Claremontanum seu Arvernense / Clermont
Interprovincial Council in Clermont; 535
Convoked by King Theudebert I (r. 533-547), the Council of Clermont (535) was attended by fifteen bishops representing over half-a-dozen ecclesiastical provinces, a plurality representing the province of Bourges. Honoratus of Bourges subscribed first to the council’s acts, which suggests that he presided over the meeting. Two other metropolitan bishops were in attendance as well, Nicetius of Trier and Flavius of Rheims. Theudebert convoked the council two years after succeeding his father, Theuderic I, as king of Rheims, and one year after the conquest of the Burgundian kingdom. Along with its acts, consisting of sixteen canons, the council also produced an epistle addressed to the king in which the bishops requested of Theudebert that territorial partitions not be the pretext for the undermining of individual and institutional property rights. Both the preface – which draws from the praefatio of the acts of the Visigothic Council of Agde (506) – and the letter frame the council’s agenda in terms of the renewal of existing canons and the addition of new ones. The sixteen canons address a variety of issues, including the determination of conciliar agendas (c. 1), episcopal election procedures (c. 2), the alienation of ecclesiastical property (cc. 5 and 14), a prohibition of Jews serving as iudices (c. 9), and clerical celibacy (cc. 13 and 16). The council’s acts were preserved in half-a-dozen Gallic chronological canonical collections, in a few cases with individual canons missing. The Clermont canons also were selectively included in systematic collections beginning with the Merovingian-era Vetus Gallica. Burchard of Worms, Ivo of Chartres, and Gratian also included canons from the council in their respective collections.
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QQ: Maassen, Concilia aevi Merovingici, 65-71; de Clercq, Concilia Galliae, 104-112; Basdevant/Gaudemet, Les canons des conciles mérovingiens, vol. 1, 208-225; Scholz, Ausgewählte Synoden Galliens und des merowingischen Frankenreichs, 166-183.
Lit: Hefele/Leclerq II/2, 1139-42; Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, vol. 1, 207-208; Pontal, Synoden im Merowingerreich, 76-78; E. Magnou-Nortier, A propos des rapports entre l’Eglise et l’Etat franc: La lettre synodale au roi Théodebert (535), in: Societa, Istituzioni, Spiritualita. Studi in Onore di C. Violante, 2 vols., Spoleto 1994, I 519–534; Halfond, The Archaeology of Frankish Church Councils, AD 511-768, 226.
Gregory Halfond
April 2025
Empfohlene Zitierweise:
Halfond, Gregory, "Claremontanum seu Arvernense / Clermont: Interprovincial Council in Clermont; 535", in: Lexikon der Konzilien [Online-Version], April 2025; URL: http://www.konziliengeschichte.org/site/de/publikationen/lexikon/database/674.html
