INTRODUCTION

A ROMAN INSTITUTION IN A POST-ROMAN WORLD*

A Gallo-Roman Institution

In the year AD 742, (ca. 675–754) composed a letter to the newly elected Pope Zacharias (r. 741–52), in which he informed the pontiff that “old men report that the have not held a synod for eighty years.”1 Although the English bishop was exaggerating by a good four decades, he communicated an unambiguous message: it was reprehensible that the Frankish bishops were so lax in their duties as to neglect meeting collectively with their brethren for the better part of a century. Such an appalling state of aff airs could only suggest a serious state of degeneration among the Frankish episcopacy. For Boniface, the solution to the problem was obvious: new ecclesiastical councils needed to be held in order to correct the abuses of the past decades, with himself, naturally, presiding.2 It was the good fortune of Boniface that the sons of the Frankish maior domus (688–741), Carloman (d. 755) and Pippin III (ca. 714–68), agreed, and enthusias- tically sponsored a series of “reform” councils beginning in the .3

* A diff erent version of this introductory chapter was published before as “Cum Consensu Omnium: Frankish Church Councils from Clovis to Charlemagne” in History Compass, Volume 5, February issue (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2007). It has been reprinted with the permission of the publisher. 1 Boniface, S. Bonifatii et Lulli Epistolae, MGH Epistolarum III, ed. Ernst Dümmler (Berlin: Weidmann, 1892), no. 50. 2 In this same letter (no. 50), Boniface tells the pope that he already has received permission from Carloman to hold a council in the eastern half of the Frankish kingdom. 3 Timothy Reuter, “Kirchenreform und Kirchenpolitik im Zeitalter Karl Martells: Begriff e und Wirklichkeit,” in Karl Martell in seiner Zeit, ed. Jörg Jarnut, Ulrich Nonn, and Michael Richter (Sigmaringen, Germany: Jan Th orbecke Verlag, 1994), 35–59, has argued that it would be anachronistic to apply the word reform to the eighth-century councils. C.f. M. A. Claussen, Th e Reform of the Frankish Church: Chrodegang of and the Regula Canonicorum in the Eighth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), who employs the term liberally. Peter Brown, Th e Making of Western Christendom, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 437–40, prefers the more precise term correctio. On the idea of reform in early medieval Europe, see Julia Barrow, “Ideas and Applications of Reform,” in Th e Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 3, ed. Th omas F. X. Noble and Julia M. H. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 345–62. 2 introduction

In doing so, the two principes were addressing the immediate concern of consolidating their political positions in the wake of their father’s death.4 But in their convocation of church councils they also were fol- lowing a long tradition that characterized secular involvement in church aff airs in the regnum Francorum. Certainly, ecclesiastical councils had been held in Gaul prior to the establishment of Frankish royal power. Between 314 and 506, more than thirty synods were convoked in the Gallic provinces.5 Nor were the Franks innovators in permitting the princeps a role in their convoca- tion and discussions. Th is practice dated back to the reign of the fi rst Christian Roman emperor, Constantine I (r. 306–37), under whose watchful eye the ecumenical Council of Nicaea met in AD 325. Constantine also was responsible for the convocation of the fi rst Gallo- Roman synod, held in Arles in 314 at the will of the piissimus imperator, who intended for it to settle the Donatist controversy tearing apart the African church at that time.6 Neither Constantine nor his imperial or Frankish successors hesitated to instigate conciliar business and, indeed, viewed it as their prerogative. What is more, the majority of ecclesiastics in both the Roman and Frankish eras did not question this privilege.7

4 Paul Fouracre, Th e Age of Charles Martel (Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd., 2000), 169–70. 5 Th ey were Arles (314), Cologne (346), Arles (353), Béziers (356), Paris (360–1), Valence (374), Bordeaux (384), Unknown (385/6), Trier (386), Nîmes (394/6), Turin (398), Beziers (ca. 421), Unknown (429), Riez (439), Unknown (440), Orange (441), Vaison (442), Unknown (ca. 444), Arles (449), Arles (449/50), Unknown (450), Lerins (ca. 451), Arles (451/2), Vienne (451/2), Angers (453), Tours (461), Unknown (463), Vannes (ca. 465), Lyons (ca. 469), Arles (ca. 470), Lyons (ca. 470), Agde (506), and pos- sibly the so-called Second Council of Arles (442/506), on which see Ralph Mathisen, “Th e Second Council of Arles and the Spirit of Compilation and Codifi cation in Late Roman Gaul,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 5, no. 4 (1997): 511–54. Discussion of all of the preceding councils can be found in Ralph Mathisen, Ecclesiastical Factionalism and Religious Controversy in Fift h-Century Gaul (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989). For a quantitative analysis of the Gallo-Roman councils, see Peter Gassmann, “Der Episkopat in Gallien im 5. Jahrhundert” (Ph.D. diss., Rheinischen Friedrich Wilhelms Universität zu Bonn, 1977), 260–3. On the continuity between the fourth- and fi ft h-century Gallic councils with those held under the Franks, see Hans Barion, Das fränkisch-deutsche Synodalrecht des Frühmittelalters (Bonn: Ludwig Röhrscheid Verlag, 1931), 202; J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, Th e Frankish Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 107; William M. Daly, “Clovis: How Barbarian, How Pagan?” Speculum 69, no. 3 (1994): 657. 6 Arles (314), Preface. All citations of the Gallo-Roman councils (pre-511) are from Concilia Galliae A.314–A.506, ed. Charles Munier, CCSL 148 (Turnhout, : Brepols, 1963). 7 Jean Gaudemet, La formation du droit séculier et du droit de l’Eglise aux IVe et Ve siècles (Paris: Sirey, 1957), 136, notes that not even Pope Leo the Great contested the right of the Roman emperors to convoke councils.