Turonense / Tours
Interprovincial Council in Tours; 567
The Council of Tours assembled in November 567 in the Basilica of St. Martin in Tours. The council met with the permission of King Charibert I (r. 561-567), who died shortly after the council concluded its business. Nine prelates representing three ecclesiastical provinces (Tours, Sens, and Rouen) were in attendance, with Eufronius of Tours presiding over the meeting. The council’s acts are notable for their relative length and verbosity; several of the twenty-eight canons not only are exceedingly long by the standards of Gallic councils, they also contain an unusual number of direct references to, and quotations from, scripture, Roman imperial constitutiones, conciliar canons, and papal decretals. Two epistles traditionally also have been linked to the council, one addressed to the plebs of Tours, and the other to queen-turned-nun Radegund of Poitiers.
While a number of the canons attempted to balance royal and episcopal positions on a variety of issues, the council also addressed a particularly sensitive and immediate controversy. The bishops of the regnum Chariberthi had raised objections against the marriage of Charibert to a woman named Marcovefa, a former nun and sister of one of the king’s previous wives. In council, Eufronius and his colleagues attempted to formulate arguments that might persuade the king to end his uncanonical marriage. Canon twenty-one is a particularly elaborate effort to marshal various authorities to defend the sanctity of monastic vows, a theme similarly addressed in the epistle to Radegund. Canon twenty-two’s condemnation of incestuous marriages likewise seems to have been written with the king in mind. The council’s efforts to persuade Charibert failed, however, and one of the attendees, Germanus of Paris, excommunicated the king and his wife shortly after the council concluded its business (probably in late November or December 567).
The council’s acts were included in their entirety in the Collectiones Sancti Amandi and Bellovacensis, while several canons also were included in the Collectio Burgundiana. Six of the council’s canons appeared among the False Capitularies of Benedictus Levita (cc. 4, 16, 20, 25, 26, and 27), while cc. 4 and 27 later were taken up (albeit misidentified) by Burchard of Worms and subsequently Ivo of Chartres.
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QQ: Maassen, Concilia aevi Merovingici, 121-138; de Clercq, Concilia Galliae, 175-199; Basdevant/Gaudemet, Les canons des conciles mérovingiens, vol. 2, 346-399; Scholz, Ausgewählte Synoden Galliens und des merowingischen Frankenreichs, 279-327.
Lit: Hefele/Leclerq III/1, 184-93; Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, vol. 1, 211; Pontal, Synoden im Merowingerreich, 128-135; Halfond, The Archaeology of Frankish Church Councils, AD 511-768, 229; Halfond, Charibert I and the Episcopal Leadership of the Kingdom of Paris; Id., Contextualizing the Council of Tours (567), in: Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, ed. J. Goering/S. Dusil/A.Thier (= MIC.S 15), Rome 2016, 289-301.
Gregory Halfond
Juni 2025
Empfohlene Zitierweise:
Halfond, Gregory, "Turonense / Tours: Interprovincial Council in Tours; 567", in: Lexikon der Konzilien [Online-Version], Juni 2025; URL: http://www.konziliengeschichte.org/site/de/publikationen/lexikon/database/691.html
