The diocese was suffragan to the Archdiocese of Lyon under the Ancien Régime, and the Bishop of Autun held the post of Vicar of the Archbishop.

Christian teaching reached Autun at a very early period, as is known from a funeral inscription, in classical Greek, of a certain Pectorius which dates from the 3rd century.

[5] According to this legendary cycle, which dates from about the first half of the 6th century, it was not then believed at Autun that the city was an episcopal see in the time of St. Irenaeus (c. 140–211).

The Abbey of St. Martin was founded in 602[18] by Queen Brunhilda of Austrasia, and it was there that her remains were interred – the deposed monarch having been repeatedly racked for three days, torn apart by four horses, and then burnt on a pyre.

The 19th century Benedictine Cardinal Pitra says in his "Histoire de St. Léger"[22] that this canon may have been directed against Monothelitism, then seeking entrance into the Gallican churches, but already condemned in the Athenasian Creed.

[24] In 1094 Hugues, by then Archbishop of Lyon, and thirty-three other bishops meeting at Autun renewed the excommunication of Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, the Antipope Guibert and their partisans, and also that of King Philip of France, guilty of bigamy.

Simony, ecclesiastical disorders, and monastic usurpations provoked other decrees, only one of which is extant, forbidding the monks to induce the canons to enter monasteries.

[26] In the 1150s a quarrel over jurisdiction and independence broke out between Bishop Henri de Bourgogne of Autun and Abbot Reginald of Flavigny.

Following the beginning of the Great Schism in 1378, the bishops of Autun were appointed, as they had been throughout the fourteenth century, by the Avignon pope, now Clement VII.

Its promoter was Sister Margaret Mary Alacoque, a cloistered nun who claimed to have visions between 1673 and 1675, in which Jesus personally taught her the devotion.

[30] Much later, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, the future diplomat, Foreign Minister, and Prince of Benevento, was Bishop of Autun from 1788 to 1791.

[33] But as to the Diocese of Autun of the Ancien Régime, that resignation required papal permission, and Pope Pius VI obliged by dismissing Talleyrand as a schismatic in a bull of 13 April 1791.

The ceremony took place in Paris at the Church of the Oratory, and Talleyrand was assisted by the titular bishops Miroudot du Bourg of Babylon and Gobel of Lyda.

[41] The diocese of Autun was without a bishop of any complexion until Napoleon came to power and decided that, for the sake of French unity and his own plans, peace had to be arranged with the Papacy.

[43] The office of Archdeacon of Mâcon continued to exist, but its holder now belonged to the diocese of Autun, and was made a Canon of the Cathedral of Saint-Lazare.

He was elected a member of the French Academy in 1882, and named a Cardinal by Pope Leo XIII in 1893 though the fact was not made public until 1895.

[47] On 15 December 1962, Pope John XXIII gave the Consistorial Congregation authority, with the consent of the Abbot Primate of the Benedictine Order, to grant the title of the defunct territorial Abbey of Cluny to the Bishop of Autun.