Roman Catholic Diocese of Nice


The Roman Catholic Diocese of Nice is a diocese of the Latin Church of the Roman Catholic Church in France. The diocese comprises the Départment of Alpes-Maritimes. The diocese is a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Marseille.

History

According to local tradition, Nice was evangelized by St. Barnabas, who had been sent by St. Paul, or else by St. Mary Magdalen, St. Martha, and St. Lazarus.
St. Bassus, a martyr under Emperor Decius, is believed by some to have been the first Bishop of Nice. The See of Nice in Roman Gallia Narbonensis is said to have existed in 314, since the bishop sent delegates to the Council of Arles in that year. Louis Duchesne, however, pointed out that Nice was not a city and did not have its own municipal administration. It was governed from the city of Marseille by a civic functionary called an episcopus. In 314, this situation was still in effect, and the delegates sent to the Council of Nicaea came from the portus of Nice, not the civitas; the delegates represented the chief civic administrator, the episcopus from Marseille. In Duchesne's view, there was not yet an ecclesiastical leader in Nice called an episcopus.
The first bishop known by name is Amantius, who attended the Council of Aquileia in 381.
Cimiez, a civitas near Nice, but in the province of Alpes Maritimae and indeed its largest town, is claimed to have had an episcopal see around 260. The episcopal seat was held in the middle of the fifth century by St. Valerianus. A papal rescript of Pope Leo I, issued after AD 450, joined the two dioceses into one. This union was undone by Pope Hilarius, but in 465 he reunited the sees of Nice and Cimiez at the demand of Bishop Ingenuus of Embrun, the Metropolitan of the Alpes Maritimae, who was quarreling with Bishop Auxanius. This united see was a suffragan of ancient Diocese of Embrun up to the French Revolution.
When the Emperor Charlemagne happened to visit Cimiez, he caused Bishop Syagrius of Nice to build on its ruins the monastery of Saint Pontius of Cimiez. This claim presents major difficulties. There is only one source that mentions Syagrius, his Life written in the early seventeenth century by the hagiographer Vincentius Barrali Salerna. The Life states that Syagrius was Charlemagne's own nepos, the Count of Brie; he found a place where the body of Saint Pons was being venerated, and got Charlemagne to build a monastery thanks to his incessant requests; Pope Adrian, in 777, which was his fifth year as pope, called Syagrius from his monastery and made him the first Bishop of Nice, an office he held for ten years; Syagrius died on 23 May 787; he was buried in the abbey where he had been the first Abbot. The problems begin with the brother of Charlemagne, Carloman, who was born in 751, making it most unlikely that his son Syagrius was made a bishop only twenty-six years later. Charlemagne's presence in Nice was motivated by a desire to convert pagans in the area, during which he defeated the King of Chimaera ; but there were no kings in the area, and most of the local people were Christians and had been Christians for centuries. The story claims that Charlemagne named Syagrius and his monastery Count of Cimiez, but neither counts nor counties yet existed. That Syagrius was bishop of Nice is highly dubious.
Bishops of Nice bore the title of Counts of Drap, since the donation of property situated at Drap made in 1073 by Pierre, Bishop of Vaison, a native of Nice, to Bishop Raymond I and his successors. In 1388 Nice fell under the political control of the Counts of Savoy, and Nice became the seat of a Seneschal. The Count had the right to nominate a new bishop.
On 29 March 1137 Innocent II issued a bull, Officii nostri, confirming the privileges of the Church of Nice, including the castrum quod vocatur Drapum, for Bishop Petrus.
On 19 January 1183, Pope Lucius III wrote to Bishop Petrus, complaining about the degraded state of spiritual life in the monastery of S. Pons in Nice, and authorizing the bishop to take measures to repair the situation. Despite an agreement between the bishop and the monks in 1184, they remained unrepentant, and were excommunicated. They complained to Pope Lucius, who sent another letter on 31 March 1185, rebuking them and supporting the bishop.
In 1207 another scandal struck the diocese of Nice. Bishop Joannes was embroiled in another conflict with some religious of the diocese, and had concluded that certain documents presented by the religious were forged. They complained to Pope Innocent III, who issued a mandate to the Bishop of Glandèves and the Bishop of Sénez, to investigate the documents in question and the truth of the contents, so that the Pope would know how to proceed. Before that could happen, Bishop Joannes inspected the documents again and concluded that he had been wrong in the first place; he immediately approached Fr. Pietro di Castronovo, the Apostolic legate, and explained why he had made his mistake. But it was still a false charge of forgery. Canon law on falsifications, however, was clear and precise, and the bishop went directly to the Pope, who suspended him from office and appointed a committee, Bishop Hugh of Riez and the Abbot of Boscaud, to bring the bishop to purge himself of his offense, and then restore him to office.
In 1691 Nice was seized by Louis XIV, though it was restored to Savoy in 1696. It was seized again by the Duke of Berwick in 1705, and restored to Savoy by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. It was attacked by the French again in 1744, and in 1792; it was united to France in 1793 and became the capital of the new Department of Alpes Maritimes.
The diocese was re-established by the Concordat of 1801 as suffragan of Aix. While the Countship of Nice from 1818 to 1860 was part of the Sardinian States, the see became a suffragan of Genoa. When Nice was annexed to France in 1860, certain parts which remained Italian were cut off from it and added to the Diocese of Ventimiglia. In 1862 the diocese was again a suffragan of Aix. The arrondissement of Grasse was separated from the Diocese of Fréjus in 1886, and given to Nice, which thereafter united the three former dioceses of Nice, diocese of Grasse and diocese of Vence.

Bishops of Nice

to 1000