Epaonense / Épaone
Interprovincial Council in Epaone; 517
The Council of Épaone was an interprovincial council held in the Burgundian Kingdom in 517. Twenty-four bishops and one clerical delegate from dioceses located within the regnum were in attendance. The council was organized and presided over by the metropolitan bishops Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus of Vienne and Viventiolus of Lyons, whose letters to their respective suffragans announcing the council survive. These letters, which were dispatched the preceding spring, alerted the bishops of the kingdom that the council would assemble in early September, specifically on the eighth day of the Ides of September (i.e. September 6th) in the parish of Épaone. Avitus, in his letter, alludes directly to the demands of the agricultural calendar in reminding his suffragans of their responsibility to attend the meeting. Viventiolus’s epistle also makes an allowance for lay attendance at the synod, but if any laici did attend the council the acts themselves make no mention of them. While neither of the epistles nor the acts make any direct reference to the involvement of the Burgundian monarchy in the council’s convocation, it nevertheless it has been hypothesized that the council’s assembly may have been timed to coincide with the issuance of the Liber Constitutionum by King Sigismund (r. 516-523), himself a convert to Nicene Christianity. Certainly, the council’s convocation more generally reflects the Burgundian monarchy’s shift in public support and patronage from Arian to Nicene Christianity in consequence of the king’s recent ascension to the throne. The council concluded its business on September 15th, a little over a week after its scheduled assembly date.
The council produced a total of forty canons, some of which reflect the influence of the acts of the preceding Gallic councils of Agde (506) and Orléans (511) while not necessarily being in full agreement with these earlier precedents. Issues addressed at Épaone included: episcopal authority (cc. 1, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 19, 27, 28, 40), clerical ordination and behavioral standards (cc. 2, 3, 4, 13, 15, 20, 22, 24, 37), the administration of ecclesiastical property (cc. 7, 8, 12, 14, 17, 18), monasticism (cc. 8, 9, 10, 19, 38), lay discipline (cc. 31, 34, 35, 36), rules regarding penance and penitents (cc. 3, 23, 31), heretics (cc. 16, 29, 33), inappropriate relationships including incest (cc. 20, 30, 32, 38), the ownership and treatment of slaves (cc. 8, 34, 39), and prohibitions against the consecration of deaconesses (c. 21), the housing of relics in oratories located in villae (c. 25), and the use of the chrism in the dedication of altars not made of stone (c. 26). Scholars have noted parallels between individual canons and other writings by Avitus, suggesting that the bishop of Vienne played a significant role in the drafting of the council’s canonical program.
The legislation produced at Épaone provided influential precedents for subsequent canonical legislation issued in the Merovingian era. Of particular note is canon 30, which prohibited several different forms of incestuous relationships. The canon seems to have been composed at least partly in response to actual cases of improper marital relationships that had come to the attention of Avitus and his colleagues, including that of a layman named Vincomalus who had married his dead wife’s sister. Another near-contemporary case involved a Burgundian royal official named Stephanus. While the latter’s case was discussed at a subsequent episcopal council, Lyons (518/22), the treatment of incest at Épaone at minimum provided a backdrop for the handling of this second case regardless of whether or not it was addressed directly at the council of 517. Following the demise of the Burgundian regnum and its absorption into the Frankish Kingdom in 534, Frankish councils subsequently would elaborate on the precedent set by canon thirty, including the Council of Orléans (541), c. 27, which cited explicitly the earlier rule in its own incest ban.
The Épaone canons were included in the majority of Gallo-Frankish chronologically-arranged canonical collections surviving from the Merovingian period, as well as selectively within the systematic Vetus Gallica. The seventh-century Isidorian Hispana adopted thirteen of the council’s canons, but mistakenly credited them to the Council of Agde (506). Later canonists including Regino of Prüm, Burchard of Worms, Ivo of Chartres, and Gratian would incorporate a small number of canons issued by the council – but not always correctly identified as such – into their respective collections.
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QQ: Maassen, Concilia aevi Merovingici, 15-30; De Clercq, Concilia Galliae, 20-37; Basdevant-Gaudemet/Gaudemet, Les canons des conciles mérovingiens, vol. 1, 93-125; Scholz, Ausgewählte Synoden Galliens und des merowingischen Frankenreichs, 131-153.
Lit: Hefele/Leclerq II/2, 1031-42; Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, 204-205; J. Gaudemet, Art. “Epaone, concile de”, in: DHGE 15 (1963) 524-545; Mikat, Die Inzestverbote des Konzils von Epaon 63-84; Pontal, Synoden im Merowingerreich, 34-46; I. Wood, Incest, Law, and the Bible in Sixth-Century Gaul, in: Early Medieval Europe 7 (1998) 291-303; D. Shanzer/I. Wood (eds.), Avitus of Vienne: Selected Letters and Prose (= TTH 38), Liverpool 2002, 22-24, 285-290; Ubl, Inzestverbot und Gesetzgebung, 118-137; Halfond, The Archaeology of Frankish Church Councils, AD 511-768, 223-224.
Gregory Halfond
März 2025
Empfohlene Zitierweise:
Halfond, Gregory, "Epaonense / Epaone: Interprovincial Council in Épaone; 517", in: Lexikon der Konzilien [Online-Version], März 2025; URL: http://www.konziliengeschichte.org/site/de/publikationen/lexikon/database/481.html
