River in order to avoid the plague.

The adventurer Mathieu Merle,[22] a native of Uzès and leader of the Huguenots in Gévaudan from 1573 to 1581, led into the region bands of Protestants raised from among vagabonds in Périgord, Querci, and the Haut-Rouergue.

[24] The Diocese of Mende was one of the regions where the insurrection of the Huguenot Camisards, peasants and rural craftsmen of the Cévennes, broke out at the beginning of the eighteenth century and continued c. 1702 to 1710.

[26] Cardinal Dominique de la Rochefoucauld, Archbishop of Rouen, who presided in 1789 over the last assembly of the clergy of France, was born in 1712 at Saint Chély d'Apcher, in the diocese.

The chemist Jean-Antoine Chaptal (1756–1832), who attended the Collège de Mende and then Riez, was one of the last of those who profited by the scholarships founded by Urban V for twelve young students at Montpellier.

Nogaret resigned his episcopal and priestly functions, due to age (he said), on 11 January 1794, during the Reign of Reason, and retired to a house in Canourgue.

The diocese of Mende was revived by Pope Pius VII in his bull Qui Christi Domini of 29 November 1801.

On 16 September 1801 he gave his resignation, as requested, and on 17 March 1802 his name was removed from the list of émigrés, and he was appointed Bishop of Mende.

He immediately set to work to bring peace and order to the diocese of Mende, but, when the Constitutional Bishop Nogaret died on 30 March 1804 without having made a retraction or submission to the authority of Rome, Chabot's Vicar General advised against allowing the priests of the diocese to participate in Nogaret's funeral.

An uproar from Nogaret's friends arose, and the Minister of Cults in Paris, Chaptal, demanded the resignation of the Vicar General.

[37] Bishop Jean-Antoine-Marie Foulquier (1849–1873) held three diocesan synods, in 1853–1855, to prepare the diocese of Mende to adopt the Roman rite in its liturgy.

This meant, among other things, the end of financial support on the part of the French government and all of its subdivisions of any religious group.

On 11 February 1906, Pope Pius X responded with the encyclical Vehementer Nos, which condemned the Law of 1905 as a unilateral abrogation of the Concordat.

[40] In the period between the signing of the Concordat of 1801 and the implementation of the Law of the Separation of the State and the Churches, there operated in the diocese of Mende five congregations of men.

There were also the Fathers of the Sacred-Hearts (or of the Adoration), an order based in Paris; the Marists at Langogne; the Brothers of the Christian Schools at Mende, Meyrueis, Langogne, Malzieu, Canourge and Saint-Germain-du-Teil; and the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, at Maruéjols, Saint-Chely-d'Apcher, Chanac, Ispagnac, Saint-Alban, Florac, Nasbinals and Serverette.

In 1905 at the end of the régime of the Concordat, the diocese had 128,866 inhabitants, 26 parishes, 191 succursal[clarification needed] churches,[45] and 135 vicarages, supported by the state.