Saint-Dié-des-Vosges
Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, commonly referred to as
Saint-Dié, is a
commune of northeastern
France.
It is located in the
Vosges département, of which it is a
sous-préfecture.
Saint-Dié is located 38 m. northeast of
Epinal by rail. It is situated on the
Meurthe river in a basin surrounded by well-wooded hills.
The town, part of which was laid out in a uniform style after the fire of
1757, is built largely of red
sandstone. Its
cathedral has a Romanesque
nave (12th century) and a Gothic choir; the portal of red stone dates from the 18th century. A fine cloister (13th century), containing a stone pulpit, communicates with the Petite-Eglise or Notre-Dame, a well-preserved specimen of Romanesque architecture (12th century).
The hôtel-de-ville contains a theatre, a library with some valuable manuscripts, and a museum of antiquities. There is a monument by Merci to
Jules Ferry, born in the town in 1832.
The town benefited from the immigration of
Alsatians after the
Franco-Prussian War of
1870-
1871, and its industries include the spinning and weaving of cotton, bleaching, wire-drawing, metal-founding, and the manufacture of hosiery, woodwork of various kinds, machinery, iron goods and wire-gauze.
St Die (
Deodatum,
Theodata, S. Deodati Fanum) is named after a saint who grew up around a
monastery later bearing his name founded in the
7th century by
Saint Deodatus of
Nevers, and gave up his episcopal functions to retire to this place. In the
10th century the community became a chapter of canons; among those who subsequently held the rank of
provost or
dean were
Giovanni de Medici, afterwards
Pope Leo X, and several princes of the
ducal House of Lorraine. Among the extensive privileges enjoyed by them was that of coining money.
Though they co-operated in building the
town walls, the canons and the dukes of Lorraine soon became rivals for the authority over St Die. Towards the end of the
15th century one of the earliest
printing presses of
Lorraine was founded at St Die. The institution of a town council in
1628, and the establishment in
1777 of a
bishopric which appropriated part of their spiritual jurisdiction, contributed greatly to diminish the influence of the canons; and with the
French Revolution they were completely swept away.
During the wars of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries the town was repeatedly sacked. It was also partially destroyed by fire in
1065,
1155,
1554 and
1757. Funds for the rebuilding of the portion of the town destroyed by the last fire were supplied by
Stanislas, last duke of Lorraine.
The Saint-Dié diocese was erected in the
1777, but suppressed in 1801 by the Holy See in accordance with the Napoleonic
Concordat of 1802, and later restored nominally by the Concordat of 1817, and in fact by a papal Bull of 6 October, 1822, and a royal ordinance of 13 January, 1823, as a suffragan of Besançon. According to a principle sanctioned by that Concordat, the diocesan boundaries were realigned, however, to follow those of the civil department of the
Vosges, which since
1801 had formed part of the
diocese of Nancy. The diocese established in the area by the
Civil Constitution of the Clergy in
1790 had indeed been of Vosges, which was sometimes referred to at that period as the diocese of Saint-Dié, after its episcopal seat.The Franco-German
Treaty of Frankfort (1871) cut eighteen communes from the Department of the Vosges, and added them to the
Diocese of Strasburg.
The Diocese of St-Dié originated in the celebrated abbey of that name. St. Deodatus (Dié) (b. towards the close of the sixth century; d. 679) came from Le Nivernais, or, according to some authorities, from Ireland; attracted by the reputation of St. Columbanus he withdrew to the Vosges, sojourning at Romont, and Arentelle, and made the acquaintance of Sts Arbogast and Florentius. For some time he was a solitary at Wibra, doubtless the present Katzenthal on Alsace, but being persecuted by the inhabitants, he went to the Vosges and founded a monastery, which he named Galilée on lands (called "Juncturae") given to him by Childeric II. The town of St-Dié now stands on this site. At the same time, Leudin Bodo, Bishop of Toul, founded to the north of Galilée the monastery of Bonmoutier and to the south that of Etival; Saint Gondelbert, perhaps after resigning the Archbishopric of Sens, had just founded the monastery of Senones to the east. These four monasteries formed, by their geographical position the four extremities of a cross : Later,
Saint Hidulphus,
Bishop of Treves (d 707), erected between them at the intersection. of the two arms of the cross, the monastery of Moyenmoutier. Villigod and Martin (disciples of St-Dié), Abbot Spinulus (Spin), John the priest, and the deacon Benignus (disciples of St. Hidulphus) are honoured as saints. in the tenth cent of the Abbey of St-Dié grew lax, a Frederick I, Duke of Lorraine, expelled the Benedictines, replacing them by the Canons Regular of St Augustine. Gregory V, in 996, agreed to the change and decided that the grand preévôt, the principal dignitary of the abbey should depend directly upon the Holy See.
