Interval Between The Fifth And Sixth Oecumenical Synods, Until The Beginning Of The Monothelite Controversies.

CHAPTER -The Synods Until The End Of The Sixth Century.

SEC. 284. THE FRANKISH SYNODS ABOUT THE MIDDLE OF THE SIXTH CENTURY.

FROM the close of the previous period there elapsed more than a whole century, before Christendom again enjoyed the grand spectacle of an OEcumenical Council. In so much greater number we meet with a series of smaller, yet in many respects not unimportant Synods; and if hitherto the principal localities of such assemblies has been in the East, the majority are now celebrated in the West, especially in Spain and in France.

Soon after the outbreak of the controversy on the three chapters, and before the assembling of the fifth OEcumenical Council, five Synods were held in France, the description of which has been deferred to this place, in order not to interrupt the connection in the history of the controversy on the three chapters.

To the year 549 belongs the great fifth Synod of Orleans, the minutes of which were subscribed on October 28 of that year by seven archbishops, forty-three bishops, and twenty-one representatives of bishops. The seven archbishops were, according to the order followed in the minutes:

Sacerdos of Lyons (probably president), Aurelian of Arles, Hesychius of Vienne, Nicetius of Treves (Trier), Desideratus of Bourges, Aspasius of Elusa (Eause), and Constitutus of Sens. The bishop of the diocese of Orleans was not present, as he had been exiled on false accusations, and our Synod had been called by King Childebert I. of Paris (son of Chlodwig), among other things, also for the judging of his matters. He was found to be innocent, and restored. Besides this, a heresy which had become widespread in the neighborhood of Orleans is said to have rendered the calling of the Council necessary. The old biography of Bishop Domitian of Trajectum on the Maas, edited by the Bollandists (ad 7 Maii ), to which we are indebted for this information, speaks of the Arian heresy. But the first canon of our Synod refers to Monophysitism and Nestorianism, and as it falls quite in the time of the controversy about the three chapters, we may assume that the defenders of the three chapters reproached their opponents with Monophysitism, whilst these threw back the reproach of Nestorianism, or that the two parties had actually relapsed into these heresies. The biography goes on: “Immediately after the opening of the Synod the heretics had maintained their heresy with great pomp of eloquence, but Bishop Domitian, chosen by his colleagues as speaker, had overcome them by testimonies from Holy Scriptures, and had converted very many. The stiff-necked had been excommunicated, and exiled by the princes.”

The twenty-four canons of this Synod ordain:— 1. The rejection of the Euctychian and Nestorian heresies. 2. No bishop shall excommunicate an orthodox man for unimportant causes. 3. No bishop, priest, or deacon may have a strange woman in his house; and even women related to him must not be in his house at unsuitable hours. 4. If a cleric of any degree whatever returns again to the nuptial bed, he shall for his whole lifetime be deprived of the dignity of his Ordo (ab honore accepti ordinis ), and deposed from his office (ab officio ); but the communion must be given to him. 5. No bishop may advance any cleric or lector, or claim him as his own, unless his bishop assents. If, however, he does so, he must not say Mass for six months, and the person promoted by him shall be suspended ab honore vel officio , according to the judgment of his own bishop (vel = et , see vol. 3, sec. 164). 6. No bishop must ordain a slave or freedman without the assent of his master or emancipator. If he does so he must not say Mass for six months, and the person ordained by him must be given back to his master, but must be treated by him in accordance with his (clerical) position. If this is not done the bishop must give the master two other slaves and demand back the ordained person for his own Church. 7. When slaves are liberated by their masters the Church must protect their liberty. 8. If the bishop has died in a city, no other bishop must ordain clerics or dedicate altars in that city or in the rural parishes during the vacancy of the see, or take away anything of the property of the Church. 9. No layman must be ordained bishop within a year of his conversion (see sec. 237, c. 2). Within this period he shall receive accurate instruction in clerical discipline and rules from learned and approved men. 10. No one must obtain a bishopric by presents or purchase, but with the assent of the King after his election by clergy and laity, in accordance with the ancient canons; the new bishop shall be consecrated by the metropolitan or his representative in union with the comprovincials. If anyone purchases a bishopric he is to be deposed. 11. No one must be forced upon a diocese as bishop against their will, and the citizens and clergy may not be constrained by the powerful to assent to such an intrusion. One who is intruded by force loses the episcopal dignity forever. 12. No bishop shall during his lifetime have a successor given to him, or another bishop put in his place, unless he is deposed for a capital offense. 13. No one must keep back or alienate what has been given to churches, monasteries, xenodochia [guest-houses for the reception of pilgrims, etc.], or the poor. If anyone does so he shall, in accordance with the old canons, as a murderer of the poor (secs. 220 and 222), be excommunicated until he gives back what he has withdrawn. 14. No bishop or other cleric, and in general no one, must appropriate or take in possession the goods of another church. 15. In regard to the xenodochion, which King Childebert and his consort Ultrogotho founded in Lyons, the bishop of Lyons must claim none of its goods for himself or his church. And, in general, if anyone of any position attacks the rights of this xenodochion, he shall be smitten with perpetual anathema (cf. Kellner, Das Buss- und Strafverfahren , Trier 1863, S. 84). 16. Whoever wishes to take back what he himself or one of his forefathers has presented to priests or churches or other holy places, shall, as a murderer of the poor (see c. 13), be smitten with excommunication. 17. If anyone has a dispute with a bishop or administrator of Church property (actor ), let him first endeavor to have a peaceful understanding with him. If he does not succeed, let him appeal to the metropolitan. If the accused bishop, after two admonitions of the metropolitan, neither satisfies his opponent nor himself appears before the metropolitan, he must be shut out a caritate of the metropolitan (see vol. 3, secs. 164 and 200, c. 20, note 1), until he appears and gives satisfaction as to the contention. If it is shown that he was molested without reason, the unjust accuser shall be excommunicated for a year.

If, however, the metropolitan has been approached twice by one of his comprovincial bishops in a case and has not heard him, the bishop may bring his affair before the next Synod, and that which the comprovincials declare to be right he shall observe. 18. Renewal of c. 19 of the second Synod of Arles (vol. 3, sec. 164). 19. Girls who enter a convent of their own free will, or are offered by their parents, must remain a year in the garment that they wore on their admission. In a convent in which they are not continuously confined, they must wear the garment they brought with them three years, and not till then receive the habit of the order. If, subsequently, they go out and marry, they, together with their husbands, must be excommunicated. If they separate again from these, they may again obtain communion. 20. Prisoners should be visited by the archdeacon or provost of the Church every Sunday, so that their need may, in accordance with the command of God, be lightened by mercy. The bishop must appoint a faithful and diligent person to care for the needs of prisoners. The necessary cost they must receive from the Church. 21. The bishop must specially care for lepers, for their food and clothing. 22. If a slave has fled into a church (for asylum), in accordance with the ancient ordinances (sec. 224), he must not be given back until his master has assured him of forgiveness on oath. If the master does not keep his promise, and in anyway tortures his slave, he must be shut out from all intercourse with the faithful. If, however, he has made that promise, and the slave will not leave the church, then his master may take him by force. If the master is a heathen or a sectary, he must produce several good Christian persons as guarantors for his promise, that he will forgive his servant. 23. A provincial Synod shall take place every year. 24. The old canons shall remain in force. Soon after the end of the fifth Synod of Orleans, probably in the same year, 549, ten of the bishops who had been there met in a new Council at Clermont in Auvergne, Arvernense II ., among them the four archbishops named above, of Vienne, Treves, Bourges, and Elusa. The real reason of this new assembly is unknown, and we know of it only that it repeated the canons of the Synod of Orleans. According to the codex which Sirmond found at Toulouse, they had done this only in reference to the first fifteen canons and the seventeenth; but Mansi discovered a second codex which contained an excerpt from all of these canons, excepting only the one before last, and ascribed them to our Synod of Clermont. Still earlier Peter de Marca and Peter la Lande had obtained from the archives of the church of Urgel (in Spain) the Praefatio of our Synod, which is nothing else but the uninteresting Praefatio of the fifth Council of Orleans increased by four lines. On the 1st of June, probably of the year 550, a Synod was held at Toul, by command of King Theodebald of Austrasia, under the presidency of Archbishop Nicetius of Treves. The Acts are no longer extant, but we still possess a statement relating to this assembly from Archbishop Mappinius of Reims to Nicetius, to the effect that King Theodebald (whom Mappinius calls his “Son and Lord”) had summoned him to Toul to a Synod on the 1st of June without saying anything of its purpose. He had therefore immediately petitioned for further information, and had learnt that Nicetius had been in different ways oppressed and persecuted by certain Frankish magnates whom he had excommunicated on account of incestuous marriages. Mappinius assures him now of his sympathy, but does not conceal his view that he ought to have applied to him (his neighbor metropolitan) rather than to the King. Finally, he remarks that he had received the King’s second letter only on the 27th or 28th of May, and therefore it was impossible that he should appear at Toul on the 1st of June. It seems almost as though he had been unwilling to come, as Reims and Toul are only about forty hours distant, and both belonged to Austrasia.

A quite short account of a Synod at Metz we owe to St. Gregory of Tours (Hist . Franc . 4, 6, 7). He relates: “After the death of Bishop St. Gallus of Clermont, the bishops who were present for the funeral wanted to consecrate Cato, a priest of that place, as his successor. Out of pride, however, he refused to accept consecration from them, saying: ‘Return to your cities, nam ego canonice assumpturus sum honorem .’” What Cato meant Gregory does not tell us, but he adds: “Elected by the majority of the clergy of Clermont to be bishop, even before his ordination Cato oppressed Archdeacon Cautinus, on which account he fled to King Theodebald. The King now summoned a Synod to Metz, and by this Cautinus was consecrated bishop of Clermont.” The time of this Synod cannot be determined more exactly than that it could not have taken place before the year 549 nor after 555; for in 549 Bishop Gallus of Clermont was present at the Synod of Orleans just mentioned, and in 555 King Theodebald of Austrasia died.

About the same time falls the second Synod of Paris. There were present six metropolitans: Sapaudus of Arles (the successor of St.

Aurelian, sec. 261), who was probably president, Hesychius of Vienne, Nicetius of Treves (Trier), Probian of Bourges, Constitutus of Sens, and Leontius of Bordeaux, together with twenty-one other bishops. The synodal decree says: “King Childebert convoked the Synod in order to arrange several matters affecting the Church, and particularly to provide for the see of Paris, whose bishop, Sassaric, had recently been deposed.

The Acts passed in regard to him were read; and when they came to the place at which Sassaric confessed his fault before several bishops and other clergy (the judges), the latter were requested by the Synod to make a fresh declaration on the subject, and declared that Sassaric had, in fact, made such a voluntary confession. Another bishop, Ardacius, further testified that he had heard the same from Sassaric’s own mouth. Thereupon the Synod unanimously confirmed the sentence of the previous judges, that Sassaric should henceforth live in a monastery, and according to his own confession deserved deposition, since the offense of which he had been guilty (its nature is not mentioned) was regarded as capital by the old canons. The archbishop (of Sens), however, was requested, in accordance with the ordinance of the recent Synod of Orleans in regard to capital offenses (canon 12), to ordain a new bishop for Paris. So far the minutes go. From another source we know that now Eusebius was appointed bishop of Paris. As, however, St. Germanus was present as bishop of Paris at the third Synod of Paris, A.D. 557, as we shall shortly see, Eusebius must have been dead in that year; so that Le Cointe, Remi Ceillier, and others have thought it advisable to remove the second Synod of Paris to the year 551, and not, with Sirmond, Hardouin, and others, to place it in the year 555.

To the same year, 551, belonged also the Synod of Elusa, held by Archbishop Aspasius of Elusa (Eause) with his suffragans. This Synod was formerly entirely unknown to us until Professor Dr. Friedrich published its minutes from a parchment codex in the Court and State Library at Munich, belonging to the eighth or ninth century (formerly belonging to the monastery of Diessen). Dr. Friedrich’s essay, Drei unedirte Concilien der Merovingerzeit [“Three Unedited Councils of the time of the Merovingians”], appeared A.D. 1867. The seven canons of this Synod are, in their principal contents, of the following purport:— 1. Quicumque post acceptam poenitentiam ad thorum uxorum suarum, sicut canis ad vomitum, redisse probantur (see sec. 211), vel aliis, tam viri quam feminae, se illicite conjunxisse noscuntur, tam a communione quam a limitibus ecclesiae vel convivio catholicorum sequestratos esse cognoscant. 2. Si quis vero episcopus, presbyter, diaconus secum extraneam mulierem praeter has personas, quas sancta synodus (sec. 222) in solatio clericorum esse constituit, habere forte praesumpserit, aut ad cellarii secretum, tam ingenuam quam ancillam, ad nullam (? ullam) familiaritatem habere voluerit, deposito omni sacerdotali sacrificio remotus se a liminibus sanctae ecclesiae vel ( = et, see 5th Syn. of Orleans, c. 5, above) ab omni conloquio catholicorum suprascriptae synodi ordine feriantur. 3. De incantatoribus volens (?), qui instinctu diaboli cornua praecantare dicuntur, si superiores forte personae (sint), a liminibus excommunicatione pellantur ecclesia, humiliores vero personae vel servi, correpti ad judicium fustigentur, ut si se timore Dei corrigi forte dissimulant, velut scriptum est, verberibus corrigantur. 4. Sacerdotum vero vel ( = et) omnium clericorum negotia ( = processes), ut non apud laicos, nisi apud suos comprovinciales episcopos suas exerceant actiones, sanctae synodi Arausicanae praecepta convenit custodire, ea videlicet ratione, ut si quis suprascripta praecepta contempserit, excommunicatione omnium ac detestatione dignus habeatur. Pariter, ut si quis spreto suo pontifice ad laici patrocinia fortasse confugerit, cum fuerit a suo episcopo repetitus, et laicus eum defensare voluerit, similis eos excommunicationis poena percellat. 5. De ordinatione vero clericorum id convenit observari, ut cum presbyter aut diaconus ab episcopo petitur ordinandus, praecedentibus diebus viii. populus quemquam ordinandum esse cognoscat, et si qua vitia in eo populus forte esse cognoscit, ante ordinationem dicere non desistat; ut si nullus comprobatione certa contradicturus exstiterit, absque ulla hesitatione benedictionem inspector mereatur accipere. 6. Si quis vero pro remedio animae suae mancipia vel loca sanctis ecclesiis vel monasteriis offerre curaverit, conditionem quam qui donaverit scripserit, in omnibus observetur, pariter et de familiis ecclesiae id intuitu pietatis et justitiae convenit observari, ut familiae Dei leviore, quam privatorum servi, opere teneantur, ita ut quarta tributi vel quodlibet operis sui, benedicentes Deo, ex praesente tempore sibi a sacerdotibus concessa esse congaudeant. 7. Nam sicut patrum sanctorum nostrorum praecepta declarant, semel in anno sanctas congregationes episcoporum per loca, qua convenetit, specialiter convenit observari; quam rem si quis nostrorum fortasse contempserit, usque ad aliam congregationem sit (a) charitate fratrum suspensus. Kal. Feb. anno xl. regni domini nostri Hildiberthi et Hlotari regis.

