Originally erected in the late 6th century as the Diocese of Cambrai, when the episcopal see after the death of the Frankish bishop Saint Vedast (Vaast) was relocated here from Arras. Though subordinate to the Archdiocese of Reims, Cambrai's jurisdiction was immense and included even Brussels and Antwerp.
In 1007, the Bishops gained an immediate secular territory when Emperor Henry II invested them with authority over the former County of Cambrésis; the Bishop of Cambrai thus became the overlord of the twelve "peers of Cambresis". The Prince-Bishopric of Cambrai became an Imperial State, located between the County of Hainaut and the border with Flanders and Vermandois in the Kingdom of France, while the citizens of Cambrai struggled to gain the autonomous status of an Imperial city. In 1093/94, the see of Arras was revived by the counts of Flanders which became an independent diocese in the kingdom of France. Pope Urban II approved as Cambrai had been unwilling to accept the Cluniac reforms and Arras offered the chance to create a new center of ecclesiastic reform.[1]
Cambrai from 1512 was part of the Imperial Lower Rhenish–Westphalian Circle and – like the Prince-Bishopric of Liège – was not incorporated into the Seventeen Provinces of the Burgundian Circle. Nevertheless, the creation in 1559 of the new metropolitan See of Mechelen and of eleven other dioceses in the Southern Netherlands was at the request of King Philip II of Spain, in order to facilitate the struggle against the Reformation. The change greatly restricted the limits of the Diocese of Cambrai, which, when thus dismembered, was made by way of compensation an archiepiscopal see with the dioceses of Saint Omer, Tournai and Namur as suffragans. The councils of Leptines, at which Saint Boniface played an important role, were held in what was then the part of the former Diocese of Cambrai in the Southern Netherlands.
Early Modern History
Under King Louis XIV the Bishopric of Cambrai finally became French after the Siege of Cambrai of 1677, confirmed in the Treaties of Nijmegen of 1678 and 1679. From 1790 Cambrai was part of the new Nord department. By the Napoleonic Concordat of 1801, Cambrai was again reduced to a simple bishopric, suffragan to Paris, and included remnants of the former dioceses of Tournai, Ypres, and Saint Omer. In 1817 both the pope and the king were eager for the erection of a see at Lille, but Bishop Louis de Belmas (1757–1841), a former constitutional bishop, vigorously opposed it. Immediately upon his death, in 1841, Cambrai once more became an archbishopric, with the diocese of Arras as suffragan.
List of bishops and archbishops
Notable people
The list of notable people associated with the Diocese of Cambrai is very extensive, and their biographies, although short, take up no less than four volumes of the work by Canon Destombes. Exclusive of those saints whose history would be of interest only in connection with the Belgian territory formerly belonging to the diocese, mention may be made of:
Blessed Beatrice of Lens, a recluse (thirteenth century).
The Jesuits Cortyl and du Béron, first apostles of the Pelew Islands, were martyred in 1701, and Chomé (1696–1767), who was prominent in the Missions of Paraguay and Argentina in the province of Misiones, also the OratorianGratry (1805–1872), philosopher and member of the French Academy, were natives of the Diocese of Cambrai. The English college of Douai, founded by William Allen in 1568, gave in subsequent centuries a certain number of apostles and martyrs to Catholic England. Since the promulgation of the law of 1875 on higher education, Lille has been the seat of important Catholic faculties.
