Diocese of Agen

The Diocese of Agen (Latin: Dioecesis Agennensis; French: Diocèse d'Agen) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church in France.

The Diocese of Agen comprises the département of Lot-et-Garonne, in the région of Aquitaine. It has been successively suffragan to the Archdioceses of Bordeaux (under the old regime), Toulouse (1802–1822), and Bordeaux again (since 1822).

Legends which do not antedate the ninth century concerning Saint Caprasius, martyred with St. Fides by Dacianus, Prefect of the Gauls, during the persecution of Diocletian, and the story of Vincentius, a Christian martyr (written about 520), furnish no foundation for later traditions which make these two saints early bishops of Agen.

The Agen Cathedral was formerly located in the church of St. Caprasius, outside the walls of the Roman town. In its reconstructed state, it serves as a specimen of Romanesque architecture, dating from the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. With the restoration of the diocese in 1802, it was again made the cathedral, in place of the Cathedral of St. Étienne, which had been destroyed during the French Revolution.

The trend in the medieval period was for the chapter to acquire more and more of a right, and then an exclusive right, to elect the bishop of the diocese, to the gradual exclusion of the rest of the clergy and the people. This development, however, was often retarded or impeded by other considerations. In the Agennais in the early medieval period, it was the duke of Aquitaine rather than the canons who had the decisive voice in the choosing of a bishop. This can be inferred from the charter granted in 1135 by King Louis VII, the husband of Eleanor of Aquitaine, which restored to the canons of the chapter of Saint-Étienne the freedom to elect a bishop of their choice. When the popes took up residence in Avignon, Clement V reserved to himself the right to appoint bishops for all the dioceses in France.

During the Great Schism, both the Pope in Rome and the Pope in Avignon appointed bishops of Agen, but since Agen and France supported the Popes in Avignon, it was their appointees who received the temporal rights from the king and were installed in the diocese.

In 1516, King Francis I signed at treaty with Pope Leo X, which has come to be called the Concordat of Bologna, in which the King and his successors acquired the right to nominate each and every one of the bishops in France, except those of the dioceses of Metz, Toul and Verdun. The Popes reserved the right to approve (preconise) the selection of the king, and sometimes they declined the nominee. This arrangement lasted, except for the decade (1790–1801) of the French Revolution, down until the Law of the Separation of the Churches and the State of 1905. Thereafter, the popes assumed the sole right to appoint bishops, though the official terminology is still "elect".

The cathedral chapter was composed of twelve canons and several dignities (not dignitaries). The major dignities were the grand archdeacon and the precentor. The minor dignitaries included the other two archdeacons (Monclar and Marmonde), the sacristan, the porter, and the cantor. The office of cantor was suppressed by Cardinal Leonardo Grosso della Rovere (1487–1519), but was restored by Bishop Antonio della Rovere (1519–1538); it was suppressed a second time, and again restored by Bishop Nicolas de Villars (1587–1608).