Besides the Metropolitan Aspasius, the subscribers were Julian (of Bigorra), Proculeianus (of Auscii = Auch), Liberius (of Acqs), Theodore (of Conserans), Amelius (of Cominges), and three other suffragans whose sees cannot be ascertained.

The first two Synods which followed immediately after the fifth OEcumenical Council were, like it, occasioned by the controversy on the three chapters, and have therefore already been described by us (secs. and 278). I refer to the Synods of Jerusalem and Aquileia, between 553 and 555, of which the former agreed with the fifth OEcumenical Council, while the latter opposed it. Whether the bishops of Illyricum, under the Metropolitan Frontinus of Salona in Dalmatia, also held a Synod there, and gave common expression in opposition to the decrees of the fifth OEcumenical Council, must remain doubtful (sec. 277 above).

The series of Frankish Synods was again continued, in the year 554, by the fifth of Arles. The short minutes still extant, of date June 29, 554 (fortythird year of Childebert the son of Chlodwig), show that Archbishop Sapandus of Arles presided. Besides him, eighteen other bishops and representatives of bishops subscribed, most, but not all, belonging to the ecclesiastical province of Arles. The Praefatio of the minutes speaks of the provincial Synods, that by them the old canons should be brought again to remembrance, and new ordinances should be drawn up.

Canon 1 orders that all the comprovincial bishops, in regard to the oblations which are offered in the church, should be required to imitate the practice of the Metropolitan Church of Arles, under penalty of exclusion a charitate fratrum . (See c. 17 of Orleans 5, above.) 2. Monasteries and the discipline of monks belong to the bishop in whose diocese the monastery is situated. 3. No abbot must, without permission of the bishop, be absent front his monastery for a length of time. 4. No priest must depose a deacon or subdeacon without knowledge of the bishop. If he does so, the person deposed shall be received back into communion, and he who deposed him shall be excommunicated for a year. 5. The bishop must have a care of the convents for women in his city, and the abbess must do nothing against the rule. 6. The clergy must not deteriorate the property of the Church which the bishop intrusts to them. If they do so, the younger of them (under the subdeacon) must be chastised, the elder must be regarded as murderers of the poor. 7. No bishop must advance a strange clergyman to any ecclesiastical rank without a letter from his bishop. If he does so, the person ordained loses the dignity received (ab honore , quem acceperit , remotus ), and must not discharge the function committed to him; the person ordaining will be excluded from communion for three months. Cf. vol. 3, secs. 109, 113, 162, 164; above, 209, 237, 246; particularly canon 20 of Chalcedon, note 1, vol. 3, sec. 200.

We know but very little of a Council in Britanny (the place is unknown), probably in the year 555, at which Bishop Macliavus or Maclivus of Vannes was punished with excommunication because, after the death of his brother Chanaus, Count of Britanny, he abandoned the clerical position, assumed the government of the country, and was restored to his wife, whom he had married before his entrance into the clerical state. In the same way nothing is known exactly of the holding of the third Synod at Paris. As, however, Bishop Euphronius of Tours was present there, and the seventh year of his episcopate coincides with the second year of King Sigebert, i .e . with the year 563, we assume the year 556 as the first year of the administration of that bishop, and in that case our Synod could not have been held before 556. Sirmond and others place it therefore in the year 557. Archbishop Probianus of Bourges presided. Besides him there were present Archbishop Praetextatus of Rouen and thirteen other bishops, scarcely any of whose sees are named. The most famous was St. Germanus of Paris. The ten canons have the following contents:— 1. If anyone has Church property in his possession in an unrighteous way, and holds it back, he shall be excommunicated until he ceases from his fault. Such people are murderers of the poor (see above in this sec.). The bishop, however, before he punishes them, must send forth an admonitio manifesta , so that the unrighteous possessor may be able to give back the property of the Church. If the latter neglects this restitution, and if he has to be compelled to it, then a speedy chastisement shall fall upon the robber. Moreover, no one, on pain of excommunication, in order to retain any Church property, shall maintain that it lies in another kingdom (than the Church to which it belongs), for the power of God knows no boundaries of kingdoms. So no one must retain any Church property under the pretext that it was granted to him in former times by the King. In opposition to such people the bishops in former times would have supported their claims upon the canons, and taken possession; but now, almost overwhelmed by losses, they must finally do so. If the unrighteous possessor of any Church property lives in another diocese, then shall the bishop (whose Church property he has in possession) inform the other bishop of it, so that the latter may either, by his exhortations, bring him to a better mind, or inflict canonical punishment upon him. If anyone, in the earlier times of the schism, has taken possession of Church goods, with permission of King Chlodwig, of blessed memory, and left it to his children, these must restore them. The bishops must not only preserve the documents of the diocese, but also the property of the Church, and must practically defend it. 2. In the same way as robbers of Church property must those be punished who encroach upon the property of the bishop. 3. A bishop, too, must not possess foreign property; he must restore it even without regard to the fact that the King has given it to him. 4. Incestuous marriages are forbidden, namely, those with the widow of one’s brother, with one’s stepmother, with the widow of one’s uncle (father or mother’s brother), with the sister of one’s wife, with one’s daughter-in-law, with one’s aunt (mother or father’s sister), with one’s stepdaughter and step-granddaughter. 5. No one must marry a virgin consecrated to God, either by rape or by courtship. So neither must marriage be contracted with those who have laid aside secular garments, and have vowed widowhood or virginity, on penalty of permanent excommunication. 6. No one must ask foreign property of the King. No, one must seize a widow or a maiden, or ask her of the King, without the will of her parents, under penalty of excommunication. 7. No bishop must receive one who has been excommunicated by another bishop. 8. No one must be forced upon the city as bishop unless he has been elected with entire freedom by laity and clergy. He must not be appointed by command of the Prince, or in any other way against the will of the metropolitan and the comprovincials. If anyone ventures, leaning upon the royal command, to force himself into this high place, he must not be received by the comprovincials. If a comprovincial comes into union with him, he must be shut out from the communion of his colleagues. In regard to the dedication of bishops already accomplished, the Synod decrees that the metropolitan, with his comprovincials, or the neighboring bishops chosen by him in common consultation, shall decide (as to their validity). 9. If descendants of slaves have been appointed (by their dying masters) to certain services at the graves, whether they are given over to the heirs or to the Church for protection, the conditions upon which they were discharged (set free), (so) the will of the departed in regard to them must in all ways be fulfilled. In case the Church entirely frees them from these services for the exchequer, they and their descendants must remain under the permanent protection of the Church, and pay money for protection. 10. All absent bishops are required to subscribe the foregoing ordinances. Some other canons attributed to our Synod by the collectors of canons, Burchard of Worms and Ivo of Chartres, Mansi has placed in his collection; but they certainly belong to the time of Lewis the Pious. Cf.

Mansi, l .c . p. 749 sqq.

SEC. 285. THE SYNODS BETWEEN THE YEARS 560 AND 575.

The Collections of Councils mention three ancient British Synods at Llandaff in the year 560, held by Bishop Oudoceus in this his episcopal city in South Wales, in order to pronounce excommunication on three chieftains (Kings) for murders committed, and to impose upon them penances after their professing penitence. The brief accounts of them which have come to us show that they were only diocesan Synods, which were a little removed from each other in time, but the date of which cannot be more accurately given. The information given by the Libellus Synodicus on two Synods at Constantinople and Antioch is uncertain. Of these the former was held A.D. 565, under the Emperor Justinian and by his wish, and confirmed the doctrine of the Monophysite Julian of Halicarnassus that the body of Christ was incorruptible (see sec. 208), and had as its consequence the banishment of the Patriarch Eutychius of Constantinople, who refused to subscribe. The other at Antioch anathematized the opponents of the Council of Chalcedon. In the year 562 a Synod was held in Ireland, at Teilte (now Teltowe, a village near Kells, in County Meath). St. Columba, of a royal house, abbot of Derry and other Irish monasteries, when he was on a visit to his former teacher, Abbot Finnian, had privately made a copy of his Psalter . Finnian claimed this as his property (because a copy of his book), and the Irish Over-King Diarmid, Columba’s cousin, decided for Finnian. By this, and also through violation of the Church’s right of asylum by the King, Columba was so embittered that he stirred up an insurrection against him.

It came to a bloody battle, and Diarmid was forced to flee. In consequence of this the Synod of Teilte, without inviting Columba, passed a sentence of excommunication upon him, because he had been guilty of causing bloodshed. Columba himself appeared at the Synod, and the excommunication was removed. But it was laid upon Columba that he must convert as many heathens as there were Christians who had perished through his fault. He therefore left his native country, and became the apostle of Scotland. The manuscript on which so much depended, was subsequently venerated by the Irish as a kind of national, military, and religious palladium, and still exists in the possession of the O’Donnell family. The Synod of Braga, A.D. 563 (in the Spanish province of Galicia), is called the second at that place, reckoning as the first the supposed Synod of A.D. 411 (see vol. 3, sec. 118). There were present seven bishops of the province of Galicia, with their metropolitan, Lucretius of Braga, and many priests and clerics. At the very beginning the metropolitan declared that the bishops had long wished for a Synod, but that it had now, for the first time, become possible through the approval of King Ariamir. Galicia was occupied by the Suevi, and formed a separate kingdom under Arian princes. These were naturally averse to the meeting of the orthodox bishops in a Synod; but the case was altered when Ariamir, whom Gregory of Tours calls Charrarich, converted about A.D. 560 by St. Martin, bishop of Dumium, came over to the Catholic Church. Then was held the Synod of Braga, May 1, 563. On the proposal of the President, they first took up the subject of the Faith, in opposition to the Priscillianist heresy.

We have already seen (vol. 3, sec. 167) that Pope Leo the Great called upon the Spanish bishops to take vigorous measures against the Priscillian heresy, and that, on his inducement, two great Spanish Synods occupied themselves with this matter, one at Toledo (of the bishops of the civil provinces of Tarragona, Carthagena, Lusitania, and Baetica), and the other in the province of Galicia (in municipio Celenensi , vol. 3, sec. 167). Only of the former do we still possess the Acts, namely, a creed and eighteen canons. Both documents were now again read at Braga, and seventeen new capitula added in condemnation of the Priscillianist heresy, with the introductory remark: If anyone, cleric, monk, or layman, so think or defend such doctrine, he shall be cut off as an unworthy member from the body of the Catholic Church. The canons are as follows:— 1. If anyone does not confess that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are three persons of one substance, or power, or might, as the Catholic and apostolic Church teaches; and if, further, anyone recognizes only a single Person, so thatHE who is the Son is also the Father and the Paraclete, as Sabellius and Priscillian teach, let him be anathema. 2. If anyone introduces any names of the Godhead, besides those of the Holy Trinity, maintaining that in the Godhead there is a trinity of the Trinity, as the Gnostics and Priscillianists teach, let him be anathema. 3. If anyone says that the Son of God, our Lord, did not exist before\parHE was born of Mary, as Paul of Samosata, Photinus, and Priscillian taught, let him be anathema. 4. If anyone does not reverence the birthday of Christ, but fasts on this day and on Sunday, because he does not believe that Christ was born in true human nature, like Cerdo, Marcion, Manichaeus, and Priscillian, let him be anathema. 5. If anyone believes that the souls of men and angels have come from the substance of God, as Manichaeus and Priscillian maintain, let him be anathema. 6. If anyone says that the souls of men sinned first in the heavenly abodes, and therefore were cast down into human bodies upon the earth, let him be anathema. 7. If anyone denies that the devil was at the beginning a good angel, created by God, and maintains that he came up from chaos and darkness, and had no creator, but is himself the principal and the substance of evil, as Manichaeus and Priscillian taught, let him be anathema. 8. If anyone believes that, because the devil has produced some things in the world, he thus also makes, by his own power, thunder and lightning, and storms, and drought, as Priscillian taught, let him be anathema. 9. If anyone believes that the souls and bodies of men are subjected by destiny to certain stars, as the heathen and Priscillian taught, etc. 10. If anyone believes that the twelve signs (of the zodiac), which the mathematicians are wont to observe, are distributed over the particular members of the soul and the body, and assigned to the names of the patriarchs, as Priscillian taught, etc. 11. If anyone condemns matrimony, and abhors procreation, like Manichaeus and Priscillian, etc. 12. If anyone says that the formation of the human body is a work of the devil, and that conception in the womb of woman is produced by the action of demons, and therefore does not believe in the resurrection of the flesh, like Manichaeus and Priscillian, etc. 13. If anyone says that the production of all flesh generally is not a work of God, but of evil angels, as Manichaeus and Priscillian taught, etc. 14. If anyone declares flesh meat, which God has given to man for use, to be unclean, and so abstains from it, not for the chastening of the body, but because of its supposed uncleanness, so that he does not use even vegetables cooked with flesh, like Manichaeus and Priscillian, etc. 15. If a cleric or monk adopts any other woman besides his mother, or sister, or aunt (thia ), or other near blood relation, and keeps them with him and dwells with them, as the Priscillianist sect teaches, etc. 16. If anyone on the Thursday before Easter, at the Caena Domini , does not, at the appointed time, after hours, keep Mass (missas non tenet ) fasting in the church, but, after the manner of the Priscillianist sect, keeps the festival of that day, after terce, with their fast discontinued by a Mass for the dead, etc. 17. If anyone reads the Scriptures, as falsified by Priscillian in accordance with his heresy, or the treatises of Dictinius which he wrote before his confession, or any other books of heretics, which they have invented under the names of patriarchs, prophets, or apostles, and receives or defends their impious fabrications, etc.

