CHALON-SUR-SAÔNE, COUNCILS OF

Various national (Merovingian), provincial, and diocesan councils held at the former diocesan seat of Chalon-sur-Saône (Latin, Cabillonum ) in the Province of Lyons. In 579 Guntram, King of Orléans, convoked there a national council that deposed the bishops of Embrun and Gap for armed violence. In 603 another national council, held at the instigation of Queen Brunhilde of Austrasia and Abp. Aridius of Lyons, deposed Bp. desiderius of vienne. Another national council, held sometime between 643 and 652, promulgated 20 disciplinary canons, prescribing fidelity to the Nicene Creed and the ancient canons and making provision for the election and authority of bishops, the administration of Church property, the government of monasteries, and Christian morals. It prohibited abbots and monks from going to the king without episcopal permission; it forbade simony, selling slaves outside the realm, and farm labor on Sunday; and it recommended private sacramental confession with imposed penances. In 813 charlemagne ordered reform councils to be held throughout his empire, at Mainz, Reims, Tours, Arles, and Chalon-sur-Sa™ne. The 66 bishops and abbots of the Lyonnais who met at Chalon urged cathedral schools for future clerics; forbade simony; recommended the benedictine rule for monasteries, the restoration of public penance, private confession to God and a priest and the imposition of canonical penance; forbade masters to dissolve slaves' marriages; required Communion by all on Holy Thursday; and prescribed for monasteries of women. The canons appeared in the second capitulary of the Diet of Aachen (813); Gratian's Decretum also contains some of them. Other provincial councils were held at Chalon in 873, 894, and 1056. In 1064 a provincial council under peter damian who had been sent by Pope Alexander II at the request of hugh of cluny, ended the claims of the Bp. Drogo of Mâcon by confirming Cluny's exemption from diocesan authority. In 1072 Alexander II's legate held a council there to oppose simony, with prelates from the Provinces of Vienne and Besançon in attendance.

Bibliography: c. perry, Histoire civile et ecclésiastique … de Chalon-sur-Saône (Chalon-sur-Saône 1659). c. j. von hefele, Histoire des conciles d'après les documents originaux, tr. and continued by h. leclercq, 10 v. in 19 (Paris 1907–38) 3:201, 246–247, 282, 1143; 4:104, 636, 687, 697, 733, 1122, 1231, 1283. p. gras, Dictionnaire d'histoire et de Géographie ecclésiastiques, ed. a. baudrillart et al. (Paris 1912–) 12:294. Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, Tables générales, ed. a. vacant et al., 15 v. (Paris 1951–) 704.

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