The Gestes des évêques d'Auxerre, written about 875 by the canons Rainogala and Alagus, and continued later down to 1278, gives a list of bishops which, save for one detail, Louis Duchesne regards as accurate; but the chronological data of the Gestes seem to him to be very arbitrary for the period prior to the 7th century. No other church of France glories in a similar list of bishops honoured as saints; already in the Middle Ages this multiplicity of saints was remarkable.
To 1000
was the founder of the see; according to the legend, he was sent by pope Sixtus II and was martyred under Emperor Diocletian in 303 or 304. After him are mentioned without the possibility of certainly fixing their dates:
St. Marcellianus
Valerianus
St. Helladius
St. Amator, who had been ordained deacon and tonsured by St. Helladius and who thus affords the earliest example of ecclesiastical tonsure mentioned in the religious history of France
St. Germain d'Auxerre, to whom the abbey in Auxerre is dedicated
St. Allodius
St. Fratemus
St. Censurius, to whom about 475 the priest Constantius sent the Life of St. Germain
St. Heribaldus, first chaplain of Louis the Pious, and several times given ambassadorial charges
St. Abbo
Blessed Christian
Wibaldus
Herifridus
St. Géran
St. Betto
Guy
Heribert I
John
Hugh of Chalon
From 1000
Heribert II
Geoffrey of Champallemand
Robert of Nevers
Humbaud, drowned on the way to Jerusalem
St. Hugues de Montaigu, a friend of St. Bernard
Hugues de Mâcon, Abbot of Pontigny, often charged by Pope Eugenius III with adjusting differences and re-establishing order in monasteries
Alanus, author of a life of St. Bernard
Guillaume de Toucy, the first French bishop who went to Rome to acknowledge the authority of Pope Alexander III.
Among later bishops may be mentioned:
Hugues de Noyers, known as the "hammer of heretics" for the vigour with which he sought out in his diocese the sects of the Albigenses and the "Caputiés"
Guillaume de Seignelay, who took part in the war against the Albigenses and in 1230 became the bishop of Paris
Charles de Caylus, who made his diocese a centre of Jansenism and whose works in four volumes were condemned by Rome in 1754.
On November 29, 1801, the bishopric was suppressed. On October 7, 1817, it was restored, but in 1821 it was suppressed again. On June 3, 1823, it was united to the diocese of Sens, which in turn lost its Metropolitan status in 2006 and became part of the Ecclesiastical Province of the archbishopric of Dijon. The Cathedral of Auxerre, completed in 1178, contains numerous sculptures in the Byzantine style.