After the completion of this first business of the Synod, many older disciplinary canons of OEcumenical and special Synods were read, and also a letter from Pope Vigilius to Profuturus, the former bishop of Braga, of date 538, with reverent recognition of the authority of the apostolic see; and then twenty-two new capitula were drawn up for the securing of greater uniformity in ecclesiastical matters: 1. One and the same kind of psalmody shall be used in morning and evening divine services everywhere, and nowhere, particularly not in monasteries, must special uses prevail. 2. At the vigils or ( = and) Masses of festal days the same lessons shall be read everywhere in the church. 3. Bishops must greet the people in the same manner as the priests, with Dominus vobiscum , as has been the practice in the whole of the East since the time of the apostles, and they must not adopt the alteration introduced by the Priscillianists. 4. Mass must be celebrated everywhere in accordance with the formulary (Ordo ), which was sent in writing from Rome, and received by Profuturus, a former metropolitan of Braga. 5. So in regard to baptism. 6. Bishops shall sit according to the time of their ordination; but the metropolitan has the first rank. 7. All Church revenues are to be divided into three parts: for the bishop, for the other clergy, for the repair and the luminaria of the church (sec. 222). Of the latter portion the archpresbyter, or archdeacon who administers for him, must give an account to the bishop. 8. No bishop must ordain a strange cleric without written permission from his bishop. 9. Deacons are not to wear the Ovarium (Stole) under the tunic (tunicella, dalmatic), but on the shoulder (in sight), because otherwise they could not be distinguished from the subdeacons. 10. Not every lector, but only the subdeacons are allowed to bear the holy vessels of the altar. 11. Lectors are not allowed to sing in church in secular clothing, nor to wear long hair. 12. Besides the Psalms of the Bible of the Old and New Testaments, nothing poetical shall be sung in the church, as the holy canons prescribe. 13. No layman may enter the sanctuary of the church, but only clerics for the reception of the communion. 14. Clerics who eat no flesh, must partake of vegetables cooked in flesh, in order to remove the suspicion of Priscillianism, under penalty of excommunication and deposition. 15. No one must hold intercourse with excommunicated persons. 16. No commemoration of suicides is to be made at the sacrifice, nor shall their bodies be buried with psalmody. So also with regard to criminals executed. 17. So with catechumens who die before baptism. 18. Corpses must not be interred within churches, but, for the most part, outside the walls of the church. 19. A priest who ventures, after being forbidden, to consecrate the chrism, or to consecrate churches or altars, shall be deposed from his office (vol. 2, sec. 112, c. 20; and 406 below). 20. No layman is to be made priest until he has learnt the ecclesiastical discipline a whole year as lector or subdeacon, and has risen through all the orders up to the Sacerdotium . 21. That which has been presented by the faithful, or which has been offered for prayers for the departed, must be collected by a cleric, and distributed, once or twice a year, among all the clerics, since a great inequality and thence discord arises, when each one is allowed to retain for himself the offerings which fall in his week. 22. The more ancient canons read in this Council must be observed by all, under pain of deposition.

At the close, the metropolitan requested the bishops individually to publish these ordinances in their dioceses, and to excommunicate all clerics and monks infected with the Priscillianist heresy, under penalty of proper excommunication. For the carrying out of the 7th canon of the third Synod of Paris, Leontius, metropolitan of Bordeaux, assembled the bishops of his province, in the year 563, at Xaintes (Concilium Santonense , i.), in order to depose Emerius, the bishop of this city, because he had been intruded in an uncanonical manner. King Chlotar I. had ordered him to be consecrated without the assent of the metropolitan and in his absence. In his place the Synod raised Heraclius, a priest of Bordeaux, to be bishop of Xaintes, and sent him to Paris, to King Charibert, in order to obtain his assent. On his way thither he requested Euphronius, archbishop of Tours, to subscribe the synodal decree; but he refused. It was still worse in Paris; for King Charibert was furious with them for wanting to invalidate an ordinance of his father Chlotar. He caused Heraclius to be placed on a car full of thorns, sent him into exile, restored Emerius, and fined Archbishop Leontius a thousand pieces of gold, and the other members of the Synod in proportion. So it is related by Gregory of Tours, Hist . Franc . lib. 4, C. 26. Gregory of Tours (ibid . lib. 5, c. 21) also refers to the second Synod of Lyons, which took place A.D. 567. Occasion for it was given by two bishops, Salonius of Embrun and Sagittarius of Gap (Vapingum ), who had been guilty of several acts of violence, murders, adulteries, and other crimes. In particular, they had fallen upon Victor, bishop of Augusta Tricastinorum (St. Paul de trois Chateaux), as he was celebrating his birthday, with an armed band, ill-treated and robbed him, and killed his servants. When King Guntram of Orleans learnt this, he ordered the Synod of Lyons to be held. Those two bishops were here found guilty and deposed. They appealed to Rome, and Pope John III. ordered them to be restored, which, in fact, was carried out by the King. Immediately they became reconciled to Bishop Victor, who again entered into communion with them. For this reason he was put out of communion by the bishops who had been present at our Synod, because he had renewed intercourse with one whom they had excommunicated, and this on a charge preferred by himself. So far Gregory of Tours. The matter of the two bishops was handled anew at the second Synod of Chalons, A.D. 579. (See below, sec. 286.)

The second matter of business at our Synod of Lyons was the drawing up of six canons: 1. If bishops from one ecclesiastical province have a controversy, they must be content with the sentence of the metropolitan and the comprovincials. If the quarrel is between bishops of different provinces, their metropolitans shall meet and decide the matter. If a bishop is injured by a colleague; or by anyone else, he must be defended by all his brethren in common. 2. That which bishops or other clerics have left by testament to the Church, or to anyone, shall remain unalterably in force, even if it is not quite in accordance with the ordo of the secular laws. Whoever interferes with such a legacy is shut out from all communion with the faithful until he makes restitution. 3. Whoever makes, or endeavors to make, a slave of one who has long lived in peace without question as to his (free) position, is to be excommunicated until he makes restitution. 4. If anyone is excommunicated by a bishop, he shall be regarded as excommunicated by all other bishops, until he who excommunicated him thinks him worthy of being received back. 5. That which former bishops have granted to any clerics, either from Church property in usufruct, or from their own property, to become theirs, future bishops must not venture to withdraw. If, however, these clerics have done wrong, the punishments shall be inflicted according to the quality of the person, and in accordance with the canons, on their persons, and not on their possessions. 6. In the first week of the ninth month, before the first Sunday in the month, all churches shall hold processions for intercession, in the same way as they are held, according to the ordinance of the Fathers, before the festival of the Ascension.

The minutes are subscribed by the two metropolitans, Philip of Vienne and Nicetius of Lyons, and also by six bishops and six representatives of bishops from the provinces of Vienne, Lyons, Trier (Treves), and Arles. Almost contemporaneous with the Synod just named was the second at Tours, where, on November 17, 567, in the Basilica of St. Martin, nine bishops, among them Euphronius, archbishop of Tours (President); Praetextatus, archbishop of Rouen, and St. Germanus of Paris, met, with the consent of King Charibert, for the restoration of ecclesiastical discipline. They summed up their ordinances in twenty-seven canons:— 1. Two provincial Synods shall be held annually, or if this should prove impossible, as in the past, then every year one at least. Only sickness, and nothing besides, not even a royal command, excuses nonappearance.

If a bishop does not appear, he must remain in a state of exclusion from the communion of his colleagues until the next great Synod, and no bishop of any other province may have communion with him. 2. If bishops have quarrels among themselves, they must select priests (presbyteros ) as umpires and mediators. If any one does not obey the sentence of those judges and mediators chosen by both sides, he shall be punished by the Synod. 3. “Ut corpus Domini in altari non in imaginario ordine sed sub crucis titulo componatur.” Some translate: “The body of the Lord, i .e . the particles of the broken consecrated bread, shall be laid upon the altar, not in an arbitrary order, according to the particular fancy of the priest, but in the form of the cross.” Others translate: “The body of the Lord shall not be placed on the altar in the series of the pictures, but shall be preserved under the cross.” That the former explanation is preferable has been shown by Binterim, Denkwurdigkeiten , Bd. 2, Thl. 2, S. f., note,* and Drs. Schwarz and Laib in the Studien uber d . christl . Altar , Stuttgard 1857, S. 30. The same is clear also from the Mozarabic Liturgy, which prescribed a cruciform arrangement of the sacred particles (cf. the author’s treatise on Cardinal Ximenes, 2 Aufl.

S. 160). It is further here to be remarked, as we have already seen (vol. 3, sec. 162), that in Gaul, as in Rome, the usage prevailed, during the Mass, to lay upon the altar a host previously consecrated, and to cast a portion of this host into the chalice. The particles of this host were ordered to be laid in the form of the cross. 4. As well at the vigils as at the Masses, the laity are not allowed to stand among the clergy near the altar on which the holy mysteries are solemnized; but the space between the railing and the altar is appointed only for the choirs of the singing clerks. At prayer, however (i .e . at private prayer, distinct from the divine service), and at communion, laymen, and also women, shall, in accordance with custom, enter the most holy place (sancta sanctorum ). 5. Every community shall support its poor, and the poor shall not wander about in strange cities. 6. No cleric or layman must grant epistolia . This belongs to the bishop alone. (Sec. 247. Orleans, 2, c. 13.) 7. No bishop may depose an abbot or archpresbyter without consultation with the other abbots. 8. If a bishop knows that anyone is excommunicated by another bishop, and maintains communion with him, he himself is to be deprived of communion until the next Synod. 9. In the province of Armoricum no one must consecrate either a Breton or a Roman to be bishop, without the assent of the metropolitan and his comprovincials, under penalty of exclusion from the communion of the bishops until the next Synod. 10. No bishop, priest, deacon, or subdeacon may have with him any other woman than his mother, sister, or daughter to manage his household affairs; nor yet a woman belonging to a monastery, nor a widow, nor a maid. 11. No bishop must be negligent in carrying through this ordinance.

The metropolitan must support his comprovincials in this, and they their metropolitan. 12. The bishop must regard his wife only as his sister. Wherever he resides he must be surrounded with clergy, and his abode and that of his wife must be separated from one another, that the clergy who serve him may come into no contact with the maidservants of the bishop’s wife. 13. A bishop who has no wife (episcopam ) must have no woman in his retinue, and the clergy who serve him have the right to drive strange women out of the residence of the bishop. 14. No priest or monk must sleep in the same bed with another, in order to avoid every evil suspicion. The monks, moreover, are not to live alone, or by twos in separate cells, but all in common in one schola ( = dormitorium , cf. Du Cange, s .v .), under the supervision of the abbot or provost. At the same time, two or three must keep awake and read in turns, while the others rest. 15. Whoever has entered a monastery must not leave it again and marry. If anyone does so, he is to be excommunicated, and, if necessary, with the help of the secular judge, must be separated from his wife. If the judge will not give this assistance, he is also excommunicated. Whoever defends a monk who has defiled himself by such a union is, like him, excommunicated until the monk returns to the monastery, and does the penance which the abbot lays upon him. 16. No woman may enter a man’s monastery. An abbot who suffers such a thing is excommunicated. 17. In regard to the fasts of monks the old ordinance shall continue.

From Easter to Pentecost (Quinquagesima = Pentekosth> ), with the exception of the Rogation Days, a prandium (breakfast or luncheon, before the coena , about midday) shall be prepared daily for the monks.

After Pentecost they shall fast for a week, and thenceforward, until the 1st of August, they shall fast three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, except the sick. In August there shall be prandium daily, because there are daily Missae Sanctorum (not de feria ). In September, October, and November, again, the fasts must be three times a week, as before; but in December, until Christmas, daily. From Christmas to Epiphany there shall be daily prandium , because every day is a festival.

Excepted are only the three days in the beginning of January, in which the fathers, in order to oppose the heathen usages, ordered private litanies. On the 1st of January, the festival of the Circumcision, Mass shall be sung at eight o’clock. From the Epiphany until Lent there must be three fasts in the week. 18. In honor of St. Martin the following use of the Psalter shall be observed, both in his church and in others: On feast days (according to another reading, AEstivis diebus ), at matins, six antiphons with every two psalms shall be sung; in the whole of August are manicationes (i .e . early rising, cf. Du Cange, s .v .), because in this month there are festivals and Masses of saints; in September there are seven antiphons with every two psalms; in October, eight with every three psalms; in November, nine with every three psalms; in December, ten with every three psalms; and the same number in January and February until Easter, more or fewer, as may be possible. But at matins there must never be fewer than twelve psalms, as at Sext six, and at the Duodecima twelve, with Hallelujah. If anyone takes less than twelve psalms at matins, he shall fast until evening, and then partake only of bread and water. Only in the next day may he again take refreshment. 19. As very many archpriests in the country, and also deacons and subdeacons, rest under suspicion of continuing intercourse with their wives, the archpriest must always have a cleric with him, who accompanies him everywhere, and has his bed with him in the same cell. In this seven subdeacons or lectors or laymen can change with one another. The remaining priests, deacons, and subdeacons shall take care, in the country, that their female slaves shall always live where their wives do; they themselves shall dwell and pray in their cells alone.

If a priest has intercourse with his wife (presbytera ), a deacon with his deaconess, a subdeacon with his subdeaconess, he is excommunicated for a year, deposed from his clerical office (for ever), and placed among the laity, he may sing only among the lectors. A priest who lives with his wife must not be reverenced by the people, but disapproved of, because he is a teacher, not of continence, but of vice. 20. Virgins who have taken the veil, and widows who have assumed the vow, must not marry again under penalty of excommunication (renewal of older ordinances of the second Synod of Arles, c. 52; see sec. 164; and of the Synod of Carthage, A.D. 418, c. 18, formerly erroneously attributed to the Council of Mileve; see vol. 2, sec. 119).

The excuse does not avail that a virgin has altered her raiment (taken the veil) in order not to be defiled by an inferior; for it has been confirmed by Kings Childebert, Chlotar, and Charibert, that no one may compel a maiden to marriage against the will of her parents (sec. 284). If, then, a virgin fears violence, let her flee into the church until her relations can rescue her; and then she may marry. If, however, she changes her habit, she must abide by her purpose. In regard to widows, however, one may not say that they could marry again because they have not been dedicated. Their dedication is certainly forbidden; but their vow is still binding. (Vol. 3, sec. 162, c. 27.) 21. The old canons in regard to incestuous marriages shall remain in force. Several of them, belonging to the Synods of Orleans, Epaon, and Clermont (secs. 224, 231, 249) are adduced with passages from Scripture (Leviticus 18,4 sqq., etc.). 22. Some still hold fast the old error, that they should honor the 1st of January. Others, on the festival of the See of Peter, present meat offerings to the dead, and partake of meats which have been offered to demons. Others reverence certain rocks, or trees, or fountains, etc. The priests should root out these heathenish superstitions. 23. Besides the Ambrosian hymns which we have in the canon, others also may be sung which are worthy of it, if the authors are named. 24. The property of the Church must not take harm by the mutual wars of the Frankish Kings against one another. If anyone (in warlike inroads into another part of the Frankish kingdom) plunders or confiscates Church property, he shall be exhorted to restitution; and if he remains obstinate, he shall at last be punished by all the bishops in common, with the singing of the 108th psalm [109], not only with excommunication, but also with anathema until his death. (Excommunication and anathema were, in ancient times, employed for the most part as identical. Where the two expressions are distinguished, anathema signifies the excommunicatio major , whilst by excommunication we are to understand only exclusion from the holy communion (minor ). Later, however, after the appearance of the collection of decretals of Gregory IX. (thirteenth cent.), by anathema was understood the greater excommunication emphasized by execrations, etc. See Kober, Kirchenbann , S. 37 ff. Cf. below, on the third Synod of Braga, where we read of a solemn excommunication with the singing of Psalm 108 [109].) 25. Partial repetition of the first canon of the third Synod of Paris, in regard to Church property (sec. 284). 26. Judges or magnates who oppress the poor shall be excommunicated, unless they reform at the exhortation of the bishop. 27. It is not merely sacrilegious, but heretical, if a bishop takes money for the ordaining of clerics, as is explained in the book De dogmatibus ecclesiasticis (of Gennadius). Both the giver and the receiver of the money shall be excluded from the Church until the next Synod. The Jesuit Sirmond recovered, from several MSS., a letter addressed to the Christian laity, either during the second Synod of Tours, or soon after it (as the superscription says), by four bishops who were members of that Synod, particularly Archbishop Euphronius of Tours. In this letter they summon the faithful to penitence and amendment, that they may escape the divine judgment which lies before them. The betrothed should put off their marriage, partly that by prayer and chastity they may propitiate God, partly that, if they perish in the misery lying before them, they may be cut off with a pure soul. From all property the tithe must certainly be paid, even every tenth slave, and so for every son the third of a pound must be given to the bishops for the redemption of prisoners. Enmities must be laid aside, incestuous unions dissolved. Two other letters have reference to our Council, namely, a letter of the Queen, St. Radegundis (widow of Chlotar I.), in which she petitions the bishops for confirmation of the women’s convent established by her at Poitiers; and a second containing the answer. On the 1st of January 607 of the Spanish era, i .e . 569 of our chronology, Theodomir of Galicia in Spain, the pious King of the Suevi, convoked the bishops of his kingdom in a Synod in the city of Lugo (ad Lucum ), and, among other things, represented to them that his kingdom had too few bishoprics, and only one metropolitan see (Braga). The Synod was asked to assist in removing this evil. It did so, raised the city of Lugo to the rank of a second metropolis, designated other cities (not named) as episcopal sees, and circumscribed, with greater exactness, the Galician sees, now increased to the number of thirteen, so that no disputes might arise on that subject.

