Clippiacense / Clichy
Interprovincial Council in Clichy; 626/627
The Council of Clichy assembled at the Basilica of St. Mary outside of Paris in September of the forty-third regnal year of King Chlothar II, a date which could correlate with either 626 or 627. Convoked on the authority of the king, who is explicitly compared in the acts to the biblical King David, the council’s attendees included forty bishops (including ten metropolitan prelates), one deacon, and one abbot, who collectively represented a dozen ecclesiastical provinces. Tetricus of Lyon subscribed first to the acts, suggesting that he presided over the council. By their own admission, the participants utilized canonical collections in their deliberations, including it seems the systematic Vetus Gallica. The acts draw from the Apostolic Canons, as well as from the acts of the Councils of Agde (506) and Epaone (517).
The acts consist of twenty-eight canons, which address a wide range of issues including: usury (c. 1), ecclesiastical property and its theoretical inalienability (cc. 2, 12, 15, 18, 22, 23, 24, 25), ecclesiastical justice and episcopal authority (cc. 3, 6, 7, 14, 20), the necessary enforcement of the canons of the Council of Paris of 614 (cc. 4 and 27, and praefatio), heresy and pagan superstitions (cc. 5 and 16), permissions required for the taking of ecclesiastical vows and ordinations (cc. 8, 21, and 28), ecclesiastical asylum (c. 9), incest (c. 10), homicide (c. 11), slave-owning (cc. 13 and 19), standards for accusers (c. 17), and the protection of nuns and widows (c. 26).
Writing in the tenth century, Flodoard of Reims included a variant of the council’s acts in his Historia Remensis ecclesiae. Due to minor variations in the text of the acts and to Flodoard’s dating of the council to the episcopate of Sonnatius of Reims, this variant has been read in the past as evidence of a separate Council of Reims. Most scholars now, however, reject this view. The Council of Clichy’s acts subsequently were preserved in the Collectio Diessensis. Canons 7 and 10 were included among the false capitularies.
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QQ: Maassen, Concilia aevi Merovingici, 196-201; de Clercq, Concilia Galliae, 290-297; Gaudemet/Basdevant-Gaudemet, Les canons des conciles mérovingiens, vol. 2, 526-547; Scholz, Ausgewählte Synoden Galliens und des merowingischen Frankenreichs, 418-437; Flodoard of Reims, Historia Remensis ecclesiae 2.5, ed. M. Stratmann, Hannover 1998 (= MGH.SRM 36), 141-146.
Lit: Hefele/Leclerq III/1, 260-265; Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, vol. 1, 213; Pontal, Synoden im Merowingerreich,189-192; Halfond, The Archaeology of Frankish Church Councils, AD 511-768, 237; Mordek, Kirchenrecht und Reform im Frankenreich, 66-70.
Gregory Halfond
September 2025
Empfohlene Zitierweise:
Halfond, Gregory, "Clippiacense / Clichy: Interprovincial Council in Clichy; 626/627", in: Lexikon der Konzilien [Online-Version], September 2025; URL: http://www.konziliengeschichte.org/site/de/publikationen/lexikon/database/730.html
