Carpentoratense / Carpentras
Provincial Council in Carpentras; 527
The provincial council of Carpentras assembled in Ostrogothic Provence in 527 under the supervision of the metropolitan bishop, Caesarius of Arles, with sixteen bishops in all in attendance. The acts were signed on November 6th.
The surviving acta are not divided into multiple canons, but rather address at length the problem of bishops improperly monopolizing donations to parish churches. Prior to the episcopal subscriptions, the acts state that a subsequent council is to be held in the civitas of Vaison on November 6th of the following year. Also attached to the acts is an epistle addressed to the absent Bishop Agroecius of Antibes. Agroecius had avoided attending the council personally, and also failed to send a clerical representative in his place, knowing that he would be charged there with conducting an improper clerical ordination (of a certain Protadius) in violation of the second canon of the acts of the Council of Arles (524). The epistle informs Agroecius that he is forbidden from performing the Mass for a full year. Subsequent to the council, Caesarius sought papal support for the Arelatan policy, and received in response an epistle from Pope Felix IV, dated February 3rd, 528, confirming that a probationary period was required of laymen seeking clerical ordination.
The acts were included in half-a-dozen early medieval Gallic canonical collections, as well as in versions of the Iberian Hispana.
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QQ: Maassen, Concilia aevi Merovingici, 40-43; de Clercq, Concilia Galliae, 47-52; Gaudemet/Basdevant-Gaudemet,Les canons des conciles mérovingiens, vol. 1, 144-151.
Lit: Hefele/Leclerq II/2, 1074-1076; Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, vol. 1, 206; Pontal, Synoden im Merowingerreich, 54-55; Halfond, The Archaeology of Frankish Church Councils, AD 511-768, 224; A. Malnory, Saint Césaire, évêque d'Arles: 503-543, Paris 1894, 136; W. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul, Cambridge 1994, 139-140.
Gregory Halfond
Januar 2026
Halfond, Gregory, "Carpentoratense / Carpentras: Provincial Council in Carpentras; 527", in: Lexikon der Konzilien [Online-Version], Januar 2025; URL: http://www.konziliengeschichte.org/site/de/publikationen/lexikon/database/663.html
