Latunense / Saint-Jean-de-Losne
Council in Saint-Jean-de-Losne; 673-675
The Council of Saint-Jean-de-Losne assembled sometime between 673 – when the convoking monarch, Childeric II, assumed control of the Neustro-Burgundy Kingdom – and 675, the year of Childeric’s assassination. While the council assembled in Burgundy, the lack of subscriptions in the surviving acta does not permit a reconstruction of the meeting’s precise form and attendance. The acts do mention, however, the presence of the king at the council.
The acta contain twenty-two canons. There are several parallels between these canons and those issued at another contemporary council convoked by Childeric, the so-called concilium Modogarnomense (ca. 673–75). Issues addressed by the council include: the secularization of the clergy (cc. 1-2, 10, and 15), ecclesiastical justice (cc. 3, 17, 20), improper cohabitation with women (c. 4), ordination and qualification rules for clerical and episcopal office (cc. 5-6, 9, 16, and 22), episcopal supervision of the clergy (c. 7), the necessity of bishops being present in their cities during major feasts as well as of preaching on Sundays and other holy days (cc. 8 and 18), the scheduling of a subsequent council in Childeric’s fourteenth regnal year (c. 11), the protection and conduct of avowed widows and nuns (cc. 12-14), the necessity of monks securing their abbot’s permission to travel (cc. 7 and 19), and the obligation of synodal attendance (c. 21).
The Losne acts, along with those of the concilium Modogarnomense, are preserved in a late-ninth or tenth century manuscript, Albi, BM 2 [147], containing the Collectio Albigensis.
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QQ: Maassen, Concilia aevi Merovingici, 217-219; de Clercq, Concilia Galliae, 314-317; Gaudemet/Basdevant-Gaudemet (eds.), Les canons des conciles, vol. 2, 575-583; Scholz, Ausgewählte Synoden Galliens und des merowingischen Frankenreichs, 456-467.
Lit: Hefele/Leclerq III/1, 300-302; Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, vol. 1, 214; Pontal, Synoden im Merowingerreich, 198-200; J. Semmler, Per Iussorium Gloriosi Principis Childerici Regis, in: MIÖG 107 (1999) 12-49; Halfond, The Archaeology of Frankish Church Councils, AD 511-768, 241; Id., Reassessing the Acts of the Merovingian Concilium Modogarnomense, in: Mediaevalia 46 (2025) 3-34.
Gregory Halfond
Oktober 2025
Halfond, Gregory, "Latunense / Saint-Jean-de-Losne: Council in Saint-Jean-de-Losne; 673-675", in: Lexikon der Konzilien [Online-Version], Oktober 2025; URL: http://www.konziliengeschichte.org/site/de/publikationen/lexikon/database/4310.html