Matisconense I / Mâcon
Interprovincial Council in Mâcon; 581/583
The First Council of Mâcon was convoked by the Frankish king Guntram with the stated goal of addressing “public affairs and the needs of the poor” (pro causis publicis pro necessitatibus pauperum), and it was attended by twenty-one prelates from that king’s Burgundian sub-kingdom. These bishops represented five ecclesiastical provinces: Lyons, Vienne, Sens, Bourges, and Arles. The council was one of over a dozen convoked by Guntram, and not surprisingly there was considerable overlap in attendance among these meetings. The precise date of the council’s convocation is uncertain, as the acts include two conflicting dating formulas, a regnal year that correlates with the year AD 583, and an indiction date that conversely suggests a meeting in 581. While the council addressed a wide range of issues in its acts, its legislative agenda is most notable for producing six canons addressing relations between Christians and Jews. These included proscriptions against Jews having improper communications with nuns within their convents (c. 2), holding positions of authority over Christians (c. 13), venturing out in public between Maundy Thursday and Easter Sunday (c. 14), dining with Christians (c. 15), refusing to sell their Christian slaves at a fixed price (c. 16), and attempting to convert their slaves to Judaism (c. 17). No other Merovingian-era Frankish synod devoted as much attention to concerns stemming from the presence of a Jewish minority within a professed Christian kingdom. The council’s canons were preserved in a number of early medieval chronological and systematic canonical collections, and two canons – the aforementioned c. 16, as well as c.18, which dealt with perjury – later would be included in Gratian’s Decretum.
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QQ: Maassen, Concilia aevi Merovingici, 155-61; De Clercq, Concilia Galliae, 222-30; Basdevant-Gaudemet/Gaudemet, Les canons des conciles mérovingiens, vol. 2, 426-43.
Lit: Hefele/Leclerq, III/1, 202-5; Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, 212; Pontal, Synoden im Merowingerreich, 156-59; Halfond, The Archaeology of Frankish Church Councils, AD 511-768, 232; Id., Episcopal Political Loyalties in the Merovingian Kingdoms, 76-96.
Gregory Halfond
November 2024
Empfohlene Zitierweise:
Halfond, Gregory, "Matisconense I / Mâcon: Interprovincial Council in Mâcon; 581/583", in: Lexikon der Konzilien [Online-Version], November 2024; URL: http://www.konziliengeschichte.org/site/de/publikationen/lexikon/database/699.html
