Ancient Diocese of Sarlat

The French Catholic diocese of Sarlat existed from 1317 to 1801. It was suppressed by the Concordat of 1801. Its territory passed to the diocese of Angoulême.

The seat of the Bishop of Sarlat was at the Cathedral of Saint-Sacerdos, in the town of Sarlat in the Dordogne.

The Abbey of Saint-Sauveur of Sarlat, which was later placed under the patronage of St. Sacerdos Bishop of Limoges (670—c. 720), when his relics were brought there, seems to have existed before the reigns of Pepin the Short and Charlemagne. These two rulers, who came there on pilgrimage, were called its "founders" in a Bull of Pope Eugene III (1153), no doubt as a compliment rather than a declaration of historical fact. Charlemagne gave the monastery a fragment of the True Cross. In 886, the Emperor Charles the Fat, great-grandson of Charlemagne, restored the church of Sarlat and presented it with more relics.

About 936 Odo, Abbot of Cluny, was sent to reform the abbey. The abbey was visited in the spring of 1147 by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who had been sent to Périgueux on a mission of preaching against heresy by Pope Eugene III.

In 1154, with the accession of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, duchess of Guyenne and countess of Poitou, Sarlat came under the dominion of the House of Plantagenet, though in the 14th century they were again subjects of the French crown.

The abbey was made an episcopal see by Pope John XXII in a bull dated 13 August 1317. The last Abbot was Armandus de Sancto Leonardo (1312-1317). The first Bishop of Sarlat, Raymond de Rocquecorgne, O.S.B, was confirmed by the Pope in Consistory on 2 July 1318. In 1324 he was transferred to the diocese of Saint-Pons-de-Thomières.

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