A chronicle of the bishops of Cambrai was written in the 11th century. This Gesta episcoporum Cambracensium[2] was for some time attributed to Balderic, archbishop of Noyon, but it now seems that the author was an anonymous canon of Cambrai.[3] The work is of considerable importance for the history of the north of France during the 11th century, and was first published in 1615.[4]
Places
Abbeys
Under the old regime the Archdiocese of Cambrai contained forty-one abbeys, eighteen of which belonged to the Benedictines. Chief among them were:
the Abbey of St. Géry, founded near Cambrai about the year 600 in honour of St. Médard by St. Géry (580–619), deacon of the church of Treves, and who built a chapel on the bank of the Senne, on the site of the future city of Brussels;
the Abbey of Soignies, founded by the same St. Vincent, and having for abbots his son Landri and, in the eleventh century, St. Richard;
the Abbey of Maubeuge, founded in 661 by St. Aldegonde the sister of St. Wandru and a descendant of Clovis and the kings of Thuringia, among whose successors as abbesses were her niece, St. Aldetrude (d. 696) and another niece, St. Amalberte (d. 705), herself the mother of two saints, one of whom, St. Gudule, was a nun at Nivelles and became patroness of Brussels, and the other, St. Raynalde, a martyr;
the Abbey of Lobbes which, in the seventh and eighth centuries, had as abbots St. Landelin, St. Ursmar, St. Ermin, and St. Theodulph, and in the tenth century, Heriger, the ecclesiastical writer;
the Abbey of Crespin, founded in the seventh century by St. Landelin, who was succeeded by St. Adelin;
the Abbey of Maroilles (seventh century), which St. Humbert I, who died in 682, was abbot; the abbey was sacked and destroyed, 1791–1794, and used as a quarry for stones. It no longer exists.
the Abbey of Elno, founded in the seventh century by St. Amandus and endowed by Dagobert;
the Abbey of Marchiennes, founded by St. Rictrudes (end of the seventh century);
the Abbey of Liessies (eighth century) which, in the sixteenth century, had for abbot Louis de Blois, author of numerous spiritual writings;
the Abbey of St. Sauve de Valenciennes (ninth century), founded in honour of the itinerant bishop Sauve (Salvius), martyred in Hainaut at the end of the eighth century;
Notre-Dame de Grâce at Cambrai, containing a picture ascribed to St. Luke;
Notre-Dame des Dunes at Dunkerque, where the special object of interest is a statue which, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, was discovered near the castle of Dunkerque;
the feast associated with this, 8 September 1793, coincided with the raising of the siege of this city by the Duke of York;
Notre-Dame des Miracles at Bourbourg, made famous by a miracle wrought in 1383, an account of which was given by the chronicler Froissart, who was an eyewitness. A Benedictine abbey formerly extant here was converted by Marie Antoinette into a house of noble canonesses. Until a comparatively recent date, the great religious solemnities in the diocese often gave rise to ducasses, sumptuous processions in which giants, huge fishes, devils, and representations of heaven and hell figured prominently. Before the law of 1901 was enforced there were in the diocese Augustinians, English Benedictines, Jesuits, Marists, Dominicans, Franciscans, Lazarists, Redemptorists, Camillians, Brothers of St. Vincent de Paul, and Trappists; the last-named still remain. Numerous local congregations of women are engaged in the schools and among the sick, as, for instance: the Augustinian Nuns (founded in the sixth century, mother-house at Cambrai);
the Bernardines of Our Lady of Flines (founded in the thirteenth century);
the Daughters of the Infant Jesus (founded in 1824, mother-house at Lille);
^Vanderputten, Steven (2013). Reform, Conflict, and the Shaping of Corporate Identities: Collected Studies on Benedictine Monasticism, 1050 - 1150. LIT Verlag Münster. pp. 85–86. ISBN 978-3-643-90429-4. Retrieved 22 May 2024.
^Monumenta Germaniae historica inde ab anno Christi quingentesimo usque ad annum millesimum et quingentesimum... (in German and Latin). Vol. Scriptores: VII. Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Aulici Hahniani. 1846. pp. 393–525.
^Robert M. Stein (2006). "Sacred Authority and Secular Power: The Historical Argument of the Gesta Episcoporum Cameracensis [sic]," in: Lawrence Besserman, ed. (2006). Sacred and Secular in Medieval and Early Modern Cultures: New Essays. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 149–166. ISBN 978-1-4039-7727-4., and especially p. 217 n. 12.
