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TARENTAISE


454


TARGUM


cures, 300 succursal churches, and 135 vicariates to- wards the support of which the State contributed.

Oallia Christiana {nova) (1715), 1, 1223-42, instrum., 191-7; Du- chesne, Pastes ipiscopaux, II (Paris, 1894-9), 101-02; Coctore. Le diocese de Tarbes et son dernier historien in Revue de Gascogne, VI (1865), 575-85; de LAaRfezE. Histoire religiexise de la Bigorre (Paris, 1862); Batsere, Esquisses: Tarbes et ses environs, Ba- gn^es, Baudian, Episodes (Tarbes, 1856).

Georges Gotau.

Tarentaise, Diocese of (Tarantasiensis), com- prises the arrondissement of Mouticrs in the Depart- ment of Savoie; it is also sometimes called the Dio- cese of Moutiers en Tarentaise, and is suffragan of Chambiry. Legend relates that the "Centrones" were evangeUzed in the fifth century by James the Assyrian, secretary to St. Honoratus, Archbishop of Aries. He became the first Bishop of Darantasia or Taren- taise, the metropohs of the "Centrones", and named St. Marcellus as his successor. The first document in which the Diocese of Tarentaise is reliably mentioned is a letter of Leo the Great (5 May, 450) which assigns to the Archdiocese of Vienne, among other suffragans, the Bishop of Tarentaise. The first historically known bishop is Sanctius who in 517 assisted at the Council of Epaon. A plea was brought before the Council of Frankfort (794) against the decision of Leo I that had been confirmed by Popes Symmachus and Gregory the Great. Leo III partly acceded to this plea, and made Darantasia a metropohs with three suffragans, Aosta, Sion, and Maurienne, but main- tained the primacy of Vienne. For four centuries this primacy was the cause of conflicts between the archbishops of Tarentaise and those of Vienne; subsequently Maurienne was again attached to the metropohs of Vienne.

The city of Darantasia was destroyed by the Saracens in the tenth century, whereupon the arch- bishops moved their residence to the right bank of the Is&re, calling it their moutier (mon;istery), and it was at this place that the town of Moutiers began to be built in the second half of the tenth century. In the twelfth century the archbishops of Tarentaise were powerful sovereigns. In 1186 a bull of Frederick Barbarossa recognized the Archbishop of Tarentaise as immediate vassal of the empire and prince of the Holy Roman Empire in disregard of the pretensions of Humbert III, Count of Savoy; but in 1358 a transaction between Archbishop Jean de Bertrand and the Count of Savoy, Amadeus VI, fixed the respec- tive rights of the archl^ishops and the counts. Taren- taise belonged to France from 1536 to 1559, and from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century was on four occasions wrested for a time by France from the House of Savoy. In 1792 it formed the Department of Mont Blanc. The Treaty of Paris (30 May, 1814) gave it to the King of Sardinia, while the Plebiscite of 22 and 23 April, 1860, gave it to France. The Archdiocese of Moutiers in Tarentaise was suppressed in 1792 by the French Revolution, In 1825 a dio- cese was re-established at Moutiers, suffragan of Chamb^ry, and was maintained in 1860 in virtue of a special clause in the treaty ceding Savoy to France.

Among the archbishops of Moutiers in Tarentaise may be mentioned: St. Peter I (about 11,30), the first Cistercian raised to the episcopate, who founded in a defile the Cistercian Abbey of Tami^, to serve as a shelter for pilgrims and travellers; the Cistercian monk St. Peter II (1141-74) founded the charity of the pain de Mai, which until the second half of the eighteenth century distributed bread at Moutiers at the expense of the archdiocese during the first twenty-eight days of May; it was he who vipheld Alcxiinder III against Frederick Barbaro.ssa and tlie Aiitipiiiii' ^■i(■tor IV, and maintained in obedience to Al('x;iniler III the seven huniired abbeys of the Cis- terci;ni Order. Alexander decided (3 Feb., 1171) that thcnecfdrth the metropolitan See of Tarentaise should depend only on Rome; St. Peter III (1271-