This short notice is all that can be discovered respecting the first Synod of Lugo. What the learned Garsias Loaisia further added in his Collectio Conciliorum Hispaniae (1593) is partly spurious, e.g. the information disputing the circumscribing of the Spanish bishoprics under the Emperor Constantine the Great, partly it belongs to much later times. So with the tables of the Spanish archbishops and bishoprics which he added. The editor of Espana Sagrada , Florez, in the fourth volume of this great work, has denied the existence of the Synod of Lugo, and his continuer, the Augustine Manuel Risco, in the fortieth volume of that work, defends the statement of his predecessor against the objections of the Dean of Lugo, in a comprehensive Disertacion sobre los documentos de la santa Iglesia de Lugo , que se dicen Concilios Lucenses celebrados en el Reynado de los Sueoos , p. 299 sqq.

More important is the third (properly second) Synod of Braga in Spain, to which Miso, King of the Suevi (son of Theodomir), summoned the bishops of the three ecclesiastical provinces (here named utrumque concilium ) of his kingdom of Galicia, A.D. 572. The two archbishops, Martin of Braga (formerly bishop of Dumium) and Nitigisius of Lugo, were at their head, and the former presided. On his proposal, first of all were read the capitula of the former Synod of Braga, at which he had been present as bishop of Dumium, and for their completion two other canons were drawn up. They all refer to Church discipline; and it is remarkable how Archbishop Martin, in the year 572, could say there is de unitate et rectitudine fidei in hac provincia nihil dubium , whilst only nine years before the previous Synod of Braga held it necessary to oppose the Priscillianists so vehemently (see above in this section). Are we to think that this heresy had in the meantime been so weakened as to be extinguished? The 10th canon of our Synod makes reference to this.

The ten canons ordain:— 1. Bishops must visit their dioceses and see that the clergy rightly discharge their functions, particularly that the catechumens are exorcised twenty days before baptism, and are instructed in the creed.

The bishops should exhort the laity to keep far away from all worship of idols and from vices. 2. On these visitation tours the bishops must demand of each church no more than two solidi (in honorem cathedrae ), and from the parochial clergy they shall require no menial services. 3. Ordinations must be imparted without remuneration. 4. Henceforth nothing shall be paid for the small portion of balsam (chrism) sent to the churches by the bishop for use in baptism. 5. If a bishop is petitioned to consecrate a church he must demand nothing for this, but he may receive a voluntary gift. He is not, however, to consecrate a church unless he has previously received a deed as to its adequate endowment. 6. It has already happened that persons have built a church from selfish motives, and then appropriated one-half of the offerings there presented. A church of that kind no bishop must consecrate. 7. As many put off the baptism of their children because they are unable to pay the baptismal fees, these are for the future abolished, and the clergy must demand nothing for baptism, but may receive a voluntary offering. 8. If anyone accuses a cleric of fornication, he must have two or three witnesses (according to 1 Timothy 5:19), otherwise the accuser is to be excommunicated. 9. The metropolitan shall declare the date of the next Easter festival to the bishops, and at Christmas, after the Gospel, it shall be proclaimed by every clergyman to the people. At the beginning of Lent, Litaniae shall be held for three days. 10. It is a relic of the Priscillianist heresy that some priests hold and consecrate Masses for the dead after having previously partaken of wine. If anyone henceforth ventures thus to consecrate after he has partaken of anything, he shall be deposed by the bishop. Some further canons, supposed to be of Braga, which Burchard cites from Worms and Gratian, are given by Aguirre and Mansi (ll .cc .).

Quite incredible is that which is related by the Spanish chronicler under Philip II., Hieronymus Moralis, and after him by Baronius, ad ann . 572, n. 10, respecting a second Synod of Lugo, A.D. 572. Even Florez and his continuator Manuel Risco have mentioned this in the Espana Sagrada (t. 4, n. 40, p. 252). It is quite correct that the often-named Archbishop Martin of Braga sent a collection and translation which he had made of eighty-four older Greek canons (Martin came from Pannonia) to Archbishop Nitigisius of Lugo, and universo concilio Lucensis ecclesiae . But by concilium is here, as above, to be understood nothing else than an ecclesiastical province.

In France the fourth Synod of Paris was now celebrated. Gregory of Tours refers to it (Hist Franc . lib. 4, c. 48; earlier, 42) when he says: In order to put an end to a disagreement between Kings Guntrum and Sigebert, Guntrum convoked the bishops of his kingdom at a Synod in Paris.

As is well known, Guntrum and Sigebert were brothers, the latter King of Austrasia, the former of Burgundy; both sons of Chlotar I. Besides these, their brother Chilperich possessed the kingdom of Soissons; but the eldest brother Charibert had died A.D. 570, and they had divided his kingdom among them. There was hardly any cessation of war between the brothers, and although Guntrum and Sigebert partly united with one another against Chilperich, yet they were frequently in a state of hostility towards each other; so that it is unnecessary, with Valesius and Le Cointe, to alter the text of Gregory, as if he said: “In order to stop a quarrel between Chilperich and Sigebert , Guntrum convoked the Synod.”

The subject of the dispute between Guntram and Sitebert was the appointment of a bishop at Chateaudun (Castello-Dunum). This castle belonged to the diocese of Chartres, but to the kingdom of Sigebert, whilst Chartres was under Guntrum. With Sigebert’s assent, Archbishop AEgidius of Reims consecrated the priest Promotus as bishop of Chateaudun, and thus raised this city to be a bishopric and separated it from the diocese of Chartres, without, however, any assent from Pappolus, bishop of Chartres. The latter made complaint at the fourth Synod of Paris, which was held on the 11th of September 573, in the Basilica of St. Peter (afterwards St. Genevieve). It was attended by thirty-two bishops and one priest as the representative of his bishop, and numbered among its members six metropolitans, Philip of Vienne, Sapaudus of Arles, Priscus of Lyons, Constitutus of Sens, Laban of Eause, and Felix of Bourges. Naturally St.

Germanus of Paris was also present. They all subscribed the synodal letter to Archbishop AEgidius of Reims, in which his conduct was severely blamed, and the deposition of Promotus pronounced. In a second letter they exhorted King Sigebert no longer to protect that injustice. In the latter letter, they say, among other things, that the Synod had been summoned non absque conniventia of Sigebert. But these seem to be only words of courtesy. Had Sigebert consented to examine the matter synodaliter , many bishops would have come out of his kingdom also to Paris, whilst those who were present belonged almost entirely to the dominion of Guntrum.

From another expression of our Synod at the beginning of its letter to Archbishop AEgidius of Reims it seems to come out, that that controversy was not the only subject of its transactions, for it says: “Dum pro causis publicis, privatorumque querelis Parisiis moraremur ; but we know nothing further on the subject.

We further learn from Gregory of Tours (Hist . Franc , 7, 17), that Promotus was deposed after the death of Sigebert his king (575), and that his endeavors for restitution remained without effect.

SEC. 286. THE SYNODS BETWEEN THE YEARS 575 AND 589.

To the year 575 belongs an Irish Concilium mixtum (a kind of Parliament and Synod united), which was celebrated under King Aedh or Aidus at Drum-ceitt (dorgum ceti = whale’s back) on the sea (now Drumkeath, in County Londonderry). St. Columba, the great national saint of Ireland and apostle of Scotland, was also present; and it was his eloquence that succeeded, in spite of the King’s will opposing, in securing the continuance of the bards, who had now for long been Christians; and now celebrated in song, as other Irish heroes, so also St. Columba, and this with special partiality. Moreover, the Irish monarch disclaimed, at this Synod, all supremacy over Albingens, King of the Dalriads, the Irish settlers in Scotland. St. Columba appears also to have brought this about. In the same year, 575, was Sigebert, already mentioned as Frankish King of Austrasia, assassinated, whilst he was making war on his brother Chilperich, King of Soissons and Paris. His widow, Brunehilde, was taken at Paris, and exiled to Rouen. During her imprisonment, Merovaeus, Chilperich’s son by his first marriage, had conceived an affection for her, and now married her at Rouen, without his father’s knowledge. In order to escape from the anger of Chilperich, they were both forced speedily to separate, and Brunehilde betook herself to Metz, to her young son, Childebert II., King of Austrasia. Between Chilperich and Merovaeus, however, there arose so violent an enmity, that the son rebelled against the father, who excluded him from the succession, chiefly at the instigation of his wife Fredegunde, who wanted to cast out her stepson and obtain the whole inheritance for her children. Under her influence; Chilperich, when the fortune of war became more favorable to him, persecuted all the friends of Merovaeus, and, among them, in particular, Praetextatus, archbishop of Rouen. He had him imprisoned, and sent him for condemnation before the fifth Synod of Paris, A.D. 577. As no Acts of this Synod are still extant, we know it only from Gregory of Tours (Hist . Franc . lib. 5, c. 19). There were forty-five bishops, among them Gregory himself, assembled at Paris in the Basilica of St. Peter (later St. Genevieve). King Chilperich appeared in his own person, and complained that Archbishop Praetextatus had, in opposition to the canons, married Prince Merovaeus to his aunt Brunehilde, had excited him to rebellion, had won the people over to him by presents, and had plotted the overthrow and death of the King, in order to raise up Merovaeus in his place. False witnesses confirmed the accusation. After the King had gone out, Gregory of Tours, in a fine address, endeavored to restore courage to the intimidated bishops, so as to secure an impartial consideration of the subject, but two colleagues denounced him (as it seems, Bertram of Bordeaux and Ragnemod of Paris). He was forced to appear before the King; but would not be won over either by threats or by flatteries; nor would he be won by the presents of Fredegunde.

Next day, at the second session, the King appeared again, and accused Archbishop Praetextatus of theft. He said he had made away with gold and valuables worth 5000 solidi. Praetextatus was able to show that these things were the property of Brunehilde, left by her in Rouen, and that the King himself well knew of this deposit. Chilperich saw that his proofs did not suffice, and that another way must be chosen. Some courtiers now had recourse to Praetextatus, and represented to him, under the appearance of goodwill, that he would most easily again obtain the favor of the King, if he would comport himself humbly before him and confess his faults. If he were to do this, the King would immediately forgive him. The archbishop consented to this, cast himself, at the third session, at the feet of Chilperich, and confessed that he had been in fault, and had plotted against the life of the King, in order to put the prince in his place. But the promised pardon did not follow. On the contrary, the King cast himself on his knees before the bishops, and demanded condemnation. Raised up again by the weeping bishops, he betook himself immediately to his residence, and then sent to the Synod a collection of canons, to which a new section was appended, containing the so-called apostolic canons. The 25th (24th) of these declares that a bishop, if he is guilty of fornication, or perjury, or theft, shall be deposed, but not deprived of communion (see App., can. in vol. 1). In the copy which the King sent, there was added “or murder”; and Chilperich now demanded not merely deposition, but solemn excommunication of the archbishop, with the singing of Psalm 108, and its forms of cursing. As the bishops, by the advice of Gregory of Tours, did not consent to this transgression of the canons, the King had Praetextatus arrested, on account of an attempted flight, severely beaten, and then deported to an island near Coutances in Normandy. Melanius or Melantius received the see of Rouen; but after the death of the King (584) the citizens of Rouen brought Praetextatus back with great rejoicings. He betook himself immediately to Paris, to King Guntrum, the guardian of the young Chlotar II. (son of Chilperich), and demanded a new inquiry. The Queen-widow, Fredegunde, maintained that he had been deposed by fortyfive bishops; but, as Bishop Ragnemod of Paris declared that only penance had been imposed upon him, and not complete deposition, he was received into favor by the King, and restored to his bishopric. We cannot ascertain with certainty the time at which the Concilium Brennacense was held. Gregory of Tours, here our only authority, gives no very exact information on the subject, and the suppositions range between 577 and 581. In earlier times it was assumed that Braine, near Soissons, was the place at which this Synod was held; but Abbe Lebeuf has shown clearly that we must think of the royal domain of Berni (Bergni, Bargni between Paris and Soissons (fourteen leagues from Paris, and seven from Soissons). On this occasion Gregory of Tours himself is on his trial.

Leudastes, who had raised himself from the lowest rank, through every kind of grade, up to the dignity of a count or governor of Tours, and in this capacity had been guilty of much wrong-doing and violence, informed King Chilperich that Gregory of Tours had accused Queen Fredegunde of adulterous intercourse with Bishop Bertechram (Bertram) of Bordeaux.

Chilperich, therefore, held the Synod of Berni, and Gregory purged himself there, since he denied under oath that he had originated that accusation against the Queen. He was thereupon declared innocent, and Leudastes, who had taken to flight, was punished with general excommunication. We referred above to Bishops Salonius and Sagittarius, and mentioned that they were deposed by the second Synod of Lyons in 567, but had been restored by Pope John III. As, however, they persevered in their offenses, King Guntrum convoked the second Synod of Chalons sur Marne on their account, A.D. 579. They were accused of adultery, manslaughter, and high treason, deposed, and detained in the Basilica of St. Marcellus.

