Matisconense / Mâcon
Interprovincial Council in Mâcon; 585
The Council of Mâcon (585) was a large interprovincial council held in October 585 by King Guntram of Burgundy, preparations for which had begun at least several months earlier. Fifty-four bishops were in attendance, including seven metropolitan prelates, along with twelve clerical delegates of unspecified rank. Collectively, the assembled participants represented over half-a-dozen ecclesiastical provinces, their individual civitates located primarily in Burgundy and Provence. Also in attendance were sixteen bishops from Aquitaine, nine of whom had been implicated in the recently-foiled plot to support the claim of the royal pretender Gundovald. Also present at the council was the dux Leudegisel, who several months earlier had directed the siege at Convenae against Gundovald’s forces. It generally is assumed that the first subscribing metropolitan bishop, Priscus of Lyon, presided over the meeting.
The Council of Mâcon is unique among Merovingian-era Frankish councils in that along with its acts its agenda is described in detail in a near-contemporary narrative source, Gregory of Tours’s Decem libri historiarum. Gregory’s description of the council’s business is notably different in emphasis and in details from what the acts themselves record. Gregory’s account focuses primarily on the council’s concern with the actions of bishops taken on behalf of Gundovald. According to Gregory, the council excommunicated Bishop Ursicunus of Cahors for welcoming the pretender into his city, and also deposed Faustianus of Dax, who had been ordained on Gundovald’s orders, and named a replacement. The council additionally required the prelates who had participated in the ordination, Bertram of Bordeaux, Palladius of Saintes, and Orestes of Bazas, to indemnify Faustianus for their role in his improper installation. Gregory’s account implies that the king originally had planned for additional bishops to be penalized for their participation in the conspiracy. Besides his attention to the council’s treatment of the Gundovald affair, Gregory adds three additional details about the council’s proceedings: the unsuccessful efforts by an unnamed bishop to convince his colleagues that the word homo could not signify a woman (mulier), an underwhelming reading of original prayers (orationes) by Praetextatus of Rouen, and a fight between the servants of Duke Leudegisel and those of Priscus of Lyon.
The acts themselves, which do not direct address any of the aforementioned issues, include twenty canons in all, and are exceptional among Frankish conciliar acta in providing information, albeit stylized, about the meeting’s protocol. They note the opening prayers by the presiding metropolitan prelates, as well as an agreement by the metropolitans and other participating bishops that decisions be reached through common deliberation. The council’s published canons deal with a variety of issues, including regulations for the observance of holy days and the performance of the liturgy (cc. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6), the necessity of paying the tithe (c. 5), episcopal responsibility for church dependents including the poor (cc. 7, 12, 13, and 14), ecclesiastical asylum (c. 8), the necessity of cases involving clerics to be adjudicated within the church (cc. 9-10), the episcopal obligation of hospitality (c. 11), lay deference to clerics (c. 15), sexual indiscretions (cc. 16 and 18), proper burial procedures (c. 17), a prohibition against clerics being present for the determination and enforcement of capital punishment in secular courts (c. 19), and the necessity of holding a follow-up meeting three years hence (c. 20). Recent scholarship has shown that the Collectio Lugdunensis, and the Sirmondian constitutiones contained therein, provided raw material for the participating bishops to support their claims regarding episcopal jurisdiction.
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QQ: Gregory of Tours, Decem libri historiarum 8.20; Boretius, Capitularia regum Francorum, 10-12; Maassen, Concilia aevi Merovingici, 163-173; De Clercq, Concilia Galliae, 237-250; Basdevant / Gaudemet, Les canons des conciles mérovingiens, vol. 2, 452-485; Scholz, Ausgewählte Synoden Galliens und des merowingischen Frankenreichs, 364-397.
Lit: Hefele/Leclerq III/1, 208-214; Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, vol. 1, 212; Pontal, Synoden im Merowingerreich, 161-167; Halfond, The Archaeology of Frankish Church Councils, AD 511-768, 233; Id., All the King’s Men: Episcopal Political Loyalties in the Merovingian Kingdoms; Id., Corporate Solidarity and its Limits within the Gallo-Frankish Episcopate; S. Esders/H. Reimitz, After Gundovald, before Pseudo-Isidore: Episcopal Jurisdiction, Clerical Privilege and the Uses of Roman Law in the Frankish Kingdoms, in: Early Medieval Europe 27 (2019) 85-111; H. Reimitz, True Differences: Gregory of Tours’ Account of the Council of Mâcon (585), in: The Merovingian Kingdoms and the Mediterranean World: Revisiting the Sources, ed. S. Esders/Y. Hen/P. Lucas/T. Rotman, London 2019, 19-28; S. Scholz, Bischöfe, König und Amtsträger auf der Synode von Mâcon 585, in: Der Bischöfliche Impetus. Individueller und kollektiver Gestaltungswille in Gesellschaft, Kultur und Wirtschaft vom 4. bis zum 9. Jahrhundert, ed. A. Bihrer/S. Scholz/G. Schwedler, Köln-Wien 2025, 83-99; M. Eber, Similiter et nos anathematizamus. Dogma als Synodalkanon auf gallischen Konzilien des 6. Jahrhunderts, in: ebd., 123-143.
Gregory Halfond
August 2025
Empfohlene Zitierweise:
Halfond, Gregory, "Matisconense / Mâcon: Interprovincial Council in Mâcon; 585", in: Lexikon der Konzilien [Online-Version], August 2025; URL: http://www.konziliengeschichte.org/site/de/publikationen/lexikon/database/704.html
