Parisiense / Paris
Interprovincial Council in Paris; ca. 556/573
The Council of Paris assembled in the civitas of Paris in the mid-sixth century. The council’s precise dating, however, has been the subject of considerable disagreement. Although most modern editions of the acts date the council to ca. 556/573 based on the ordination and death dates of the attending Bishop Eufronius of Tours, more recent assessments have posited a meeting sometime in the first half of the 560’s during the reign of Charibert I (r. 561-567). Fifteen bishops (including four metropolitan prelates) attended the council, representing half-a-dozen ecclesiastical provinces. The first subscribing bishop, Probianus of Bourges, presumably presided over the council, although it is possible that a leading role also was played by Bishop Germanus of Paris.
The council’s acts consist of nine canons in all. While the acts have been read as a radical effort by the bishops of Charibert’s kingdom to promote their own episcopal prerogatives at the expense of royal overreach, the individual canons do not entirely support this reading. Canons one, two, three, and six, for example, which all deal with property alienation (in the aftermath of the territorial divisio of 561), do not attack the monarchy directly for permitting the wrongful usurpation of property so much as reassert episcopal authority in the management and allocation of ecclesiastical lands. In a similar vein, canon eight emphasizes that individuals nominated to the episcopacy by the monarchy must be approved by the provincial metropolitan and his suffragans, but does not condemn outright the practice of royal nomination.
The council’s acts were preserved in a small number of Gallo-Frankish canonical collections, the Collectiones Sancti Amandi and Bellovacensis (as well as in an appendix to the Collectio Quesnelliana). Canons six and eight later were adopted by Ivo of Chartres and by Gratian into their respective collections.
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QQ: Maassen, Concilia aevi Merovingici, 141–146; de Clercq, Concilia Galliae, 204-210; Basdevant / Gaudemet (eds.), Les canons des conciles mérovingiens, vol. 2, 410-425; Scholz, Ausgewählte Synoden Galliens und des merowingischen Frankenreichs, 265-277.
Lit: Hefele/Leclerq III/1, 171-174; Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, vol. 1, 211; Pontal, Synoden im Merowingerreich, 122-26; Halfond, The Archaeology of Frankish Church Councils, AD 511-768, 228; Id., Charibert I and the Episcopal Leadership of the Kingdom of Paris (561-567), in: Viator 43, no. 2 (2012) 1-28.
Gregory Halfond
Juni 2025
Empfohlene Zitierweise:
Halfond, Gregory, "Parisiense / Paris: Interprovincial Council in Paris; ca. 556/573", in: Lexikon der Konzilien [Online-Version], Juni 2025; URL: http://www.konziliengeschichte.org/site/de/publikationen/lexikon/database/688.html