Subsequently they succeeded in escaping; but others obtained their sees. This or another Synod at Chalons is mentioned in an old document of doubtful genuineness, found among the manuscripts of the learned Jesuit Sirmond, but first communicated by the later collectors of Councils, Labbe, Hardouin, and Mansi. According to this document, a pious woman at Maurienne received intelligence from some monks, who came from Jerusalem, of the relics of St. John the Baptist, and did not rest until she discovered them. Thereupon King Guntrum had a church built at Maurienne, and, at a Synod at Chalons, Felmasius was ordained as the first bishop of Maurienne, in the ecclesiastical province of Vienne. To the year 579 also that Synod of Xaintes (Santonensis) probably belongs, at which Count Nantinus of Angouleme gave back the Church property which he had seized, and so was released from the sentence of excommunication which Bishop Heraclius of Angouleme had suspended over him. We have spoken of the supposed Synod of Grado, of A.D. 579, in the history of the controversy on the three chapters (sec. 280), and therefore we now pass on to the first Synod of Macon (Matisconensis I), which was summoned by the Frankish King Guntrum in the year 581. It was attended by twenty-one bishops from several ecclesiastical provinces, and the most distinguished were the four archbishops, Priscus of Lyons, Evantius of Vienne, Artemius of Sens, and Remedius of Bourges. The Synod occupied itself, according to the Praefatio of the minutes, partly with public affairs, partly with the care of the poor, and drew up nineteen canons:— 1. Bishops, priests, and deacons shall have no intercourse with strange women. Only grandmother, mother, sister, or niece may, when necessary, live with them. 2. No cleric or layman, unless he is of proved virtue and of advanced age, may for any reason enter a nunnery and have private converse with the nuns; and in general they must only come into the common room. Jews, in particular, must not have access to nunneries. 3. No woman may enter a bishop’s chamber, unless two priests or deacons are present. 4. If anyone retains what departed persons have offered to the Church, he will be excommunicated. 5. No cleric may wear secular garments, shoes, or weapons. If he does so, he shall be imprisoned for thirty days, and kept on bread and water. 6. An archbishop may not say Mass without the pallium. 7. If a secular judge imprisons or punishes a clergyman without the assent of the bishop, except for criminal causes, i .e . murder, theft, and fraud, he must be excluded from the Church by the bishop at his pleasure. 8. No cleric may bring another before a secular judge. If a younger (inferior) cleric does so, he is to receive forty blows save one; if he belongs to the higher clergy, he is to be imprisoned for thirty days. 9. From St. Martin’s Day until Christmas, a fast must be kept on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of each week (sabbati , cf. Du Cange, s .v .). The Sacrifice must be offered after the manner of the Lenten season. The canons, too, shall be read at this time, so that no one may plead ignorance in defense of a fault. 10. Clerics may not, without the bishop’s permission, celebrate feast days elsewhere. 11. Higher clerics who persist in connubial intercourse are deposed. 12. A virgin vowed to God, who marries, shall, together with him to whom she has united herself, be excommunicated to the end of life. If both, in penitence, dissolve their union, the bishop shall exclude them from communion as long as he thinks good. 13. Jews may not be judges or tax-gatherers over Christians. 14. From Thursday in Holy Week to the Easter festival, in accordance with an ordinance of the late King Childebert, Jews may not show themselves on streets and public places, because they have done so to insult Christians. Moreover, they must testify respect to all clerics, and must not sit down before priests, unless they are invited to do so. 15. No Christian may partake of meals with Jews under penalty of excommunication. 16. No Christian must henceforth be slave to a Jew; and if a Jew has a Christian slave, any Christian can purchase him for 12 soldi, either in order to set him free, or to employ him as his own slave. If the Jew is not contented, and hesitates to accept the sum defined, the Christian slave may live with Christians where he will. If, however, a Jew is convicted of having wanted to persuade a Christian slave to apostasy, he loses the slave and the right to make a will. 17. If anyone misguides, or seeks to misguide, another to false witness or perjury, he is to be excommunicated for life. Those who agree with him in his perjury are dishonorable, and may not again offer evidence. 18. If anyone accuses the innocent before the judges or the King, if a layman, he is to be excommunicated; if a higher cleric, to be deposed, until he has given satisfaction. 19. The nun Agnes has given largely of her property to magnates, in order, through them, to obtain protection in her disorderly free life.

Giver and receivers are excommunicated. Among the heretical Synods of this time we note only a single one, the Arian Synod at Toledo in 581 or 582; and for this reason, that its members, returning to the orthodox Church at the Synod of Toledo of 589, themselves made reference to this earlier assembly. — Leovigild, King of the West Goths, known as a violent, persecuting Arian, summoned, in the twelfth year of his reign (581 or 582), his Arian bishops to a Synod at Toledo, and they decided that the Catholics who went over to Arianism should not be re-baptized, but should only be purged by the laying on of hands. Also, the form of doxology, “Glory be to the Father through the Son,” etc., should be used. — In consequence of this ordinance, as we are informed by the Spanish chronicler John Biclariensis, a contemporary, many Catholics were perverted. That this Synod also published a Libellus , in order to bring about the perversion of the Romans (the Roman provincials) to Arianism, is mentioned at the third Synod of Toledo (589). On the 22nd of May 583 there met at Lyons (Lugdunensis III.), under the presidency of Priseus, the archbishop of that place, seven bishops and several representatives of bishops, from different ecclesiastical provinces, and ordained:— 1. Clerics, from a subdeacon upwards, must have no strange woman in the house, and the married clergy may not live with their wives. 2. If bishops send out letters of recommendation to a needy person, or a prisoner, the signature must be indubitable, and at the same time there should be noted how high the sum runs for the redemption of the prisoner, and what needs he has. 3. Nuns who desert their nunneries are excommunicated until they return. Only the Viaticum may be granted to them. 4. In regard to incestuous marriages, the old ordinances prevail. 5. Christmas and Easter must be celebrated by each bishop in his own Church. 6. The lepers of every city shall receive food and clothing from their own bishop, and may not go abroad to beg. Of the second Synod at Valence, in May or June 584, we know only that it confirmed the pious ordinances of King Guntrum and his family, and that there were present there forty bishops, under the presidency of Archbishop Sapandus of Arles. Of greater significance was the second Synod of Macon on the 23rd of October 585, a kind of French general Council. As already indicated, the whole jurisdiction of the Frankish dominion was divided into only three kingdoms, under Guntram of Burgundy, Chlotar II. of Paris, and Childebert II. of Austrasia (see Synod 4 of Paris in sec. 285). Actually, however, Guntram ruled two kingdoms, as he was guardian to Chlotar II., who was under age. From the two kingdoms subject to him the bishops were now assembled at Macon, forty-three in person, twenty by representatives, and, besides these, two bishops who had no sees of their own, namely, that Promotus of Chateaudun whom we noticed above, and Bishop Froniminus of Agde, who had been expelled by the Goths. Priscus, archbishop of Lyons, presided. He is named patriarch in the Praefatio of the minutes, a title with which, in former times, the primates of whole countries, e.g. the Bishops of Toledo and Canterbury, were not infrequently honored. Besides him there were present the Metropolitans Evantius of Vicnne, Praetextatus of Rouen (lately restored), Bertechram of Bordeaux, Artemius of Sens, and Sulpitius of Bourges. Sapaudus of Arles had sent a representative.

The twenty canons treat:— 1. Of the sanctifying of the Sunday. 2. Of the six days’ feast of Easter (from Maundy Thursday to Easter Tuesday inclusive, all servile work is forbidden). 3. Cases of necessity excepted, no one must henceforth be baptized on any other day than on Easter Eve. 4. On all Sundays all the faithful, men and women, must offer bread and wine on the altar. 5. The old law, to pay tithes to the Church, is widely neglected, and must therefore be enjoined afresh. The tithe is to be expended for the use of the poor (also of the clergy), and for the redemption of prisoners. Whoever obstinately refuses it is for ever excommunicated. 6. The prescription of the Council of Hippo (vol. 2), c. 28, that the Mass may be celebrated only by priests fasting, is renewed, and it is ordained that what is left of the consecrated bread, moistened with wine, should be given, as food, on Wednesday or Friday, to innocent children, who, however, must also be fasting. 7. Slaves who were made free in the church shall be protected by the bishops, and controversies respecting their liberty are to be decided, not by the secular judges, but by the bishop. 8. The right of asylum shall remain in force. 9. It has happened that clergymen have been dragged by the secular power from their churches and put into public prisons. This must no longer be done; but anyone who has a charge against a bishop must bring his complaint before the metropolitan, who, in lighter cases, shall either himself, or with reference to one or two bishops, decide, and, in graver cases, bring them before a Council. 10. Similarly, no one may arrest a priest, or deacon, or subdeacon; but they must be accused before the bishop. 11. The bishops must exercise hospitality. 12. So also they must protect widows and orphans against ill-treatment by secular judges. The latter must not, under penalty of excommunication, sit in judgment on widows or orphans without having previously given information to the bishop or his archdeacon, etc., so that he may take part in the trial and in the judgment. 13. No dogs are allowed in the episcopal residence, so that the poor who seek refuge there may not be bitten. Falcons are also forbidden to bishops. 14. Magnates and those from the royal retinue must not destroy the lowly for their goods and possessions, on pain of anathema. 15. If a layman meets one of the more distinguished clergy, he shall honor him with a reverence. If a cleric and a layman meet each other, both on horseback, the latter shall greet the former by raising his hat. If the cleric is on foot and the layman on horseback, the latter must dismount and make his greeting. 16. The widow of a subdeacon, exorcist, or acolyte may not marry again, on penalty of being shut up in a nunnery. 17. If a female body is not yet decomposed, another male corpse must not be laid in her grave. Moreover, a corpse must not be laid in a grave which is the property of another, unless he allow it. 18. Incestuous marriages are forbidden. 19. Clerics may not be present at judicial condemnations of criminals, nor at executions. 20. After three years all must again meet in a Synod, and the bishop of Lyons shall appoint a place well situated for the purpose, with the acquiescence of the King. If anyone stays away without reason, he is shut out a charitate fratrum (sec. 284, Orleans 5).

We learn from Gregory of Tours that our Synod further deposed Bishop Faustianus of Dar (Aquae ), because he had been consecrated at the command of the insurgent Gundobald (the bastard of Chlotar I.). The three bishops who ordained him, Bertechram of Bordeaux, Orestes, and Palladius, were required to pay him 100 gold florins annually for his maintenance. Another bishop, Ursicinus, was suspended for three years, because he had held with Gundobald. A bishop, who had maintained that women could not be called human beings (homines ) in the full sense, was reprimanded by the Synod. Finally, Praetextatus of Rouen read before them the discourses which he had prepared in exile. These ordinances of the Synod of Macon were published by King Guntram in a decree of November 10, 585, in which he enforced careful observance of the Sunday, threatened sinners of ecclesiastical and secular position with punishment, recommended judges to judge righteously, and this personally and not by deputies, and required bishops and judges not to conceal the faults of their subordinates, but to punish them. The Council of Auxerre was only a diocesan Synod, which Bishop Annacharius of Auxerre held, with seven abbots, thirty-four priests, and three deacons of his diocese. In the Collections of Councils it is assigned to the year 578, and put before the Acts of the second Synod of Macon, because some codices, in the superscription, give that date. But the similarity which many canons of Auxerre have with those of Macon led long ago to the supposition that Bishop Annacharius, who was present at the Synod of Macon, held a diocesan Synod in his episcopal city, soon after the close of that one, in order to introduce its ordinances into his diocese, and to draw up others for special purposes. The forty-five canons which were here drawn up present a good deal of linguistic and archaeological difficulty:— 1. No one may, after a heathenish fashion, dress himself on the 1st of January like cows (or old women) and stags, or make diabolic new year’s presents; but on this day no other gifts shall be made than have been customary. (Sec. 285, Syn. of Tours, c. 22. Cf. Du Cange, Glossar . s .vv . vetula, cervula, and strena.) 2. All priests (in the country) must before Epiphany send messengers to the bishop to ascertain the time of the beginning of Lent. They shall announce this beginning to their people at the Epiphany. (Syn. 4 of Paris, c. 9, in sec. 285.) 3. Private sacrifices in private houses and the spending of the night in church before the holy festivals are forbidden. Moreover, it is not allowed to abolish a vow at a thorn bush, or holy tree or fountain. On the contrary, if anyone has a vow upon him, he should watch in church and discharge it for the benefit of the matricula (register of the clergy) or of the poor. Moreover, no one must make images consisting of a wooden foot or man. (Instead of lineo ( = linen), we should probably read ligneo , as the following canon suggests. On compensum = oblata, and matricula , cf. Du Cange, s .vv .) 4. No regard must be paid to soothsayers and predictions, nor to those who interpret the future (caragus or caragius , see Du Cange), nor to the sortes sanctorum (sec. 211, c. 16, of Chalons); nor look at that which they make out of wood or bread. 5. Even the night watches in honor of St. Martin are forbidden. 6. About the middle of Lent every priest should ask for the chrism. If, on account of sickness, he cannot come himself, he may make over this duty to the archdeacon (thus even in rural churches there were such) or the archsubdeacon. But the chrism must be carried in a chrismarium and linen cloth, like the relics. (Chrismarium = theca , in which relics and the chrism were preserved, the latter probably still in an ampulla ; cf. Du Cange, s .vv .) 7. In the middle of May all priests — on the first of October all abbots — must come to a Synod in the city. 8. Only wine mixed with water may be offered at the consecration, and certainly not wine or any other liquid mixed with honey. 9. In the church no secular choruses or songs must be performed by girls, nor any banquets held. 10. It is not allowed to say Mass twice in a day at an altar, and at the altar at which the bishop has celebrated no priest may do so on that day. 11. Non licet in vigilia Paschae ante horam secundam noctis vigilias perexplere, quia in illa nocte non licet post mediam noctem bibere (nec manducare); nec in natali Domini nec in reliquis solemnitatibus.

We thought it necessary to give the original text of this difficult canon.

Only one point here is distinctly clear; that on the vigils before Easter, Christmas, and other festivals, nothing was allowed to be taken after midnight, whilst with the Greeks the fasts were continued only till midnight, and then the solemn Easter festival took place, as we see from the recently-discovered festal letters of St. Augustine (in Larsow’s translation, S. 79, 94, and 113), and from c. 89 of the Trullan Synod of the year 692. But it is a question what the first sentence of our canon signifies.

Fleury and other French scholars connected noctis with vigilias , understanding by this the night fasts, took hora secunda as second hour of the day ( = seven o’clock in the morning), and translated: “The night by vigil fasts must not be ended before seven o’clock in the morning, for after midnight nothing more must be partaken of.” This certainly gives a good meaning; but I doubt whether by hora secunda we could understand the second hour of the day . We shall meet with doubts on this subject.

