Vasense / Vaison
Provincial Council in Vaison; 529
The provincial council of Vaison assembled in Ostrogothic Provence in 529 under the supervision of the metropolitan bishop, Caesarius of Arles, with a dozen bishops in all in attendance. The attendees of the Council of Carpentras (527) had planned to hold a subsequent council in the civitas of Vaison on November 6th of the following year (528), but for reasons unknown the meeting was delayed until 529. The acts of the council of 529 were signed on November 5th.
The surviving acta contain five canons, which in several cases justify their rulings by citing the ecclesiastical customs of other regions including Italy. Canon one requires presbyters to open their homes to unmarried lectors to facilitate the latter’s education. Canon two grants to presbyters the right to preach, and allows deacons to read a homily in their place if a presbyter is affected by an infirmity. Canons three, four, and five address liturgical practices: canon three directs the singing of the Kyrie eleison at Matins, Mass, and Vespers and the Tersanctus during Masses (c. 3). Canon four requires that the sitting pope be named during ecclesiastical services, while canon five mandates the appending of the phrase “Sicut erat in principio” to the Gloria Patri on the grounds that this phrase was used in Rome, Italy, the East, as well as in Africa as a counter to Arian theology. It has been hypothesized that those Provençal bishops who failed to subscribe to the acts – including Aletius of Vaison himself – may have objected to the content of the first two canons specifically.
The acts were included in over half-a-dozen early medieval Gallic canonical collections, as well as in versions of the Iberian Hispana, with c. 2 additionally appearing in the systematic Vetus Gallica. Both Burchard of Worms and Ivo of Chartres included cc. 2 and 4 in their respective Decreta.
----------
QQ: Maassen, Concilia aevi Merovingici, 55-58; de Clercq, Concilia Galliae, 77-81; Gaudemet/Basdevant-Gaudemet, Les canons des conciles mérovingiens, vol. 1, 186-193.
Lit: Hefele/Leclerq II/2, 1110-1115; Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen vol. 1, 207; Pontal, Synoden im Merowingerreich,56-58; Halfond, The Archaeology of Frankish Church Councils, AD 511-768, 225; A. Malnory, Saint Césaire, évêque d'Arles: 503-543, Paris 1894, 138-143; W. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul, Cambridge 1994, 143-144.
Gregory Halfond
Februar 2026
Empfohlene Zitierweise::
Halfond, Gregory, "Vasense / Vaison: Provincial Council in Vaison; 529", in: Lexikon der Konzilien [Online-Version], Februar 2025; URL: http://www.konziliengeschichte.org/site/de/publikationen/lexikon/database/666.html
