Gallia Christiana

The Gallia Christiana, a type of work of which there have been several editions, is a documentary catalogue or list, with brief historical notices, of all the Catholic dioceses and abbeys of France from the earliest times, also of their occupants.

In 1621 Jean Chenu, an avocat at the Parlement of Paris, published Archiepiscoporum et episcoporum Galliæ chronologica historia. Nearly a third of the bishops are missing, and the episcopal succession as given by Chenu was very incomplete. In 1626, Claude Robert, a priest of Langres, published with the approbation of Baronius, a Gallia Christiana. He entered a large number of churches outside of Gaul, and gave a short history of the metropolitan sees, cathedrals, and abbeys.

Two brothers de Sainte-Marthe, Scévole (1571–1650) and Louis (1571–1656), appointed royal historiographers of France in 1620, had assisted Chenu and Robert. At the assembly of the French Clergy in 1626, a number of prelates commissioned these brothers to compile a more definitive work. They died before the completion of their work, and it was issued in 1656 by the sons of Scévole de Sainte-Marthe, Pierre de Sainte-Marthe (1618–90), himself historiographer of France, Abel de Sainte-Marthe (1620–71), theologian, and later general of the Oratory, and Nicolas-Charles de Sainte-Marthe (1623–62), prior of Claunay. On 13 September 1656, the Sainte-Marthe brothers were presented to the assembly of the French Clergy, who accepted the dedication of the work on condition that a passage suspected of Jansenism be suppressed. The work formed four volumes in folio, the first for the archdioceses, the second and third for the dioceses, and the fourth for the abbeys, all in alphabetical order. It reproduced a large number of manuscripts. Defects and omissions, however, were obvious. The Sainte-Marthe brothers themselves announced in their preface the early appearance of a second edition corrected and enlarged.

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