Cabilonense / Chalon-sur-Saône
Interprovincial Council in Chalon-sur-Saône; 647/653
The Council of Chalon-sur-Saône assembled in the episcopal church of Saint Vincent in the month of October sometime between the episcopal ordination of Bishop Vulfoleudus of Bourges in 647 and the year 653, after which some of the participating prelates no longer held office. In all, thirty-nine bishops (including half-a-dozen metropolitan prelates), five abbots, and one archdeacon, representing nine ecclesiastical provinces, attended the council, which was convoked in name of King Clovis II by the Neustrian Mayor of the Palace Erchinoald. It is generally assumed that Candericus of Lyons, who subscribed first to the acts, presided over the meeting.
The twenty canons issued by the council dealt with a range of issues, including the authority of previous conciliar rulings, including those of the ecumenical councils (cc. 1-2), clerical discipline and episcopal governance (cc. 3-4, 10, 14, 15), the inalienability of ecclesiastical property (cc. 5-7), the imposition of penance (c. 8), the slave-trade (c. 9), abbatial authority (cc. 11-12), simony (c. 16), violence committed within sacred space (c. 17), the sanctity of the Sabbath (c. 18), the inappropriate singing of non-religious songs in churches (c. 19), and a canon announcing the deposition of Bishops Agapius and Bobo of Digne (c. 20). Canon one has been read habitually as a reference to the Monothelitism controversy, although some have expressed skepticism of this reading due to the canon’s opacity. The council also sent an epistle to Bishop Theudorius of Arles, who had been expected to attend the meeting in order to hear charges against him, but who had failed to appear.
The council’s acts were preserved in the chronological Collectiones Sancti Amandi, Sancti Mauri, and Bellovacensis, but in no known systematic collections.
----------
QQ: Maassen, Concilia aevi Merovingici, 208-214; de Clercq, Concilia Galliae, 302-310; Gaudemet/Basdevant-Gaudemet (eds.), Les canons des conciles mérovingiens, vol. 2, 548-565; Scholz, Ausgewählte Synoden Galliens und des merowingischen Frankenreichs, 438-455.
Lit: Hefele/Leclerq III/1, 281-285; Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, vol. 1, 213; Pontal, Synoden im Merowingerreich, 193-197; Halfond, The Archaeology of Frankish Church Councils, AD 511-768, 239; I. Wood, The Franks and Papal Theology, 550‒660, in: The Crisis of the Oikoumene. The Three Chapters and the Failed Quest for Unity in the Sixth-Century Mediterranean, ed. C. Chazelle and C. Cubitt, Turnhout 2007, 223‒241; S. Esders, Chindasvinth, the ‘Gothic Disease’, and the Monothelite Crisis, in: Millennium 16 (2019) 175-212; S. Lin, The Merovingian Kingdoms and the Monothelete Controversy, in: JEH 71 (2020) 235–52; M. Meier / S. Patzold, Qualifying Mediterranean Connectivity: Byzantium and the Franks during the Seventh Century, in: Early Medieval Europe 31 (2023) 380–404.
Gregory Halfons
September 2025
Empfohlene Zitierweise:
Halfond, Gregory, "Cabilonense / Chalon-sur-Saône: Interprovincial Council in Chalon-sur-Saône; 647/653", in: Lexikon der Konzilien [Online-Version], September 2025; URL: http://www.konziliengeschichte.org/site/de/publikationen/lexikon/database/742.html