Others connect noctis with hora secunda , and translate: “The vigils may not be ended before the second hour of the night,” i .e . not before seven o’clock at night, since the night, at the season of Easter, began about six o’clock. But on this rendering it will be difficult to explain the quia , and to find a connection between the first and second sentence of our canon; for to the question, “Why should the vigils not end before seven o’clock in the evening?” the second sentence, “Because after midnight nothing more must be taken,” is no intelligible answer. Quite astray is the manner in which Binterim, instead of clearing up the difficulty, has further confused it. In the second volume of his History of the German Councils (S. 144), he translated: “Before the second night-hour it is not allowed, on Easter Eve, to end the vigils, because, on this night, it is not permitted to drink after midnight,” and refers to his Memorials (Denkwurdigkeiten , Bd. 5, Thl. 2, S. 157). Here, however, he was met by the misfortune, that he changed post mediam noctem into ante mediam noctem, and thence argued as if our canon prescribed that before midnight nothing was to be taken. But no single manuscript has ante instead of post , and the statutes of St. Boniface, which simply repeat this canon, give post . — Let us now see if light may not be cast upon our canon from some other quarter. About a hundred years before our Synod the Gallican Bishops St. Lupus of Troyes and Euphronius of Autun, wrote to Bishop Talasius of Angers: “Paschalis vigilia a vespere raro in matutinum usque perducitur”; and they add, at this vigilia are to be read the Lectiones passionis , the Lectiones of different books of the Bible, quae totae habeant aliquid de praefiguratione aut vaticinio passionis (Hardouin, t. 2, p. 791). According to this, then, by vigil is meant not merely the fast, as Fleury and others assume, but also the divine service of the vigil connected with the fast; and this seldom lasted in Gaul, in the fifth century, until after midnight and into the morning.

Accordingly our canon can hardly have meant to require that these vigils should last until seven o’clock in the morning.

We come to the same result also in another way. As has been said, Boniface, as apostolic legate for Germany and France, repeats our canon verbally in his statutes; this, consequently, was still in full practice in France about the year 750. A hundred years later, however, the French Bishop Herard of Tours, in his Capitula of A.D. 858, n. 83: “Qui sabbato Paschae usque ad noctis initium non jejunant, excommunicentur” (Hardouin, t. 5, p. 455). The fasts thus lasted then, on the Easter vigil, only until the beginning of the night, which agrees quite well with the hora secunda noctis in our canon. On other days the fast ended with vespers, and Theodore of Canterbury says, c. 29: “On the vigil of Christmas manducant Romani hora nona expleta ,” i .e . at three o’clock P.M. (Hardouin, t. 3, p. 1774). We must, accordingly, maintain that our canon, more stringent than the Romans, ordered for the vigils of Easter, Christmas, and other festivals a continuation of the vigil service and fast until seven o’clock in the evening, and, besides, forbade all the faithful, on these holy nights, to take anything after midnight. But the quia remains to us enigmatic, unless we interpret something in this manner: “Because the following festivals are so high, that from midnight onwards nothing more may be taken, the vigils too, which precede these days, are solemnized more stringently. 12. Neither the Eucharist nor the kiss may be given to the dead; nor must their bodies be covered with the veil or pall. 13. The deacon may not cover his shoulders with the veil or pall. 14. No corpse may be buried in the baptistery. 15. Two corpses may not be laid upon one another. 16. Servile labors are forbidden on Sundays. 17. It is not permitted to receive oblations from suicides. 18. Except in cases of necessity, baptism shall be administered only at Easter. 19. A presbyter, deacon, or subdeacon, if he has partaken of anything, may neither officiate at Mass nor stand in the church during the service (because the adstantes clerici communicated). 20. If a priest, deacon, or subdeacon commits a sin of the flesh, and the archpresbyter does not report it to the bishop or the archdeacon, he shall be excommunicated for a year, but the sinner shall be deposed. 21. No presbyter may, after his ordination, sleep in the same bed with his wife (presbytera ), or have connubial intercourse with her. So with the deacon and subdeacon. 22. The widow of a priest, deacon, or subdeacon must not marry again. 23. If an abbot does not punish a great crime of a monk, or does not report it to the bishop or archdeacon, he must be removed for penance to another monastery. 24. No abbot or monk may go to a marriage. 25. No abbot or monk may be godfather at a baptism (commater is the name of a woman in relation to the sponsor for her child; cf. Du Cange, s .v .). 26. No abbot may allow a woman to enter his monastery, even to see a festivity. If he does so, he must be incarcerated for three months in another monastery, and kept on bread and water. 27-32. Prohibition of incestuous marriages. 33 & 34. No cleric may be present at the torture or sentencing of a criminal. 35. No cleric may sue another before a secular judge. 36. No woman may receive the holy Eucharist with uncovered hand. 37. Nor must she touch the pall (palla ). 38 & 39. No intercourse must be held with one who is excommunicated, nor must people eat with him. 40. A priest may not sing or dance at banquets. 41. No priest or deacon may sue anyone personally before a tribunal, but he must do this through a layman, perhaps a brother. 42. Every woman must at communion have her dominicale (i .e . either the cloth for covering her hand, cf. c. 36, or a veil for the covering of her head. Cf. Du Cange, s.v. dominicalis ). 43. A layman or judge who uses violence against a cleric without permission of the bishop, is excluded for a year from all communion with the faithful. 44. A layman who obstinately despises the exhortations of his archpresbyter shall be excluded from the Church, and punished according to the edict of the King (Macon 2, see above). 45. Whoever neglects these ordinances, or does not report the transgressors of them to the bishop, shall for a year either be excluded from intercourse with the brethren (the other clergy), or from intercourse with all Christians. Between 585 and 588 falls the provincial Synod at Clermont in Auvergne (Arvernensis ), at which Archbishop Sulpicius of Bourges, with his suffragans, decided the controversy respecting some rural churches between Bishops Innocent of Rodez and Ursicinus of Cabors (suspended at the second Synod of Macon for three years, see above), in favor of the Church of Callers. This seems to me the decision, at least in the words of Gregory of Tours (Hist . Franc . lib. 6, cc. 38 and 39), although it is generally stated that the decision was given in favor of the bishop of Rodez. Gregory of Tours refers to a Spanish Synod of the year 587 (Hist . Franc . lib. 9, c. 15), when he relates that, when the King of the West Goths, Reccared, after the death of his father, Leovigild, formed the plan of becoming a Catholic, he first arranged an assembly (disputation) of the Arian and Catholic bishops, and attached great importance to this, that the Arians had never proved the truth of their doctrine by miracles. After the end of that assembly he then called the Catholic bishops specially to him, received more exact instruction from them, and embraced the Catholic faith. In the following year, 588, the Patriarch Gregory of Antioch justified himself at a Synod at Constantinople against the accusation that he had lived with his sister in incest. The same Synod was used by John Nesteutes of Constantinople, in order to style himself “oecumenical patriarch.” In earlier times, however, his predecessors had been entitled “oecumenical patriarchs” even by the Emperors. (See secs. 233 and 250; and Hergenrother, Photius , Bd. 1, S. 178 f.)

On the 1st of July 588, King Guntram summoned all the bishops of his kingdom to a great Frankish Synod, to take counsel upon incestuous unions, on the murder of Archbishop Praetextatus of Rouen, etc. Gregory of Tours, the only authority on the subject, regarded the holding of this Synod as unnecessary, and does not say whether or where it was really held, nor what it decreed (Hist . Franc , lib. 9, c. 20).

SEC. 287. SPAIN BECOMES CATHOLIC AT THE THIRD SYNOD OF TOLEDO A.D. 589.

After King Reccared had embraced the Catholic faith, he summoned the bishops of his kingdom (Spain and Gallia Narbonensis ), in May 589, to a general Synod at Toledo (Toletana III.), of which the minutes have come to us in a tolerable state of completeness. Before the transactions began, Reccared requested the bishops to prepare themselves, by fasting and prayer, for the holy work. They resolved to fast for three days, and then met, on the 8th of May, for the first session. The King was again present, besought the Synod to return thanks to God for the return of so many to the true faith, and then caused to be read a declaration drawn up by him. It contains the orthodox confession of the Son and the Holy Ghost, teaches His procession a Patre et a Filio (cf. vol. 3, sec. 167), describes how the orthodox faith had been hitherto oppressed in Spain, and relates how he, the King, had returned to the Catholic Church, and had invited his whole people to take the same step. The famous and noble nation of the Goths, he says, now in full agreement with him, takes part in the communion of the Catholic Church, and also the Suevi, whom he had subjected, and who had been misled by another (Leovigild) into heresy, he had called back again to the truth (see above, sec. 285, Braga 2). It was now the business of the bishops to instruct these peoples, and he had called the Synod in order to bear witness to his orthodoxy before it. Accordingly he anathematized Axius with his doctrine, and recognized the Synods of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, with the Councils of all orthodox bishops who did not depart in the faith from the four Synods named. He added the declarations of faith of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon verbally, that of Constantinople with the formula ex Patre et Filio procedentem , and subscribed this document with his consort Badda.

The Synod replied with acclamations in honor of God and the King, and requested the newly-converted Gothic bishops, clerics, and nobles, on their side, to make their confession. They did so in twenty-three anathematisms:— 1. If anyone still holds the doctrine and communion of the Arians, let him be anathema. 2. If anyone does not confess that the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, is begotten of the substance of the Father without beginning, is like to and of one substance with the Father, etc. 3. If anyone does not believe that the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Father and the Son, and is coeternal with and like unto the Father and the Son, etc. 4. If anyone does not distinguish the persons in the Trinity, etc. 5. If anyone declares the Son and Spirit inferior to the Father, etc. 6. If anyone does not believe that Father, Son, and Spirit are of one substance, one omnipotence, and eternity, etc. 7. If anyone maintains that the Son is ignorant of anything, etc. 8. If anyone ascribes a beginning to the Son or Spirit, etc. 9. If anyone maintains that the Son, in His Godhead, was visible or capable of suffering, etc. 10. If anyone does not hold the Holy Ghost as the true Almighty God, as the Father and the Son, etc. 11. If anyone declares any other faith than that of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon to be the Catholic faith, etc. 12. If anyone separates the Father, Son, and Spirit in regard to glory and Godhead, etc. 13. If anyone believes that the Son and Spirit are not to be honored along with the Father, etc. 14. If anyone does not say: “Gloria et honor Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto,” etc. 15. If anyone defends or practices rebaptism, etc. 16. If anyone regards as good the abominable treatise which we composed, in the twelfth year of Leovigild, in order to mislead the Romans to the Arian heresy, etc. (see above, sec. 286). 17. If anyone does not condemn the Council of Ariminum with all his heart, etc. (see vol. 2). 18. We confess that we have been, with all our heart, etc., converted from the Arian heresy to the Catholic Church. The faith which our King has confessed before the Synod we also confess and teach to our congregations. If anyone does not hold this faith, let him be anathema maranatha ( 1 Corinthians 16:22). 19 to 22. If anyone rejects the faith of the Synods of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chaldaea, etc. 23. This condemnation of the Arian heresy we have subscribed with our own hands. The definitions of those Synods of Nicaea, etc., we have subscribed. They contain clearly the true doctrine on the Trinity and Incarnation. If anyone falsifies this holy doctrine, and separates himself again from the Catholic communion which we have now obtained, he is guilty before God and the world.

Again, the decrees of the faith of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon were added literally as in the declaration of the King, and the whole was subscribed by eight bishops, many other clerics, and the Gothic leaders present.

The King then proposed to the Synod to ordain that, in the West Gothic kingdom, after the manner of the Greek Fathers, the holy creed should be recited before communion, in order to confirm the orthodox faith. The bishops were further requested to draw up disciplinary prescriptions for the regulation of morals. This was done as follows:

Capitulum 1. The old canons, the ordinances of the Councils, and the synodal letters of the holy bishops of Rome have validity. No one shall henceforth, in opposition to them, attain to clerical dignities. 2. In accordance with the proposal of the King, before the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed of Constantinople shall be sung with clear voice. 3. No bishop may alienate Church property. What he gives, without inconvenience to his church, to monks, or to churches in his diocese, shall be valid. He shall also support strangers, the clergy, and the poor. 4. With the assent of his Synod the bishop may turn one of his parish churches into a monastery. 5. As the bishops, priests, and deacons who have come over from heresy still partly live in matrimony with their wives, this is now forbidden to them. Whoever does so shall be regarded as a lector.

Whoever has strange women in his dwelling so as to excite suspicion, shall be punished, and those women shall be sold by the bishop. The proceeds of the sale belong to the poor. 6. Those who are set free from slavery stand under the protection of the Church. 7. During the meals of the clergy, there shall be readings from the Holy Scripture. 8. Clerics, born of families who belong to the Exchequer, are to be demanded by no one under the pretext that the King had given them to him. They have only to pay their poll-tax, and remain in the Church.

The King agrees with this. 9. The churches, formerly Arian and now Catholic, belong, with their property, to those bishoprics in which they lie. 10. If widows do not wish to marry again, nobody must compel them to do so. If, however, they wish to marry again, they are at liberty to marry him whom they themselves freely choose. So also with maidens; and they must not be compelled, against their own will or that of their parents, to take anyone for husband. If anyone hinders a widow or virgin from fulfilling her intention of remaining unmarried, he is excommunicated. 11. In some churches of Spain, disorder in the ministry of penance has gained ground, so that people sin as they like, and again and again ask for reconciliation from the priest. This must no longer happen; but according to the old canons everyone who regrets his offense must be first excluded from communion, and must frequently present himself as a penitent for the laying on of hands when his time of penance is over, then, if it seems good to the bishop, he may again be received to communion; if, however, during his time of penance or afterwards, he falls back into his old sin, he shall be punished according to the stringency of the old canons. 12. If a man wished to do penance his hair must first be cut, but a woman must first change her garment, for it frequently happens that laymen, after lax penance, return again to their old offenses, therefore sharper penance must be introduced, with cutting of hair, etc. (cf. secs. 222, 252, and Aguirre, Concil . Hispan . t. 2, pp. 280 and 363. Coleccion de Canones de la iglesa espanola , por Gonzalez, Madrid 1849, t. 2, p. 213 sqq.). 13. One cleric may not bring another before a secular tribunal. 14. No Jew may have a Christian woman as wife or concubine; and if there are children of such a union, they must be baptized. Neither must Jews exercise any public office over Christians with power of punishment. They may not buy for their own use Christian slaves; and if the latter have been by them stained with any Jewish rite they shall become free, and without ransom return to Christianity. It is the King’s will that this be taken into the canons. 15. If servants of the Exchequer have built and endowed churches, the bishop shall petition the King to confirm such. 16. The ecclesiastical and the secular judges must work in common, to the end that the idolatry widely spread in Spain and Gaul may again be rooted out (see secs. 285 and 286). 17. So also must they in common root out the widely-spread horrible crime of parents killing their children, that they may not have the expense of bringing them up. 18. Since the churches of Spain are so poor and so far removed from one another, only one provincial Synod (instead of two) shall be held annually. In accordance with the command of the King, the judges and officers of the Exchequer must meet on the 1st of November, in order to learn how the people must be dealt with gently and justly. The bishops, too, by the will of the King, must exercise oversight on the conduct of the judges, and must censure them if they are guilty of insolent behavior, or inform the King, or excommunicate them, if they do not amend. The bishop shall consider, with two seniors, what a province can, without injury, pay to the judges. Before the close of a Synod the time and place of the next shall be announced, so that no further writings and invitations may be necessary for the metropolitan. 19. Many who have built a church request the consecration of it on the condition that the property made over by them to the church should not be subject to the administration of the bishop. This cannot be allowed. 20. Many bishops burden their clergy improperly with feudal services and taxes in a cruel manner. Nothing unusual, however, shall be rendered to them; and the burdened clergy shall complain to the metropolitan (see sec. 285, Synod of Braga). 21. Judges and officials may no longer turn the servants of the Church and of the clergy to feudal services for public or private purposes, under penalty of excommunication. 22. At funerals only psalms shall be sung. The special elegies, and the custom of beating on the breast, are forbidden. Where possible, the bishop shall enforce this with all the faithful, and at least with the clergy. 23. Dances and unclean songs on feast days are forbidden.

