Elusense / Eauze (Concilium Apasii)
Provincial Council in Novempopulana; February 1, 551
Also known as the Council of Eauze, the provincial concilium Aspasii was convoked by the metropolitan bishop, Aspasius of Eauze, in 551. The council was attended by seven of Aspasius’s suffragans as well as one clerical delegate. The represented civitates, while all located within Novempopulana (one of the provinces created by emperor Diocletian out of Gallia Aquitania, also called Aquitania Tertia), were divided in their political allegiances between two kings, Chlothar I and Childebert I. It sometimes is assumed, but is not demonstrable, that the council assembled in the civitas of the presiding metropolitan.
The acts contain seven canons, which deal with a variety of topics: the moral and sexual comportment of penitents (c. 1) and clerics (c. 2), a condemnation of enchanters (c. 3), clerics who attempt to utilize secular courts and/or protection to shield themselves from episcopal justice (c. 4), clerical ordination procedure (c. 5), donations to churches and the treatment of ecclesiastical servi (c. 6), and the necessity of convoking and attending annual provincial councils (c. 7). It has been observed that the assembled bishops drew upon earlier canonical records in their own legislating, including the acts of the Council of Tours (461) and the so-called Second Council of Arles. The acts are preserved in a single eighth-century manuscript, Munich BSB 5508, within the first part of the seventh-century canonical collection known as the Collectio Diessensis.
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QQ: Maassen, Concilia aevi Merovingici, 113-115; de Clercq, Concilia Galliae, 162-165; Gaudemet/Basdevant-Gaudemet, Les canons des conciles mérovingiens, vol. 1, 329-337.
Lit: Hefele/Leclerq III/1, 165-167; Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, vol. 1, 210; Pontal, Synoden im Merowingerreich, 107-108; Halfond, The Archaeology of Frankish Church Councils, AD 511-768, 227-228; G. Halfond, Canonical Renewal and Innovation in Sixth-Century Gaul: The Case of the Concilium Aspasii, in: BMCL 40 (2023) 173-196.
Gregory Halfond
Juni 2026
Empfohlene Zitierweise:
Halfond, Gregory, "Elusense / Eauze (Concilium Apasii): Provincial Council in Novempopulana; February 1, 551", in: Lexikon der Konzilien [Online-Version], Juni 2026; URL: http://www.konziliengeschichte.org/site/de/publikationen/lexikon/database/506.html
