Aosta

An Italian diocese, suffragan of Turin, and comprising 73 towns in the province of Turin. Although St. Ursus is sometimes said to have been the first bishop, this is greatly controverted. The first known, certainly, as such was St. Eustasius, whose name coupled with Aosta is signed to a letter sent to Leo I by the second Synod of Milan (451). [F. Savio, S.J., Gli Antichi Vescovi d’Italia (Piemonte), Turin, 1899, 69-108.] From the ninth century the list of bishops is fairly complete. Suppressed in 1802 it was re-established in 1817. Aosta has 82,000 Catholics 87 parishes, 188 secular priests, 24 regulars, 55 seminarists, 566 churches, chapels, or oratories. In the cathedral treasury is a diptych of Anicius Probus, Roman consul in 406, which shows the Emperor Honorius conquering the hordes of Alaric. It was discovered in 1833. St. Anselm (1033-1109), Archbishop of Canterbury, was a native of Aosta. St. Bernard de Menthon (1008), Archdeacon of Aosta, founded the hospice on the Alps named after him, as a relief to pilgrims in the passage of the Alps.