The King confirmed these decisions in a special decree introduced into the minutes of the Synod, required their observance of clergy and laity, and threatened the transgression of them with severe punishments. Then he signed first the minutes, and after him sixty-four bishops and seven representatives of bishops. Among the bishops come first the Metropolitans Massona of Emerita, Euphemius of Toledo, Leander of Seville, Migetius of Narbonne, and Pantardus of Braga in Galicia. The lastnamed subscribed at the same time for his colleague Nitigisius, the second metropolitan of Galicia. Also the eight formerly Arian bishops, who had come over, signed. Finally, St. Leander of Seville delivered an address, in order to express the joy of the Church over the conversion of the West Gotha. SEC. 288. THE LAST SYNODS OF THE SIXTH CENTURY.

Immediately after the great Synod of Toledo followed the provincial Council at Narbonne in Gothic Gaul, which was held on the 1st of November in the same year (589), by the bishop of that place, Migetius, with his several suffragans, for the observance of the 18th canon of Toledo (see last section). These bishops, in part, had been personally present at Toledo, in part by representatives. They ordained:— 1. No cleric may wear purple clothing. This is suitable for princes, not for religious ( = clerics and monks, see last section). 2. After each psalm shall Gloria Patti , etc., be sung. Longer psalms should be divided, and after each division Gloria Patri is to be sung (cf. under c. 15 of the fourth Synod of Toledo). 3. No cleric may be present at public punishments (for diversion). 4. Enforcement of the Sunday festival. 5. After c. 18 of Chalcedon (here erroneously called Nicaea) conspiracies of the clergy, and insults of the higher clergy by the lower, are forbidden. Renitents (resisters) must do penance in a convent for a year. 6. If a clergyman, or a distinguished man, is shut up in a convent out of the city on account of some crime, the abbot must treat him as the bishop prescribes. 7. A cleric who acts to the disadvantage of the Church is deposed. 8. So, if he damages the property of the Church. 9. Jews must bury their dead bodies according to ancient Jewish custom, without psalmody. 10. Every cleric must remain in the diocese by whose bishop he was ordained. 11. No ignorant person may be ordained priest or deacon. If he is already ordained, and refuses to learn more perfectly reading and the fulfilling of his office, he must be deprived of his stipend until he learns.

If he is obstinate, he is to be shut up in a convent. 12. No priest or deacon may leave the altar whilst Mass is going on; and no deacon, subdeacon, or lector may take off his alb before the end of Mass. 13. The subdeacons, ostiarii, and other servants of the Church must carefully fulfill the duties of their offices. They must raise the curtains at the doors for the superior ecclesiastics. If they obstinately refuse, the subdeacons are to be punished in their pay, the others to be chastised with blows. 14. Soothsaying is forbidden; so also 15. The heathen festivals of Thursday. Gregory of Tours (Hist . Franc . 9:37) refers to a Synod at Sourci (Sauriacum) in the year 589 or 590. It permitted Bishop Droctigisilus to return again to his diocese of Soissons. He had become delirious, some said through drunkenness, others through enchantment. As he was always worst when he lived in the city, and better when he was in the country, he had been forced to leave Soissons. Now the sickness was stopped, and he was permitted to return. A convention of several bishops at Poitiers, and subsequently a proper Synod (A.D. 589), were occasioned by a rebellion among the nuns of Poitiers. Chrodieldis, a Frankish princess and nun at Poitiers, wished to supplant the Abbess Leubovera, left the convent with forty of her friends, drew a miscellaneous rabble after her, intrenched herself in the Basilica of St. Hilary at Poitiers, and had the bishops, who excommunicated her, set upon and cruelly ill-treated, so that blood flowed. The bishops applied to King Guntram, and the bishops assembled around him found it necessary to take counsel on the subject on the 1st of November next at a common Synod (where , is not said). Nothing more of this is given in detail. But we know that, in the year 590, a great Synod at Poitiers punished Chrodieldis, her cousin Basina, and her other companions with excommunication.

Another Synod of the same year, 590, at Metz, removed this sentence again, and pronounced the deposition of Bishop AEgidius of Reims on account of high treason. Photius refers to a kind of Synod at Alexandria about the year 589. This was, however, properly a disputation between the two parties of the Samaritans; and Archbishop Eulogius of Alexandria was present with some other bishops only for the settlement of the quarrel. Both parties were shown their error. Mention is made of a Roman Synod about this time, but only in a spurious letter of Pope Pelagius II. to the bishops of Germany and Gaul. On the other hand, a Synod of the defenders of the three chapters belonged to the last years of the reign of that Pope at Mariano or Marano in Friaul (vol. 2, sec. 281), and the Synod at Salona in Dalmatia, at which the metropolitan of that place, Natalis, unlawfully deposed his Archdeacon Honoratus. In order to remove him from his important post, the archbishop wanted to ordain him priest, and thus advance him to that order; but Honoratus refused, and for this reason was condemned. He appealed to Pope Pelagius II., and after his death, which speedily followed, to Gregory the Great. The two Synods of the schismatical defenders of the three chapters fall in the first year of the reign of Gregory the Great, which we mentioned before (sec. 281). The projected Roman Synod of the year 590, for the restoration of the schismatics, appears not to have taken place, on account of the violent protests of the latter.

On the boundary of the three cities of Clermont in Auvergne, Gabales, and Rodez, the bishops assembled, A.D. 590, in a Synod, with secular grandees, and pronounced judgment on Tetradia, who had forsaken and robbed her husband, Count Eulalius of Auvergne, and then had married Duke Desiderius. In the same year Archbishop Leander, with seven suffragans, celebrated a provincial Synod in his metropolitan city of Seville (Hispalensis or Spalensis I .). Its three decrees (Capitula ) are found in the synodal letter to the absent suffragan bishop, Pegasius of Astigis, now Ecija, near Seville. His predecessor, Gaudentius, had set free several slaves, and had given a good deal of Church property to his relations. The Synod, in cap. i., supporting itself on c. 33 of Agde (see sec. 222; cf. c. 6), now declares that these gifts are invalid. The liberations are declared to be without force, unless Gaudentius has left of his private fortune an equivalent to the Church. This decision, by c. 2, shall have effect for the whole Provincia Boetica . Finally, by c. 3, the prohibition is anew enforced against the clergy having strange women in their houses, with the addition that the secular judges shall sell such women, in accordance with c. 5 of Toledo (sec. 287).

Burchard and others cited still more canons of Seville, which have been put in his collection by Mansi (l .c .). At Saragossa the bishops of the ecclesiastical province of Tarragona assembled in a provincial Synod (Caesarangustana II .), November 1, 592, under their Metropolitan Artemius, and decreed,1. If an Arian priest becomes a Catholic and upright, particularly if he is chaste, he may be ordained as priest anew on repentance. So also a deacon. 2. Relies found in Arian churches shall be burnt by the priests. 3. If Arian bishops, who have become converts, consecrated churches before they were themselves ordained anew, these churches stand in need of a fresh consecration.

In a letter to the royal revenue officers the bishops set forth how much corn could be raised from the territories, subject to the bishops. Mansi showed (l .c . p. 474) that no Synod had been held about this time in Numidia ; but somewhat later a Synod took place at Carthage , A.D. 594 or 595, because of the oppression under the Donatist schism. Details are unknown. The minutes of a Roman Synod, of July 5, 595, are found among the letters of Gregory the Great, in the older edition, as Epist . 44 of Book 4, in the Benedictine, as No. 5 in the appendix to the letters (Gregor. Opp . ed.

Benedict. t. 2, p. 1288; printed also in Mansi, t. 9, p. 1226, t. 10, p. 475; Hardouin, t. 3, p. 496). Around Pope Gregory there were twenty-three bishops, and many priests and deacons assembled, and he proposed the following ordinances, which were approved by the Synod by acclamation:— 1. It has long been the custom in the Roman Church to ordain cantors as deacons, and, still further, to use them for singing, instead of for preaching and caring for the poor. This has the consequence that, at divine service, more is thought of a good voice than of good life.

Consequently no deacon may, henceforth, sing in the church except the Gospel in the Mass. The remaining lections and psalms shall be sung by subdeacons, or, if it is necessary, by those in minor orders. 2. In the service of the person of the Pope, laymen shall no longer be used, as has been done for some time, but only clerics or monks. 3. The administrators of the property of the Church may no longer, as hitherto, place titles (i .e . wooden labels with the names of the owners) arbitrarily on goods of which they suppose that they are Church property, after the manner of revenue officers, and so defend Church property by force instead of judgment. 4. A custom has crept in, at the funeral of a Pope, to cover his body with delmatics, which are then torn in pieces by the people, and are held in great honor, and preserved as relies; whilst clothes with which apostles and martyrs were covered are less honored. This may no longer be done. 5. For consecration, the pallium, and the documents referring to these, etc., no more must be demanded under any title whatever, e .g . as pastellum ( = pastillum = luncheon, our pour boire ). If, however, one who is consecrated, after reception of the documents or the pallium, gives anything voluntarily to a (Roman) cleric (for his trouble), this may be received. 6. It often happens that slaves, who belong to the Church or to secular people, wish to enter a monastery. If we allow this, the Church will at last lose all her slaves. If, however, we do not permit their entrance into a monastery, we refuse an offering to God. Therefore, if a slave shall henceforth wish to enter a convent, his conduct shall first be carefully examined; and if this is blameless, entrance shall be allowed him.

Whether Gregory the Great did also, at the same Synod, inquire into the case of the two priests, John of Chalcedon and Athanasius, a monk of the monastery of St. Mile (Tamnaco in Lycaonia), is doubtful. Both were accused of heresy before the Patriarch John of Constantinople, and were condemned by his commissaries, but had appealed to Rome, and, after Gregory had held a Council on the subject, were acquitted. The letters of Gregory relating to this (lib. 6, Epp. 15, 16, 17, and 66) belong to the sixth year of his pontificate (595).

On the 17th of May of the year 597, sixteen bishops of several Spanish ecclesiastical provinces united in a Synod in the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul in Toledo. We know only that they drew up two canons. In the first they enjoined on the clergy the duty of chastity; in the second, forbade to the bishops to appropriate to themselves the goods of any church erected in their diocese. Rather, according to the will of the founder and the canons, there should be appointed to such a church a priest or deacon, or at least an ostiarius, in order to light the tapers before the holy relics in the evening. Another Spanish Synod at Huesca (Oscensis ), in the province of Tarragona, A.D. 598, ordained — (1) every year a diocesan Synod shall be held; and (2) all clerics must lead a chaste life. To the same ecclesiastical province of Tarragona belongs the Synod at Barcelona of November 1, 599, which, under the presidency of the Metropolitan Asiaticus of Tarragona, put forth four canons:— 1. Neither the bishop nor one of his clerics may demand anything for the imparting of orders, or the institution of the clergy. 2. So also nothing is to be asked for the chrism. 3. No layman may be ordained bishop without conforming to the old canons, which require a regular ascent through the different orders. If two or three are elected by clergy and laity, and presented to the Metropolitan, that one shall be consecrated upon whom the lot falls after a preceding fast by the bishops. 4. A virgin who has laid aside lay attire, has put on the habit of the religious, and has vowed chastity, may no longer marry. Nor one who has received the benedictio poenitentiae (sec. 222). CHAPTER -The Synods Not Relating To Monothelitism Between The Years 600 And 680.

SEC. 289. SYNODS BETWEEN THE YEARS 600 AND 630.

THE series of these Synods is opened by a Roman Synod under Gregory the Great, which took place, according to the reckoning of Pagi (ad ann . 601, n. 11 and 12), in the year 600, and certainly in October (not November, as Pagi assumed), and was occupied with the condemnation of the monk Andrew, and also with the matter of the Abbot Probus. That Greek monk Andrew belonged to the Aphthardocetae (sec. 208), and, in order to sustain his errors, had falsified several passages of the Fathers, as we know from Photius (Biblioth . Cod . 162). He was opposed especially by Archbishop Eusebius of Thessalonica (Photius gives, l .c ., extracts from his ten books against Andrew); the monk, however, also falsified a letter of this archbishop, so that it seemed to give a quite heterodox meaning. This is related by Gregory the Great in his letter to Eusebius, with the remark that the bearer of this letter, the lector Theodore, would give information, by word of mouth, on the other misdeeds of Andrew, and at the same time report what the Synod had decided respecting him. The second thing that we know of this Synod is that they communicated to the Abbot Probus of St. Andrew the permission requested by him, to leave by testament, in favor of his son, the property which he had left in the world, because he had been so suddenly elected abbot from his lay position that he had no previous opportunity of clearing up this matter. A short time afterwards Gregory the Great, with twenty-four bishops and many priests and deacons, celebrated again a Synod in the Lateran Church in Rome, on the 5th of April 601, and in the name of Jesus Christ, and by virtue of the authority of St. Peter, published the decree: “No bishop or layman may damage the property of a monastery under any pretext whatever. If there is a controversy as to whether a property belongs to the church of a bishop or to a monastery, umpires must decide. If an abbot dies, the brothers shall freely and unanimously elect as his successor, not a stranger, but one of the same community (congregation = monastic body).

If no suitable person can be found in the monastery, then the monks shall take care that one from another monastery shall be appointed (ordinandum curent ). During the lifetime of the abbot no other head shall be appointed over the monastery, unless the abbot has committed some offense interdicted by the canons. No monk may, against the will of the abbot, be selected for the guiding of other monasteries (ad ordinanda alia monasteria ), or for the reception of consecration. The bishop may not make an inventory of the goods of the monastery, and even after the death of the abbot he must not interfere in the affairs of the monastery; may not hold public mass in the monastery, so that there may be no meeting of people, or women; may set up no pulpit in it, nor introduce any regulation, nor, without the assent of the abbot, appoint any of the monks to any ecclesiastical service.”

All the bishops answered: “We rejoice at the liberties of the monks, and confirm what your Holiness has promulgated on this subject.” The Venerable Bede refers to one or properly two British Synods of A.D. 601. The Abbot Augustine, whom Gregory the Great had appointed at the head of the Anglo-Saxon mission, and had raised to be archbishop of Canterbury, had not merely to convert the still heathen Anglo-Saxons, but also bring back the deeply fallen ancient Britons to ecclesiastical order.