Gams, Pius Bonifatius (1873). Series episcoporum Ecclesiae catholicae: quotquot innotuerunt a beato Petro apostolo. Ratisbon: Typis et Sumptibus Georgii Josephi Manz. p. 526–528. (Use with caution; obsolete)
Eubel, Conradus, ed. (1913). Hierarchia catholica, Tomus 1 (second ed.). Münster: Libreria Regensbergiana. p. 160. (in Latin)
Eubel, Conradus (ed.); Gulik, Guilelmus (1923). Hierarchia catholica, Tomus 3 (second ed.). Münster: Libreria Regensbergiana. {{cite book}}: |first1= has generic name (help) p. 100.
Gauchat, Patritius (Patrice) (1935). Hierarchia catholica IV (1592–1667). Münster: Libraria Regensbergiana. Retrieved 6 July 2016. pp. 145.
Ritzler, Remigius; Sefrin, Pirminus (1952). Hierarchia catholica medii et recentis aevi V (1667–1730). Patavii: Messagero di S. Antonio. Retrieved 6 July 2016. p. 139.
Ritzler, Remigius; Sefrin, Pirminus (1958). Hierarchia catholica medii et recentis aevi VI (1730–1799). Patavii: Messagero di S. Antonio. Retrieved 6 July 2016. p. 143.
Studies
Aubry, Martine, ed. (1996). Fénelon, évêque et pasteur en son temps, 1695–1715. Actes du colloque, Cambrai, 15–16 septembre 1995 (in French). Villeneuve d'Ascq: Centre d'histoire de la région du Nord et de l'Europe du Nord-Ouest, Université Charles de Gaulle-Lille 3. ISBN 978-2-905637-29-1.
Destombes, Cyrille Jean (1890). Histoire de l'église de Cambrai (in French). Vol. Tome I (to 1093). Lille: Desclée.
Destombes, Cyrille Jean (1890). Histoire de l'église de Cambrai (in French). Vol. Tome II (1093–1561). Lille: Desclée.
Destombes, Cyrille Jean (1891). Histoire de l'église de Cambrai (in French) (Tome III (1562–1802) ed.). Lille: Desclée.
Fisquet, Honore (1864). La France pontificale (Gallia Christiana): Cambrai (in French). Paris: Etienne Repos.
Glay, André-Joseph-Ghislain (1849). Cameracum christianum, ou histoire ecclésiastique du Diocèse de Cambrai (in French). Lille: Lefort.
Maillard-Luypaert, Monique (2001). Papauté, clercs et laïcs: le diocèse de Cambrai à l'épreuve du grand schisme d'occident (1378–1417) (in French). Bruxelles: Publications Fac. St Louis. ISBN 978-2-8028-0142-9.
Pierrard, Pierre (1978). Les Diocèses de Cambrai et de Lille (in French). Paris: Beauchesne. ISBN 9782701001760.
Roger, Paul (2003). Histoire des cathédrales, abbayes, châteaux-forts et villes de la Picardie et de l'Artois (in French). Bouhet: Découvrance. ISBN 978-2-84265-206-7.
Rouche, Michel (1982). Cambrai (in French). Lille: Presses universitaires de Lille. ISBN 9782859392017.
Sainte-Marthe (OSB), Denis de (1725). Gallia Christiana, In Provincias Ecclesiasticas Distributa; (in Latin). Vol. Tomus tertius. Paris: Ex Typographia Regia.
Société bibliographique (France) (1907). L'épiscopat français depuis le Concordat jusqu'à la Séparation (1802–1905). Paris: Librairie des Saints-Pères.
Acknowledgment
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Archdiocese of Cambrai". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
External links
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(in French) Centre national des Archives de l'Église de France, L'Épiscopat francais depuis 1919 Archived 10 May 2017 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved: 2016-12-24.