Pope Gregory XI was head of the Catholic Church from 30 December 1370 to his death in March 1378. He was the seventh and last Avignon pope and the most recent French pope recognized by the modern Catholic Church. In 1377, Gregory XI returned the Papal court to Rome, ending nearly 70 years of papal residency in Avignon, France. His death shortly after was followed by the Western Schism involving two Avignon-based antipopes.
Jacques-Bénigne Lignel Bossuet was a French bishop and theologian, renowned for his sermons and other addresses. He has been considered by many to be one of the most brilliant orators of all time and a masterly French stylist.
Burgundy is a historical territory and former administrative region and province of east-central France. The province was once home to the Dukes of Burgundy from the early 11th until the late 15th century. The capital of Dijon was one of the great European centres of art and science, a place of tremendous wealth and power, and Western Monasticism. In early Modern Europe, Burgundy was a focal point of courtly culture that set the fashion for European royal houses and their court. The Duchy of Burgundy was a key in the transformation of the Middle Ages toward early modern Europe.
François Rude was a French sculptor, best known for the Departure of the Volunteers, also known as La Marseillaise on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. (1835–36). His work often expressed patriotic themes, as well as the transition from neo-classicism to romanticism.
The Antiphonary tonary missal of St. Benigne was written in the last years of the 10th century, when the Abbot William of Volpiano at St. Benignus of Dijon reformed the liturgy of several monasteries in Burgundy. The chant manuscript records mainly Western plainchant of the Roman-Frankish proper mass and part of the chant sung during the matins, but unlike the common form of the Gradual and of the Antiphonary, William organized his manuscript according to the chant genre, and these sections were subdivided into eight parts according to the octoechos. This disposition followed the order of a tonary, but William of Volpiano wrote not only the incipits of the classified chant, he wrote the complete chant text with the music in central French neumes which were still written in campo aperto, and added a second alphabetic notation of his own invention for the melodic structure of the codified chant.
Louis-Bernard Guyton, Baron de Morveau was a French chemist, politician, and aeronaut. He is credited with producing the first systematic method of chemical nomenclature.
Saint Benignus of Dijon was a martyr honored as the patron saint and first herald of Christianity of Dijon, Burgundy. His feast falls, with All Saints, on November 1; his name stands under this date in the Martyrology of St. Jerome.
Saint William of Volpiano was a Northern Italian monastic reformer, composer, and founding abbot of numerous abbeys in Burgundy, Italy and Normandy.
John of Fécamp, was an Italian-Norman Benedictine who was the most widely read of early medieval spiritual writers before the Imitation of Christ became popular, during a period called the Golden Age of Monasticism and of Scholasticism, and the height of the Papacy. Writing under the name of famous writers, he wrote the very popular book Meditations of St. Augustine and the book Meditations. He was born near Ravenna and died at Fécamp Normandy, as the Abbot of the Abbey of Fécamp. He was nicknamed 'Jeannelin' or 'Little John' on account of his diminutive stature.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dijon is a diocese of the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church in France. The archepiscopal see is Dijon Cathedral, which is located in the city of Dijon. The diocese comprises the entire department of Côte-d'Or, in the Region of Bourgogne. Originally established as the Diocese of Dijon in 1731, and suffragan to the Archdiocese of Lyon, the diocese was elevated to the rank of archdiocese in 2002. The most significant jurisdiction change occurred after the Concordat of 1801, when the diocese annexed the department of Haute-Marne. In 1821, a Papal Bull re-established the Diocese of Langres. The current archbishop is Antoine Hérouard, appointed in 2022.
Halinard was the Archbishop of Lyon between 1046 and 1052; he also served as abbot of the monastery of Saint-Bénigne in Dijon between 1031 and 1052. He was a counselor of both the Emperor Henry III and Pope Victor II.
Louis Candide Boulanger was a French Romantic painter, pastellist, lithographer and a poet, known for his religious and allegorical subjects, portraits, genre scenes.
Jean Barbault (1718–1762) was a French painter, etcher and printmaker, who worked in Rome for most of his life. He is noted for paintings of local people, wearing traditional costumes or Oriental costumes and for his work documenting iconic Roman monuments and antiquities which were published in two volumes.
Charles François Hutin was a French history and figure painter, engraver and sculptor. He became director of the Royal Academy of Arts in Dresden.
The Musée Magnin is a national museum in the French city of Dijon in Burgundy, in the Côte-d'Or department, with a collection of around 2,000 works of art collected by Maurice Magnin and his sister Jeanne and bequeathed to the state in 1938 along with the hôtel Lantin, a 17th-century hôtel particulier in the old-town quarter of Dijon where it is now displayed as an amateur collector's cabinet of curiosities and as the Magnin family home.
Jean-Baptiste Bouchardon was a 17th/18th-century French sculptor and architect.
Pierre Desvignes was a French composer.
Nicolas-Joseph Wackenthaler was a French organist and composer.
Pierre-René-Bénigne-Mériadec de Roux de Bonneval was a French Navy officer. He served in the War of American Independence, and became a member of the Society of the Cincinnati.
Carolyn Marino Malone is an American medievalist and academic. She is professor of art history and history at USC Dornsife College, Los Angeles, California, with a PhD in Art History and Medieval Studies (1973) from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests are English and French Romanesque and Gothic architecture and sculpture. She has published books on sculptural finds at Canterbury Cathedral, the abbey of St Bénigne in Dijon, the façade of Wells Cathedral, and monastic life in the Middle Ages. She served as Vice-President (1996-1997) and President (1999) of Art Historians of Southern California; Domestic Advisor to the Board of Directors of the International Center of Medieval Art (1984-1987); and was on the board of directors of the Medieval Association of the Pacific (1986-1989). She is a member of the Society of Architectural Historians.
