In the Middle Ages the Bishop of Rennes had the privilege of crowning the dukes of Brittany in his cathedral. On the occasion of his first entry into Rennes it was customary for him to be borne on the shoulders of four Breton barons.
On 3 January, 1859, the See of Rennes, which the French Revolution had desired to make a metropolitan, became an archiepiscopal see, with the Diocese of Quimper, Diocese of Vannes, and Diocese of St. Brieuc as suffragans. Cardinal Place obtained from Pope Leo XIII permission for the Archbishop of Rennes to add the titles of Dol and St. Malo to that of Rennes.
History
Tradition names as first apostles of the future Diocese of Rennes, missionaries of the Latin race, but of an uncertain date: Saint Maximinus, Saint Clarus, Saint Justus. On the other hand, when in the fifth and sixth centuries bands of Christian Britons emigrated from Great Britain to Armorica and formed on its northern coast the small Kingdom of Domnonée, the Gospel was preached for the first time in the future Diocese of Dol and Diocese of Aleth. Among these missionaries were St. Armel, who, according to the legend, founded in the sixth century the town of Ploermel in the Diocese of Vannes and then retired into the forests of Chateaugiron and Janzé and attacked Druidism on the very site of the Dolmen of the Fairy Rocks (La Roche aux Fées); St. Méen (Mevennus) who retired to the solitudes around Pontrecoët and founded the monastery of Gael (550), known afterwards as St. Méen's; St. Lunarius and St. Suliacus who dwelt in the woods along the banks of the Rance, and St. Samson and St. Malo.
The earliest historical mention of the See of Rennes dates from 453. One of the four prelates, Sarmatio, Chariato, Rumoridus, and Viventius, who in that year took part in the Council of Angers, was Bishop of Rennes. Athenius, Bishop of Rennes, took part in the Council of Tours in 461. Louis Duchesne is of opinion that the St. Amandus reckoned among the bishops of Rennes at the end of the fifth century is the same as St. Amand of Rodez.
Among other bishops are the famous St. Melanius (Melaine) who in 511 assisted at the Council of Orléans and had a widespread reputation for sanctity. He gave his name to a well-known abbey, which in the twelfth century possessed no less than seventy parish churches.
