Valentinum / Valence
Interprovincial Council in Valence; ca. 583-585
The Council of Valence was an interprovincial council attended by seventeen bishops – including the metropolitans of Arles, Lyon, and Vienne – all representing civitates from within the regnum of King Guntram of Burgundy. Convoked by Guntram, the council’s acts state that it met pro diuersis pauperum querimoniis, the poor in this context referring to monks residing within institutions patronized by the royal family. In Surius’s edition of the acts an inscription is included that dates the council to X. Kal. Iulii, anno XXIIII regni gloriosissimi Domini Guntramni regis, indictione secunda. The calendrical date indicates a meeting held on June 22nd, while the indiction correlates with the period stretching from September 1st, 583 through August 31st, 584. The regnal year, however, has been correlated alternatively with 584 and (more likely) 585 due to the challenges in reconstructing Merovingian chronology. The seventh-century Fredegar Chronica also reports that Guntram in his twenty-fourth regnal year convened forty bishops to confirm the foundation of a monastery at St. Marcel on the model of Saint Maurice-d’Agaune. It usually is assumed that this is a reference to the Council of Valence. The acts proper were not included in any surviving Frankish canonical collections.
According to the acts, the referendary Asclepiodotus had delivered royal epistolae to the council participants requesting that donations to holy places made by the king, his wife Austrechild, or by his daughters, be confirmed by the council. The council consequently decreed that royal donations made to the monasteries of St. Marcel in Chalon-sur-Saône, St. Symphorian in Autun, or elsewhere not be diminished or alienated on royal or episcopal orders. Violators were condemned as murderers of the poor. It has been hypothesized that the acts directly inspired Burgundofaro of Meaux’s exemption for Rebais (ca. 640).
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QQ: Maassen, Concilia aevi Merovingici, 162-163; de Clercq, Concilia Galliae: a. 511–a. 695, 234-236; Chronicarum Fredegarii 4.1, in: Fredegarii et aliorum chronica. Vitae sanctorum, ed. B. Krusch, Hannover 1888 (= MGH SS rer. Merov. II), 124.
Lit: Hefele/Leclerq III/1, 207-208; Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, vol. 1, 212; Pontal, Synoden im Merowingerreich,143-144; Halfond, The Archaeology of Frankish Church Councils, AD 511-768, 232; M. Weidemann, Chronologie der Merowinger im 6. Jahrhundert, in: Francia 10 (1982) 471-513, hier 480-481 und 500-504; B. Rosenwein, Negotiating Space: Power, Restraint, and Privileges of Immunity in Early Medieval Europe, Ithaca 1999, 45-52; B. Rosenwein, One Site, Many Meanings: Saint-Maurice d’Agaune as a Place of Power in the Early Middle Ages, in: M. De Jong/F. Theuws/C. Van Rhijn (eds.), Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages, Leiden 2001, 271–290, hier 280-283.
Gregory Halfond
August 2026
Empfohlene Zitierweise:
Halfond, Gregory, "Valentinum / Valence: Interprovincial Council in Valence; ca. 583-585", in: Lexikon der Konzilien [Online-Version], August 2026; URL: http://www.konziliengeschichte.org/site/de/publikationen/lexikon/database/703.html