During the sixteenth century, profiting by the long vacancy of the see of Toul, the abbots of the several monasteries in the Vosges, without actually declaring themselves independent of the diocese of Toul, claimed to exercise a quasi-episcopal jurisdiction as to the origin of which, however, they were not agreed; in the eighteenth century they pretended to be
nullius dioceseos. In 1718, Thiard de Bissy,
Bishop of Toul, requested the election of a see at St-Dié;
Leopold Duke of Lorraine, was in favour of this step, but the King of France opposed it; the Holy See refrained for the time from action. In 1777 a
Papal Bull of
Pius VI erected the abbey of St-Dié into an episcopal see, and cut off from the
Diocese of Toul the new Diocese of St-Dié, which, until the end of the old régime, was a suffragan of Trier. Louis Caverot, who died as Cardinal Archbishop of Lyons, was Bishop of St-Dié from 1849 to 1876.
The Abbey of Remiremont was founded about 620 by Saint Romaric, a lord at the court of
Clotaire II, who, having been converted by Saint Amé, a monk of
Luxeuil, took the habit at Luxeuil; it comprised a monastery of monks, among whose abbots were Saint Amé (570-625), Saint Romaric (580-653) and Saint Adelphus (d. 670), and a monastery of nuns, which numbered among its abbesses Saints Mactefelda (d. about 622), Claire (d. about 652) and Gébétrude (d. about 673). At a later period the Benedictine nuns were replaced by a chapter of ninety-eight canonesses who had to prove 200 years of nobility, and whose last abbess, under the old régime, was the Princess de Bourbon Condé, sister of the
Duke of Enghien; she was prioress of the Monastery of the Temple at her death.
Besides the saints mentioned above and some others, bishops of Nancy and Toul, the, following are honoured in a special manner in the Diocese of St-Dié;
Saint Sigisbert, Merovingian King of
Austrasia (630-56); St. Germain, a hermit near Remiremont, a martyr, who died
Abbot of Grandval, near Basle (618-70);
St. Hunna, a penitent at St-Dié (d. about 672);
St. Dagobert, another King of Austrasia, slain by his servant Grimoald (679) and honored as a martyr; St. Modesta, a nun at
Remiremont, afterwards foundress and abbess of the monastery of Horren at
Trier (seventh century);
St. Goéry, Bishop of Metz (d. about 642), whose relics are preserved at Epinal and who is the patron of the butchers of the town; St. Simeon, Bishop of Metz (eighth century), whose relics are preserved at Senones; Saint. William and Achery, hermits near Ste. Marie aux Mines (ninth wife of Charles the Fat, who died as Abbess of Andlau in Alsace; Blessed Joan of Arc, b. at Domremy in the diocese; Venerable Mére Alix le Clerc (b. at Remiremont, 1576; d. 1622) and St. Peter Fourier (b. at Mericourt, 1565; d. 1640), curé of Mattaincourt, who founded the Order of Notre-Dame. Elizabeth de Ranfaing (born at Remiremont, 1592; died 1649) founded in the
Diocese of Toul the
congregation of Our Lady of Refuge; Catherine de Bar (b. at St-Dié, 1614; d. 1698), known as Mére Mechtilde of the Blessed Sacrament, at first an
Annunciade nun and then a Benedictine, founded at Paris, in 1654, the
Order of the Benedictines of the Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Elizabeth Brem (1609-68, known as Mother Benedict of the Passion), a
Benedictine nun at
Rambervillers, established in that monastery the
Institute of the Perpetual Adoration. The remains of Brother
Joseph Formet (1724-84, known as the hermit of
Ventron), are the object of a pilgrimage. Venerable
Jean Martin Moye (1730-93), founder in Lorraine of the
Congrégation de la Providence for the instruction of young girls and apostle of
Su-Tchuen, was director for a brief period of the seminary of St-Dié, and established at
Essegney, in the diocese, one of the first novitiates of the
Soeurs de la Providence (hospitallers and teachers), whose mother-house at
Portieux ruled over a large number of houses before the Law of 1901. Grandclaude, a village teacher who was sent to the Roman College in 1857 by Bishop Caverot, contributed, when a professor in the grand seminaire of St-Dié, to the revival of canon law studies in France.
