Aurelianense III / Orléans III
Interprovincial Council in Orléans; 538
The Third Council of Orléans, held in May 538, was attended by nineteen bishops and seven presbyters serving as representatives for their absent prelates. Participants came from six ecclesiastical provinces: Bourges (3), Lyons (7), Tours (2), Rouen (7), Vienne (1), and Sens (6). Although the acta themselves do not explicitly credit a king with the council’s convocation, it usually is assumed that the council assembled with at least the assent of Kings Childebert I (r. 511–558) and Theudebert I (r. 533–547) in whose respective kingdoms the attendees resided. The council assembled following the Frankish annexation of Burgundy in 534 and of Provence in 537. While some Burgundian bishops were in attendance, no Provençal bishops subscribed to the council’s acts. The council’s published acts consist of thirty-six canons. Of particular note are those that deal with the social relations between Christians and Jews. Canon 14 (13), for instance, permits unfree Christians (mancipia) mistreated by their Jewish masters, or forced to act in ways contrary to their faith, to receive ecclesiastical asylum. The Jewish master is required to pay a price equivalent to the slave’s value as a pledge to do no more harm. The council of 538 also was the first Frankish council to address commensality, i.e. interfaith dining (c. 14 [13]) and to attempt to prohibit Jews from interacting with Christians between Maundy Thursday and Easter Sunday (c. 33 [30]). A derivative canon issued by the Council of Mâcon (581/3) suggests that Childebert I issued a concurrent edictum repeating this last proscription. It has been hypothesized that the council participants may have consulted, among other legal materials, the fourth-century Lex Dei quam praecepit dominus ad Moysen in crafting their own canons. The council’s canons were preserved in a substantial number of near-contemporary and later chronological and systematic canonical collections.
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QQ: Maassen, Concilia aevi Merovingici, 72-86; de Clercq, Concilia Galliae, 113-130; Gaudemet/Basdevant-Gaudemet,Les canons des conciles mérovingiens, vol. 1, 227-263; Scholz, Ausgewählte Synoden Galliens und des merowingischen Frankenreichs, 184-211.
Lit: Hefele/Leclerq II/2, 1155-1162; Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, vol. 1, 208-209; Pontal, Synoden im Merowingerreich, 78-85; P. Mikat, Die Inzestverbote des Dritten Konzils von Orléans (538), Opladen 1993; Ders., Die Inzestgesetzgebung der merowingisch-fränkischen Konzilien (511–626/27), Paderborn 1994, 57–58; Halfond, The Archaeology of Frankish Church Councils, AD 511-768, 226; Ders., The Easter Ban in the Merovingian Kingdoms: Ideal and Reality, in: Medieval Encounters 27 (2021) 241-265.
Gegory Halfond
April 2025
Empfohlene Zitierweise:
Halfond, Gregory, "Aurelianense III / Orléans III: Interprovincial Council in Orléans; 538", in: Lexikon der Konzilien [Online-Version], April 2025; URL: http://www.konziliengeschichte.org/site/de/publikationen/lexikon/database/676.html
