Nicasius of Die (4th century) was a 4th-century bishop from Gaul, present-day France. As Bishop of Die [1] he is notable to history as one of only five Catholic bishops from the Western part of the Roman Empire who attended the First Council of Nicaea in 325. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
Alternatively known as bishop Nicaise of Die, he is also considered a Saint in the Roman Catholic Church with a feast day celebrated on 20 March and in the Eastern Orthodox Church, is celebrated on the "Sunday of the Fathers of the first Council" . [8]
Nicaise was the earliest attested Bishop of Bishop of Die, Drôme. [9] although the largely discredited 17th century historian Polycarpe de la Rivière says he was the successor to St Mars of Die bishop c. 220, and then St Higer. These prior bishops are not known from other sources.
The same Polycarpe claims to have found in a life of St Marcel de Die, a letter from the Council of Nicaea for Nicaise to give to the bishops of Gaules. In this, no trace has ever been found of this letter. [10]
At first glance Nicaise was an unlikely attendee at the Council of Nicaea. The Latin churches were represented by only four delegations, of Die, of Rome, of Carthage and that of Cordoba (whose bishop Hosius, was the adviser of the emperor Constantine). We see that these four seats were not random, they represent the four regions of the West: Italy, Africa, Spain (Iberia) and Gaul. It should have been expect that Gauls' Bishops send their primate the archbishop of Lyon, Maxime (or Tetrad). Instead they sent the bishop of a small and obscure bishopric. It has been conjectured that [11] the primate was unavailable due to health or age and Nicaise, having Greek parents was chosen for his knowledge of Greek. [12]
According to Lenain Tillemont, in the eleventh century Die Cathedral would have housed the relics of Nicaise.
The First Council of Nicaea was a council of Christian bishops convened in the Bithynian city of Nicaea by the Roman Emperor Constantine I in AD 325.
Pope Celestine I was the bishop of Rome from 10 September 422 to his death on 1 August 432. Celestine's tenure was largely spent combatting various ideologies deemed heretical. He supported the mission of the Gallic bishops that sent Germanus of Auxerre in 429, to Britain to address Pelagianism, and later commissioned Palladius as bishop to the Scots of Ireland and northern Britain. In 430, he held a synod in Rome which condemned the apparent views of Nestorius.
Pope Zosimus was the bishop of Rome from 18 March 417 to his death on 26 December 418. He was born in Mesoraca, Calabria. Zosimus took a decided part in the protracted dispute in Gaul as to the jurisdiction of the See of Arles over that of Vienne, giving energetic decisions in favour of the former, but without settling the controversy. His fractious temper coloured all the controversies in which he took part, in Gaul, Africa and Italy, including Rome, where at his death the clergy were very much divided.
Macarius I ; was Bishop of Jerusalem from 312 to shortly before 335, according to Sozomen. He is recognized as a saint within the Orthodox and Catholic churches.
Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont was a French ecclesiastical historian.
The Archdiocese of Reims is a Latin Church ecclesiastic territory or archdiocese of the Catholic Church in France. Erected as a diocese around 250 by St. Sixtus of Reims, the diocese was elevated to an archdiocese around 750. The archbishop received the title "primate of Gallia Belgica" in 1089.
Charles Clémencet was a French Benedictine historian.
Saturninus of Arles was a French Arian bishop of Arles in the early 4th century who under Constantius II was Primate of Gaul. He is known for his opposition to Saint Hilary of Poitiers, bishop of Poitiers, at the Church Council of Arles of 353.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Vannes is a diocese of the Latin Church of the Roman Catholic Church in France. Erected in the 5th century, the Episcopal see is Vannes Cathedral in the city of Vannes. The diocese corresponds to the department of Morbihan, and is suffragan to the Archdiocese of Rennes, Dol, and Saint-Malo. Raymond Michel René Centène is the current bishop since his appointment in 2005.
The former French Catholic diocese of Die existed from the fourth to the thirteenth century, and then again from 1678 to the French Revolution. It was suppressed by the Concordat of 1801, its territory being assigned to the diocese of Grenoble. Its see was the Cathedral of the Assumption in Die.
Henri-Auguste de Loménie, Count of Brienne, Seigneur de La Ville-aux-Clercs was a French politician. He was secretary of state for the navy from 1615 to February 1643, and then secretary of state for foreign affairs from 1643 to 1663 under Mazarin during the minority of Louis XIV. From the Loménie family, he was the son of Antoine de Loménie, secretary of state to Henry IV and a Huguenot convert.
Constantine the Great's (272–337) relationship with the four Bishops of Rome during his reign is an important component of the history of the Papacy, and more generally the history of the Catholic Church.
Pierre de La Broue (8 February 1644, Toulouse - 20 September 1720, Mirepoix was a French bishop. He was part of the 'Apellant' movement within Jansenism, which called for the summoning of a church council to discuss the anti-Jansenist papal bull Unigenitus.
Michel Tronchay was a French Catholic priest, writer, philosopher, and the secretary of French historian Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont. After Tillemont's death, Tronchay completed and published volumes 6–16 of Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire ecclésiastique des six premiers siècles, a history of the first six-centuries of the Christian church. He also completed and published the final volume 6 of Histoire des empereurs et autres princes qui ont régné pendant les six premiers siècles de l'Église, a history of the Roman Empire. This work was often cited by Edward Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Saint Nicasius of Rouen, often known as the Apostle of the Vexin, was a 3rd-century saint and martyr in Gaul. He is sometimes considered the first Bishop of Rouen, although probably incorrectly.
Dom Polycarpe de la Rivière was Carthusian prior of the 17th century, historian and scholar with a fertile imagination. Much of his life is surrounded in mystery and although he wrote biographies on numerous church identities he is considered generally to have been a fabricator. Among the persons about whom he wrote are:
The Primate of the Gauls is a title given since 1079 to the archbishop of Lyon, former capital of the Three Gauls then land of the Roman Empire, and has described the authority he has exercised in the past over the other bishops of France. The primacy of a title conferred on Archbishop guarantees a theoretical jurisdiction over several ecclesiastical provinces. In France, only the title of Primate of the Gauls and Primate of Normandy, respectively assigned to the archbishops of Lyon and Rouen, are still used.
The Orthodox Church of the Gauls is a self-governing Christian church formed in 2006.
Phoebadius of Agen was a Catholic bishop of the fourth century. At the Council of Ariminum in 359 and other councils, he was a supporter of Nicaean orthodoxy. He wrote several works, including a treatise against the Arians which still survives.
Luce Pietri is a French historian and scholar of late antiquity.