Les diocèses méridionaux d’après le Provinciale Romanum (XIIe-XVe siècle)

Abstract

Southern Dioceses According to the Provinciale Romanum (12th-15th Centuries). The Roman Provinciale, an official catalogue of bishoprics of latin Christendom used by scribes of the central Church government, strongly reflects the papal claims to universalism. Dedicated to the dioceses of southern France, this paper stresses the great influence of the Notitia Galliarum (c. 400) on the Provinciale composed in the 12th century. Drawn up during the 1190’s, the new version of the text transmitted by the Liber Provincialis and the Liber censuum, and then copied in chronicles, established the division of the southern dioceses between France, Gascony and Burgundy, three territorial units to be joined, in the 14th century, by Provence, Aquitaine and Gothia. Under the reign of John XXII, the creation of the metropolis of Toulouse and of 16 episcopal sees in the provinces of Toulouse, Bourges, Bordeaux and Narbonne (1317-1318) gave rise to changes which concerned the chancery book, the Liber censuum and the Libri taxarum. Surviving evidence of the papal representation of the orbis christianus at odds with the tradition of late antiquity, the Provinciale of the Roman Church was exploited, since the 13th century, by the clerics of the french royal chancery who strove to define the realm as a space of sovereignty.