Massiliense / Marseille
Provincial Council in Marseille; May 533
The provincial council of Marseille assembled in May 533 in Ostrogothic Provence on the order of the presiding metropolitan bishop, Caesarius of Arles. Caesarius was joined at the council by fourteen of his suffragans and one abbot serving as an episcopal representative. The assembled body met to adjudicate charges of sexual misconduct and mismanagement of ecclesiastical property levelled against Bishop Contumeliosus of Riez. Contumeliosus confessed his guilt in the presence of his fellow bishops as well as laymen (in conventu episcoporum et laicorum), and was sentenced to perform penance in the monasterium Casense and to compensate personally his diocesan church for alienated property. The council concluded its business on May 26th without clarifying the permanency of Contumeliosus’s removal from office. The brief acts proper are preserved in a single canonical collection: the sixth-century Collectio Coloniensis.
The lack of specification regarding Contumeliosus’s deposition, as the subsequent correspondence between Caesarius and the papacy attests, seems to have been the result of a disagreement between Caesarius and his fellow attendees. Caesarius subsequently appealed to Rome for support of his position that the deposition be permanent. In April 534 Pope John II (r. 533-535) sent three letters – to Caesarius’s suffragans, to the clerics of Riez, and to Caesarius himself – in support of the Bishop of Arles’s position. The third of these epistles was accompanied by a selection of relevant conciliar canons, to which Caesarius subsequently added additional Gallic canonical precedents (along with commentary) in order to persuade his suffragans. But after a (false) report reached John’s successor, Agapitus I (r. 535–536), that Caesarius had approved of Contumeliosus resuming his former position, the new pope in July 535 permitted Contumeliosus to appeal his conviction. The final result of the appeal is unknown.
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QQ: Maassen, Concilia aevi Merovingici, 60-61; de Clercq, Concilia Galliae, 84-97; Gundlach (ed.), Epistolae Arelatenses genuinae, in: Epistolae Merowingici et Karolini aevi (I), Nrn. 32-35, 37, in: Epistolae Merowingici et Karolini aevi (I), 45-54, 56-57; Klingshirn (ed.), Caesarius of Arles: Life, Testament and Letters, 102-113, 116-118.
Lit: Hefele/Leclerq II/2, 1130-1135; Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, vol. 1, 207; Pontal, Synoden im Merowingerreich, 58-60; Halfond, The Archaeology of Frankish Church Councils, AD 511-768, 225; Malnory, Saint Césaire, évêque d'Arles, 154-158; Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles, 247-250.
Gregory Halfond
May 2026
Empfohlene Zitierweise:
Halfond, Gregory, "Massiliense / Marseille: Provincial Council in Marseille; May 533", in: Lexikon der Konzilien [Online-Version], Mai 2026; URL: http://www.konziliengeschichte.org/site/de/publikationen/lexikon/database/670.html
