Roman Catholic Diocese of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne

The French Roman Catholic diocese of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne (San Giovanni di Moriana in Italian) has since 1966 been effectively suppressed, formally united with the archdiocese of Chambéry.

Gregory of Tours's De Gloria Martyrum[2] 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,[3] a native of Valloires, had brought to it as sacred relic from the East a finger[4] of John the Baptist,[5] the same figure which touched Jesus Christ during his baptism.

[8] Guntram, King of Burgundy, took from the Lombards in 574 the valleys of Maurienne and Suse, and in 576 founded near the shrine a bishopric, detached from the then Diocese of Turin (in Piedmont, northern Italy), as suffragan of the Archdiocese of Vienne, also comprising the Briançonnais.

[10] In 599, Gregory the Great failed to make the Merovingian Queen Brunehaut oblige the protests of the Bishop of Turin against this foundation.

Leo III (795-816) made Darantasia (Tarantaise, Loire) a Metropolitan archbishopric with three suffragans, Aosta, Sitten, and Maurienne, but maintained the Ancient primatial status of Vienne.

The imperial diploma concerning the handing over of Maurienne to Turin, however, has been shown to be a forgery, and thus the entire story is called into question.

The decima tax of the bishops was frequently not paid or was irregularly collected, due to the inattention and lack of supervision of the collectors.

[28] Morel was a Referendary of Pope Innocent VIII, who, on 17 November 1487, ratified an agreement between the bishop and the commune of Maurienne with regard to the wine decima.

[30] In 1512, Bishop Louis de Gorrevod ordered the publication of an official liturgical book for the diocese of Maurienne, the Breviarium ad usum Maurianensis ecclesiae, based on that used by the cathedral Chapter.

Louis, Duke of Savoy, sent an embassy to Pope Nicholas V, indicating his wish that Turin be made a metropolitan archdiocese, and that new dioceses be created at Bourg en Bresse and Chambéry.

[35] In November 1515, Bishop de Gorrevod convened a synod of all the ecclesiastics in the new diocese of Bourg, and drew up a set of statutes, which were published in 1516.

[36] Gorrevod was named a cardinal by Pope Clement VII on 9 March 1530,[37] and on the same day his nephew, Jean Philibert de Challant, was appointed bishop of Bourg-en-Bresse.

[46] Pope Paul III transferred bishop-elect Girolamo Recanati Capodiferro from Nice to Maurienne on 30 July 1544, but there is no evidence that he was in Holy Orders or ever consecrated a bishop; he was named a cardinal on 19 December 1444, and appointed papal legate in the Romandiola on 26 August 1545, where he continued to serve under Pope Julius III, and Marcellus II, and Paul IV.

[48] On 23 August 1489, Bishop Etienne de Morel (1483–1499) solemnly invested Charles I, Duke of Savoy (1482–1490) as a canon of the cathedral of Maurienne.

[50] Before the appointment of Hercule Berzetti as bishop of Maurienne in 1658, Pope Alexander VII ordered Cardinal Antonio Barberini to provide a report on the state of the diocese and the suitability of the candidate.

The report stated that in civil affairs the diocese was subject to the Dukes of Savoy, and in ecclesiastical matters to the metropolitan of Vienne.

The operation of the hospital was placed in the hands of nine administrators, including a lawyer, a physician, a surgeon, and a pharmacist; there was a staff of 14, for 28 sick and 9 orphans.

In 1805, the administrators petitioned the Emperor Napoleon for assistance with their dilapidated building; he assigned them the former Major Seminary in Maurienne, which had been used as a military hospital by the French, and was in a bad sanitary condition.

In 1821, the priest of the city wrote about the state of the hospice to his friend, who was the spiritual director of the Soeurs de Saint-Joseph-de-Chambéry, who were not able to respond immediately.

[62] At the request of King Charles Felix of Sardinia and his ambassador at the Vatican, Giovanni Nicolao Ludovico Crosa, on 5 August 1825, with the papal bull "Ecclesias quae antiquitate", Pope Leo XII restored the Diocese of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne with territory consisting of 80 parishes removed from the diocese of Chambéry.

[63] Bishop Alexis Billiet was installed on 18 April 1826, and he immediately set to work to recover the diocese's rights and property, as well as to unify a clergy and people who had been thrown into confusion by the French occupation.

He began the process of canonically separating the house of the Sisters of S.-Joseph from their mother-house in Chambéry, which was approved by King Charles Felix on 18 April 1827.