The ancient residential diocese of Orange in the Comtat Venaissin in Provence, a fief belonging to the papacy, was suppressed by the French government during the French Revolution. It was revived in 2009 as a titular see of the Catholic Church.
The city now called Orange in southern France was called Arausio in Roman times. It had been founded as a retirement colony for veterans of the Roman Army who had served under Augustus during his campaigns against Marc Antony. It became the seat of a bishop very probably towards the end of the 3rd century: at the Synod of Arles in 314, its bishop was represented by a priest named Faustinus. The first bishop of Arausio whose name is given in extant documents was Constantius, who took part in the Council of Aquileia, 381.[1] From the early 5th century, the see was a suffragan of the metropolitan seeofArles.
In 1516 Francis I of France ordered the union of the principality of Orange and the Dauphiné, the accomplishment of which was ordered by the Parliament of Grenoble in March 1517. This union made the Bishop of Orange subject as far as his temporal rights were concerned to the king of France. On 8 August 1520, King Francis granted Bishop Guillaume Pélissier an extra six months to make his submission to the Chambre des comptes of the Dauphiné.[5]
In accordance with the Concordat of 1801, Pope Pius VII attached the territory of the diocese to the archdiocese of Avignon by the papal bullQui Christi Domini of 29 November 1801. In 1817, after the fall of the Emperor Bonaparte and the return of the Bourbon monarchy, it was planned to restore the residential status of the bishopric in accordance with a new concordat, but the French parliament refused to ratify the concordat.
The ancient see of Arausio, therefore, is no longer a residential bishopric. In January 2009 Pope Benedict XVI revived the title for use as a titular see,[6] for auxiliary bishops of other dioceses and for curial bureaucrats to whom episcopal status is granted.[7] The title currently (since 27 January 2012) belongs to Archbishop Julio Murat, Apostolic Nuncio to Cameroon and to Equatorial Guinea since 2018.[8]
^Only two bishops from Gaul were brave enough to participate: Constantius of Orange and Proculus of Marseille: J. D. Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio III editio novissima (Florence 1759), pp. 599-601; 615.
^The invented names are as follows:
Saint Eutropius 69 AD; Saint Ebrantius, Saint Evran; Alixit; Auspicius; Thior; Dedonus; Saint Lucius (martyred in 261).
^Constantius was at the council of Aquileia in 381, and the council of Milan in 390: Duchesne, p. 365. Duchesne recognizes neither Aristonus nor Eradius.
^On 15 October 1040 he was present at the consecration of the church of Saint Victor in Marseille by Pope Benedict IX. In 1056 he was present at a synod of bishops that met at St. Egidius in Languedoc (Saint-Gilles). Bastet, p. 98.
^Bastet, pp. 98-100. In 1064 he received a letter from Pope Alexander II: P. Jaffe, Regesta pontificum romanorum I editio altera (Leizig 1885), p. 574, no. 4551; cf. no. 4710.
^For the first eight years of his tenure there were two bishops of Orange, one elected by the Chapter of the Cathedral, with the consent of the Prince of Orange (Pélissier), and the other appointed by Pope Julius II (Jean Lefranc). After the Concordat of Bologna (1516) and the incorporation of Orange into the Dauphiné, Leo X confirmed Guillaume Pélissier. Bastet, p. 191. A. de Pontbriant (1891). Histoire de la Principauté d'Orange (in French). Avignon: Seguin Frères. pp. 299–300.
France