83); Cardinal .\ntoine de Chalant (1402-18), to whom has been ascribed "Le livre du Roi Modus et de la reine Ratio", a much-esteemed treatise on hunting; Cardinal Jean d'Arces'(1438-54), who at the Council of Basle in 1440 supported Duke Amadeus of Savoy, antipope under the name of Felix V, against Eugene IV; Cardinals Christopher and Dominic de la Rovere (1472-78 and 1478-83), whose tomb erected at Rome in the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo is a splendid monument of the Renaissance; Germonio (1607-27), who played an important part in the seventeenth-century reform of the clergj- and whose "Commentaries" and "Acta Ecclesiffi Taren- tasiensis" are important documents for the history of the time. As natives of the diocese may be men- tioned: Pope Nicholas II (1059), b. at Chevron- Villette of the family of the lords of Miolans; Pierre d'Aigueblanche, who in 1240 became Archbishop of Hereford in England, and for twenty-five years was councillor and minister to Henry III of England; Blessed Peter of Tarentaise, who became pope in 1276 under the name of Innocent V.

The chief pilgrimages of the diocese are: Notre Dame de Brian^on, which dates from the victory over the Saracens in the tenth centnry. Francis I and Henry IV visited this shrine; Notre Dame des Vernettes, at Peisey, created in the eighteenth cen- tury near a miraculous fountain; Notre Dame de la Vie at St. Martin de Belleville; Notre Dame de Beaufort; St. Anne at Villette dating from 1248. Before the application of the Law of 1901 regarding associations there were in the diocese August inians of the Assumption, Capuchins, and two orders of teaching brothers. The Sisters of St. Joseph, nursing and teaching sisters, separated in 1825 from the Congregation of Puy. Several hospitals and schools in Brazil are dependent on their mother- house at Moutiers. At the end of the nineteenth century religious congregations in the diocese were charged with : 4 infant schools, 2 orphanages for girls, 6 infirmaries or hospitals, 4 houses of retreat. In 1905 (end of the period of the Concordat) the diocese numbered 68,000 inhabitants, 7 parishes, 79 succursal churches, and 21 vicariates remunerated by the Government.

Gallia Christ, (nova) (1779), XII, 700-24; instrumenta. 377- 420; Duchesne, Fasles fpiscopaux, 1 (Paris, 1894), 207-11; Pascalein, Hist, de Tareritaise jusqu^en J79S (Moutiers, 1903); Idem, Hist, de la Tarentaise. depuis 17SS (Moutiers, 1887); Borrel, Hist, de la Revolution en Tarentaise ei de la reunion de la Savoie A la France en 1792 (Moutiers, 1901).

Georges Gotau.

Targum (Targtjmim; D'lilJin singular, C13in "translation" (cf. C3"i."i?3, Ezra, iv, 7) is the dis- tinctive designation of the Aramaic translations or paraphrases of the Old Testament. After the return from exile Aramaic gradually won the ascendancy as the colloquial language over the slowly decaying Hebrew until, from probably the last century before the Christian era, Hebrew was hardly more than the language of the schools and of worship. As the majority of the population ce.ased to be conversant with the sacred language it became necessary to pro- vide tnanslations for the better understanding of the passages of the Bible read in Hebrew at the liturgical services. Thus to meet this need it became customary to add to the portions of the Scriptures read on the Sabbath an explanatory oral translation — a Targum. At first this was probably done only for the more diffi- cult passages, but as time went on, for the entire text. The "Mishna" gives elaborate instructions as to the wav in which this translating should be done. Ac- cording to the "Megillah" (IV, 4), when the le.sson to I)e read aloud was from tlie "Torah " only one verse was to be read to the translator (Mcthuigeman. pjnin?3). When the lesson was from the "Nebi'im" it was permitted to read three to him, unless each verse formed a special division. The directions also