Aurelianense I / Orléans I
Interprovincial Council in Orléans; 511
The First Council of Orléans was an interprovincial Gallo-Frankish council that concluded its business on July 10, 511. It was both the first episcopal council convoked in Frankish Gaul, and the only (known) one to be held during the first three decades of the sixth century. The council was convoked by King Clovis I (d. 511), a recent convert to Nicene Christianity, shortly before his death. The king’s military operations between the Somme and the Loire rivers during the first decade of the sixth century, and then in Visigothic Aquitaine, strongly impacted the council’s size and representative scope. The meeting took place four years after the king’s decisive military victory over Alaric II at the Battle of Vouillé (507), which had facilitated Frankish expansion into Aquitaine, and brought under Clovis’s control over a dozen episcopal sees previously under Visigothic rule. Clovis’s campaigns did not result in a total annexation of Aquitaine, however, which meant that bishops from Gallia Narbonensis and parts of Novempopulana were unable to attend the council. Also unable to participate were Gallic bishops residing in the Burgundian Kingdom and in Ostrogothic Provence.
Ultimately, thirty-two prelates attended the council, representing seven Gallic provinces: Novempopulana (2), Aquitanica Prima (4), Aquitanica Secunda (6), Lugdunensis Secunda (5), Lugdunensis Tertia (6), Lugdunensis Senonia (5), and Belgica Secunda (4). The episcopal subscriptions appended to the council’s acts, which are ordered according to seniority (with metropolitan bishops subscribing first), clarify that these attendees generally fell into three groups: (1) sixteen bishops from the Lyonnaise provinces on average more junior than their southern counterparts; (2) twelve comparatively more senior Aquitanian prelates; and (3) four more junior bishops from Belgica Secunda. Notably absent from the council was Remigius of Rheims, the metropolitan bishop of Belgica Secunda who had baptized Clovis as a Nicene Christian, as well as about half of his suffragans. Also missing were bishops from the northeastern provinces of Belgica Prima, Germanica Prima, and Germanica Secunda. Various explanations have been proposed to explain these absences. While in the case of the German provinces, vacant sees seem to be the most likely reason for a lack of representation at the council, there is less compelling evidence for this phenomenon in Belgica Prima and Secunda. The theory that bishops from Belgica Prima intentionally boycotted Clovis’s council likewise has little basis in contemporary sources. A more convincing explanation for the failure of some northern prelates to attend the council is that it was convoked in part to acclimate to Clovis’s rule prelates either relatively new to episcopal office or who occupied sees only recently annexed to the expanding regnum Francorum. Consequently, the attendance at the council of prelates like Remigius, already well accustomed to Frankish rule, may have been considered less necessary.
The Council of Orléans, in bringing together as a unified body both northern and southern bishops, laid the groundwork for a new institutional structure in post-Roman Gaul, a “Frankish” church. While Aquitanian prelates only constituted a little over a third of the total number of participants, they brought with them to Orléans more recent and substantial experience in conciliar legislating than their more numerous northern counterparts. Six of the attendees at Clovis’s council had attended several years earlier the Visigothic Council of Arles (506), convoked by King Alaric II. Among these was Cyprian of Bordeaux, who assumed the presidency of the council of 511. Consequently, it is not at all surprising that there are some thematic parallels between the two sets of canonical acts. But despite the comparative seniority and experience of the southern prelates, the selection of a centralized meeting location at Orléans – along the frontier of recently-assimilated Armorica and northern Aquitaine – suggests an effort to unify northern and southern episcopal communities. The bishops and church of Orléans itself seem to have had minimal involvement in conciliar activities prior to the sixth century, increasing the likelihood that its selection at a meeting place in 511 was strategic.
In preparation for the council’s assembly, Clovis prepared a series of tituli to guide the subsequent discussions. As we do not know what or how many topics the king identified for discussion it would be unwise to assume that only those canons directly concerned with relations between secular and ecclesiastical personnel and institutions had their origins in Clovis’s tituli. In all, the council produced thirty-one canons. These canons addressed a wide variety of topics, including ecclesiastical asylum (cc. 1-3), clerical ordination (cc. 4, 8), ecclesiastical property and resources (cc. 5-7, 14-17, 23), clerical discipline (cc. 7, 9, 28-30), the integration of formally-Arian clerics and basilicas into the Nicene church (c. 10), penance (cc. 11-12), improper sexual relations (cc. 13, 18, and 29), monastic life (cc. 19-23), and religious observation and liturgy (cc. 24-28, and 31). While in a prefatory epistle to Clovis the bishops expressed their hope that by the king’s consensus the prescriptive authority of the canons might be strengthened, the acts generally reflect an effort to balance episcopal and royal priorities. These efforts at compromise have led some scholars to characterize the acts as a “concordance” between the court and the Gallic prelates.
A key measure of the council’s long-term influence is the preservation of all or some of its canons in canonical collections well into the Middle Ages. The council’s acts, all or in part, were included in nearly a dozen known Gallic chronological or unstructured collections compiled between the sixth and ninth centuries. In addition, twenty-two canons were included in the influential late-sixth/early-seventh century systematic collection known as the Collectio Vetus Gallica. The Orléans canons also were adopted in their entirety into the Iberian Collectio Hispana. In the Carolingian era, the majority of the canons were incorporated into the Pseudo-Isidore corpus, while tenth and eleventh-century compilations by Regino of Prüm, Burchard of Worms, and Ivo of Chartres similarly drew from the council’s legislation. The second recension of Gratian’s Decretum (ca. 1158) included no fewer twenty-five of the canons, a greater percentage of the total number than the selection contained in the Merovingian Vetus Gallica. The council’s importance as a model for subsequent Gallo-Frankish synods similarly can be perceived in the convocation by Clovis’s sons of four additional interprovincial councils in Orléans between 533 and 549.
----------
QQ: Maassen, Concilia aevi Merovingici, 1-14; De Clercq, Concilia Galliae, 3-19; Basdevant/Gaudemet, Les canons des conciles mérovingiens, vol. 1, 70-91.
Lit: Hefele/Leclerq II/2, 1005-15; Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, vol. 1, 204; Pontal, Synoden im Merowingerreich, 23-34; W. M. Daly, Clovis: How Barbaric, How Pagan?, in: Spec. 69 (1994) 619–64; J. Heuclin, Le Concile d'Orléans de 511, un premier concordat, in: Clovis, histoire et mémoire, ed. M. Rouche, 2 vol., Paris 1997, vol. 1, 435–50; Halfond, The Archaeology of Frankish Church Councils, AD 511-768, 223; Id., Vouillé, Orléans (511), and the Origins of Frankish Conciliar Tradition, in: The Battle of Vouillé, 507 CE: Where France Began, eds. R. Mathisen/D. Shanzer, Berlin 2012, 151-65.
Gregory Halfond
November 2024
Empfohlene Zitierweise:
Halfond, Gregory, "Aurelianense I / Orléans I: Interprovincial Council in Orléans; 511", in: Lexikon der Konzilien [Online-Version], November 2024; URL: http://www.konziliengeschichte.org/site/de/publikationen/lexikon/database/4297.html