The principal pilgrimages of the diocese are: Notre-Dame de St-Dié, at St-Dié, at the place where St. Dié erected his first sanctuary; Notre-Dame du Trésor, at Remiremont; Notre-Dame de Consolation, at
Epinal; Notre-Dame de la Brosse, at Bains; Notre-Dame de Bermont, near
Domrémy, the sanctuary at which
Joan of Arc prayed; and the tomb of
St. Peter Fourrier at
Mattaincourt.
There were in the diocese before the application of the Law of 1901 against the congregations: Augustianian
Canons of Lateran;
Clerks Regular of Our Saviour;
Eudistes;
Franciscans,
Fathers of the Holy Ghost and the Holy Heart of Mary and various teaching orders of brothers. Among the congregations of nuns founded in the diocese may be mentioned besides the
Sisters of Providence, the
Soeurs du Pauvre Enfant Jésus (also known as the
Soeurs de la bienfaisance chrétienne), teachers and hospitallers, founded in 1854 at
Chemoy l'Orgueilleux; the mother-house was transferred to Remiremont.
At the close of the nineteenth century the religious congregations in the diocese directed 7 créchés, 55 day nurseries, 1 orphanage for boys and girls; 19 girls' orphanages, 13 workshops, 1 house of refuge; 4 houses for the assistance of the poor, 36 hospitals or hospices, 11 houses of nuns devoted to the care of the sick in their own homes and 1 insane asylum. The diocese of St-Dié had in 1905 (at the time of the rupture of the Concordat), 421,104 inhabitants in 32 parishes, 354 succursal parishes and 49 vicariates supported by the State.
Vautrin Lud, Canon of St-Dié and chaplain and secretary of René II, Duke of Lorraine, set up a printing-establishment at St-Dié in which two Alsatian geographers,
Martin Waldseemüller and Mathias Ringmann, began at once to produce an edition of a Latin translation of Ptolemy's "Geography". In l5O7 René II received from Lisbon the abridged account in French of the four voyages of
Amerigo Vespucci. Lud had this translated into Latin by Basin de Sandaucourt. The printing of the translation dedicated to
Emperor Maximilian was completed at St-Dié on 24 April, 1507; it was prefaced by a short explanatory booklet, entitled
Cosmographiae Introductio, certainly the work of Waldseemüler, an introduction to
cosmography that can be seen as the baptismal certificate of the New Continent. Indeed Waldseemüller and the scholars of the
Vosgean Gymnasium then made a capital decision writing : "...And since Europe and Asia received names of women, I do not see any reason not to call this latest discovery Amerige, or America, according to the sagacious man who discovered it".
A second edition appeared at St-Dié in August 1507, a third at Strasburg in 1509, and thus the name a of America was spread about. Thus Saint-Dié-des-Vosges is honored today with the title of "godmother of America", the city that named America. The work was re-edited with an English version by Charles Herbermann (New York, 1907). M Gallois proved that in 1507 Waldseemüller inserted this name in two maps, but that in 1513, in other maps Waldseemüller, being better informed, inserted the name of Columbus as the discoverer of America. But it was too late; the name of America had been already firmly established.
In
1507, Martin Waldseemüller produced in St Dié also a world globe bearing the first use of the name "America".
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Jacques Augustin (Self-portrait) |
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Vautrin Lud (1448-1527), canon and creator of the
Vosgean Gymnasium*
Jacques Augustin (1759-1832), miniaturist painter
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Jules Ferry (1832-1893), lawyer and politician
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Ferdinand Brunot (1860-1938), academic (linguistics)
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Fernand Baldensperger (1871-1958), academic (literature)
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Yvan Goll (1891-1950), poet and novelist
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Jacques Brenner (1922-2001), writer and critic
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Institut universitaire de technologie |
University Institute of Technology : IUT (Institut universitaire de technologie)
*
Robotics*
Electronics*
Computing*
Internet*
Graphic design*
Communication*
Arlon (
Belgium)
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Cattolica (
Italy)
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Crikvenica (
Croatia)
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Friedrichshafen (
Germany)
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Lowell (
United States)
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Meckhe (
Senegal)
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Ville de Lorraine (
Canada)
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Zakopane (
Poland)
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City council website*
University Institute of Technology websitends-nl:Saint-Dié-des-Vosgesfiu-vro:Saint-Dié-des-Vosges