With the help of the Anglo-Saxon King Ethelbert of Kent, whom he had first converted, he succeeded, after many difficulties, in bringing the old British bishops and teachers to a meeting with him at a place in Worcestershire, since named Augustinaizac (Augustine’s oak) — (Synodus Wigornensis: Vigonia = Worcester), He exhorted them to maintain peace with him, and to support him in the conversion of the heathen Anglo- Saxons, and to give up their inaccurate way of finding Easter (see vol. 1, p. 330, sec. 37). As they would not consent, Augustine proposed that a miracle should decide whether the Roman or the British tradition was the correct one; and immediately a blind man was brought from the people of the Anglo-Saxons. The British prelates were unable to help him by their prayers; but Augustine succeeded so decidedly, that the others declared themselves overcome; but added that they could not, by themselves alone, and without the assent of their friends, consent to abandon their old usages; so that a greater Synod must be held.

This took place, and was attended by seven British bishops and many teachers, particularly from the British monastery of Bangor (in North Wales). Before they came to the Synod, the Britons visited a distinguished anchorite of their people, in order to invite his counsel. He declared: “If Augustine, on your arrival, rises from his seat to greet you, then he is humble and a man of God, and then you must follow him. If he does not so, you need not trouble yourselves about his words.” When they arrived, Augustine (more Romano ) did not rise from his seat, and therefore the Britons obstinately withstood his three demands — that (a) in regard to Easter, and (b) in regard to the rite of baptism, they should conform to the Roman Church; and (c) that they should share the mission among the Anglo-Saxons.

With regard to other matters, he would leave them with their own peculiarities. When Augustine was unable to overcome their self-will, he spoke prophetically. “Since you will not have peace with us, you shall have war from enemies; and since you will not help us to proclaim life to the Angles, these will bring death as a punishment to you.” This happened shortly, in fact, through King Ethelfrid of Northumberland, who among others caused 1200 monks of Bangor (the monastery numbered persons) to be cut down, because they had taken part in war against him. The old biographer of St. Betharius, bishop of Chartres, refers to a Synod at Sens, A.D. 601. The latter was himself present there. The occasion of the assembly was given by Pope Gregory the Great, who had requested, by letters to the Kings, to Brunehilde, to Virgilius of Arles, and others, that Synods should be held in order to remove various differences in France, particularly simony. This is probably the same Synod to which also St.

Columbanus, then abbot of Luxovium (Luxenil) in the Vosges, was invited, but did not come. If he did, this must have been the Synod at which the Frankish bishops asked Columbanus to give up his Irish ( = British) manner of reckoning Easter; but he answered them in a manner but little friendly. In the year 602, Pope Gregory the Great (Epist . lib. 12, Ep. 32) requested the bishops of the Byzacene province in Africa to examine the accusations against their Primate Clementius at a Synod. A similar demand was addressed to the Numidian bishops, in order to institute an inquiry into the case of the deacon Donadeus, who, on account of unjust deposition, had appealed to Rome, and that of Bishop Paulinus, who had practiced simony, and was said to have been furious with his clergy (Gregor. Epist . lib. 12, Epp. 8 and 28). Whether such a Synod took place is not known.

In the following year, 603, St. Desiderius, archbishop of Vienne, was deposed at a Synod at Chalons sur Saone, by the intrigues of Queen Brunehilde and Archbishop Avidius of Lyons, and Donnulus was raised to his place. King Theoderic thereupon sent the persecuted bishop into exile, and when he returned, had him stoned. That a Synod at London, about the year 605, under Augustine of Canterbury, Mellitus of London, etc., forbade marriages in the third degree of relationship, we know from a letter of St. Boniface, the apostle of the Germans, to Pope Zacharias. On Christmas of the year 605, King Ethelbert of Kent is said to have confirmed and endowed the monastery of Sts. Peter and Paul at Canterbury, at a Synod held at Canterbury. It is briefly related in the Roman pontifical book that Pope Boniface III. (A.D. 606) held a Synod of seventy-two bishops and many priests, etc., in St. Peter’s Church at Rome, and there promulgated the decree that, so long as a bishop lives, no one should speak of his successor, and no one should venture to get up a party for himself. Not until the third day after the burial should the election of the new bishop be under taken by the clergy. We receive a short account of another Roman Synod, held A.D. 610, through the Venerable Bede, who (lib. 2, c. 4) relates that Bishop Mellitus of London had traveled to Rome, in order to take counsel with Pope Boniface IV. on certain matters of importance which affected the English Church. He says that the Pope, with the bishops of Italy, now held a Synod, in order to draw up ordinances de vita monachorum et quiete .

Mellitus himself was present there, Feb. 27, 610, signed the decrees, and took them back with him to England as guides, with the letters of the Pope to Archbishop Lawrence of Canterbury (the successor of Augustine), to the clergy collectively, and to King Ethelbert. Bede tells us nothing more in particular; but the learned Lucas Holstein believed that he had discovered a decree of our Synod, and the letter belonging to it of Pope Boniface IV. to King Ethelbert. The former declares’” Some maintain that monks may not become priests, and administer the sacraments of baptism and penance.

This is quite untrue. Gregory (the Great), Augustine, the apostle of the Angles, and Martin of Tours were monks, and nevertheless became bishops. Benedict also, the great teacher of the monks, has not refused to them the reception of the priesthood. They shall only abstain from secular employments; and this applies not merely to monks, but also to canons.

The priest-monks, like the canons, are called angeli , i .e . messengers, because they announce the commands of God. The different orders of angels, however, are so much higher, as they stand nearer to the Lord, when they behold Him. Are not the monks, then, like the cherubim, covered with six wings? Two are for the covering of the head, two others are formed for the covering of the two arms, and also the garment which wraps the body has two wings. No one, therefore, must any longer try to exclude monks from the priestly office; for the more exalted anyone is, the more power he will have.”

After this quotation, it is no wonder if the document is almost universally regarded as spurious, and the work of a later monk. Remi Ceillier (Histoire des auteurs sacres , t. 17, p. 778) thought it not probable that the Pope and so many bishops should have amused themselves with the (trifling) allegorizing of the monk’s habit. Still more strong are the utterances on the subject of Du Pin (Nouvelle Bibliotheque , ed. Mons 1692, t. 6, p. 12, under Boniface IV.) and Bower (History of the Popes , vol. 4). We may add that the manner in which canons are here spoken of points to a time later than Chrodegang, although the expression Canonici clerici appears earlier (sec. 251).

The supposed letter of Pope Boniface IV. to King Ethelbert contains only a confirmation of the monastery founded at Canterbury, and betrays its spuriousness by the statement that Bishop Mellitus had journeyed to Rome on account of this matter (alone), whilst, apart from every other consideration, this monastery did not belong to his diocese. Less doubtful, but yet not entirely uncontested, is our information respecting a provincial Synod at Toledo, A.D. 610. The short minutes ascribed to it say that the bishops of the whole Carthaginian province had recognized the see of Toledo as metropolitan see, and in this they were saying nothing new, but only recognizing the privilege which it had long possessed (sec. 241). A fuller explanation is given in a contemporaneous decree of the West Gothic King Gundemar, in which he also, on his side, ordains that the whole Carthaginian province must be subject to the metropolitan of Toledo. He adds that this had been contested by several bishops, and that they had endeavored to split the Carthaginian civil province into two ecclesiastical ones, resting upon this that Bishop Euphemius of Toledo, at the Synod of the year 589 (sec. 287), in his subscription, had entitled himself only metropolitan of the province of Carpetania. Euphemius had done this, said the King, only by mistake, for Carpetania was not a province, but only a regio , a part of the Carthaginiensis provincia . As the other civil provinces, Lusitania, Baetica, Tarragonensis, had each only one metropolitan, this must be the case also with the Carthaginian, and whoever should endeavor to disturb this order, besides the ecclesiastical punishment (threatened by the Synod), would feel the severity of the King. Along with the King, twenty-six archbishops and bishops subscribed, who were at the royal court, foremost among them St.

Isidore of Seville.

Finally, the collectors of Councils added to our Synod three short petitions from persons belonging to the diocese of Mentesa (in the province of Toledo), in which they prayed that a certain AEmilian, by them much commended, should be made bishop. These three documents, however, certainly belong to another time, since another Bishop of Mentesa, James, was present at our Synod. fbt107 Under the successor of Gundemar, King Sisebut, Archbishop Eusebius of Tarragona, celebrated a provincial Synod at Egara with his suffragans on January 13, 614. That this city is identical with the present Terrassa, near Barcelona, was shown by Baluze in a special dissertation. The Synod of Egara, however, contented itself with enforcing anew the ordinances of the Council of Huesca in regard to the celibacy of the clergy. After Chlotar II., by the death of his cousins, had become sole governor of all the Frankish kingdoms, A.D. 613, he summoned the bishops of his empire to a general Synod at Paris (Parisiensis v.), which was the greatest of all the Frankish Synods up to this time, and was attended by no fewer than seventy-nine bishops. In the Collections of Councils (Mansi, t. 10, p. 539 sqq.; Hardouin, t. 3, p. 531) we find the Acts, as has been frequently remarked, not quite complete. In the year 1867, however, Professor Friedrich gave the whole minutes of the Synod from a parchment manuscript at Munich (“Three unedited Councils of the Merovingian Period”). In this Munich codex the Acts of this Synod fall into a Praefatio and seventeen canons, whilst in the Collections of Councils there are only fifteen of the latter. This arises from the fact that the former canon I is with Friedrich divided into two canons, and the Munich canon 4 is entirely lacking in the previous editions. Besides, canon 2 (in Friedrich, 3) was hitherto not quite perfect. Finally, there comes a closing formula along with the subscriptions. From this formula it results that the Synod was celebrated vi Jd. Octobr. (October 10) in the Basilica of St. Peter (later St.

Genevieve) in Paris, in the thirty-first year of Chlotar, i .e . A.D. 614, which was not certainly known before. At the close of the previous text it was simply said: “Huic synodo subscripserunt episcopi num. 79”; but the Munich codex gives the names of these seventy-nine bishops, with whom also an abbot was associated. In the first place subscribed Archbishop Aridius of Lyons, and after him followed Florianus of Arles, Domulus of Vienne, Hidulf of Rouen, Sabaudus of Trier, Proardus of Besancon, Solacius of Coln, Austrigisius of Bourges, Arnegisilus of Bordeaux, Lupus of Sens, Sunnacius of Reims, and Loodomundus of Elusa. They came together, as the preface says, partly to renew ancient canons in accordance with the need of the time, partly to remedy the grievances complained of on all sides, and to take care for the interests of the prince, the people, and the Church. The seventeen canons run:— 1. The old canons must in everything be again observed. 2. After the death of a bishop, he must be ordained as his successor whom the metropolitan with his comprovincials and the clergy and laity of the city in question have elected without simony. Any other ordination is irrita . (As remarked, cc. 1 and 2 were in previous collections c. 1) 3 (hitherto 2). No bishop may, during his lifetime, elect his successor: and so long as the bishop lives, no one may, under any pretext whatever, usurp his place, nor be ordained, unless when it is clear that the bishop is unable to govern his church and clergy. (Addition in the Munich codex: Whoever resists this ordinance falls under canonical punishment.) 4 (new). We have unanimously decreed that if a bishop deposes an abbot uncanonically (quia frates nostri sunt ), which will probably never happen, the latter shall appeal to the Synod. In case, however, the bishop dies, his successor shall reinstate the abbot. 5 (hitherto 3). No cleric, in whatever dignity he may stand, may, with contempt of his bishop (contempto episcopo ), apply to a prince or magnate, and select him as patron. Such an one should not be received, unless he can obtain forgiveness (on the part of the bishop). Whoever acts in opposition to this will be punished in accordance with the ancient canons. 6 (4). No secular judge may punish any cleric without knowledge of the bishop. If he does so, he must be excluded from the Church until he recognizes his fault, and amends. 7 (5). Liberated slaves stand under ecclesiastical protection, and may no longer be demanded back for the Exchequer. If anyone endeavors to deprive them of liberty, or demands them back for the Exchequer, and does not listen to the exhortation of the bishops, he is excommunicated. 8 (6). That which is given for the maintenance of churches shall be administered in accordance with the will of the giver by the bishop, priest, or cleric serving the church in question. If anyone takes anything from it, he is excommunicated. 9 (7). If a bishop or other cleric dies, the church and private property which he leaves behind may not be meddled with, not even at the command of a King or judge, but it must be preserved by the archdeacon or clergy until the instructions of the will are learnt.

Whoever acts in opposition to this is to be excluded from the communion as a murderer of the poor. 10 (8). Even the bishop and archdeacon may not, which hitherto has frequently happened, seize upon what has been left (praesidium , see Du Cange, s.v.) by an abbot or priest or other minister of a church ( = titulus ) for himself or his church, but it must remain for the place (church) to which the departed has bequeathed it. 11 (9). No bishop or layman may lay claim to the goods of another bishop, or to a church or private property, or take and keep it from anyone, under the pretext of the protection of the kingdom or of a (new) division of the provinces. 12 (10). The testaments of the bishops and of all clerics, in which they make gifts to the church, or to anyone, must have validity, even when they are not quite in accordance with the forms of secular law. 13 (11). If a bishop has a trial with another bishop, he must apply to the metropolitan, and not to the secular judge. 14 (12). No monk, and no nun (monacha ), may go back again from the cloister, under penalty of excommunication ad exitum vitae . 15 (13). Virgins and widows who, remaining in their abodes, have put on the religious habit, or on whom their parents have put it, may not marry. 16 (14). Incestuous marriages are forbidden. 17 (15). No Jew may exercise military or official authority over Christians. If he does so, he must be baptized with his family.

On the 18th of October 615, King Chlotar II. issued an edict, in which he confirmed the ordinances of the Synod, and repeated them with some additions. The most important of these are as follows: — To canon 2: One who is canonically elected bishop needs the confirmation of the King (per ordinationem principis ordinetur ). To c. 6: Only in civil affairs may the secular judge not take proceedings against clerics without knowledge of the bishop, but certainly in criminal cases, and if the fault lies quite open.

Only priests and deacons are here excepted. Matters of dispute between laymen and clerics shall be decided by the secular judge and the spiritual superior in common. To c. 9: If anyone has died without a testament, his relations shall inherit according to the law. The King further promises the removal of unfair impositions, and many other good arrangements, and says at the close that he has given these ordinances at the Council in common with the bishops and nobles. Another Frankish Council, perhaps also at Paris (when is unknown), enforced the ordinances of the above Synod at Paris again, and added new directions. Of its canons there are ten extant, viz.: Nos. 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, and the beginning of No. 15. They run:— 1. The ordinances of the Synod of Paris and King Chlotar remain in force. 2. Only in those churches in which relics of the saints are found may altars be consecrated. 4. Monks shall live according to rule in common, and have no property. 5. No baptisms may be held in monasteries, nor divine service for departed people of the world; and the bodies of such persons may not be buried there, except with consent of the bishop. 8. No cleric may have a strange woman in his house. 9. The right of asylum is confirmed. 11. Abbots and archpresbyters without fault may not be deposed nor set up for money. Moreover, no layman must be raised to be an archdeacon, unless when the bishop regards it as quite necessary for the defense of the Church. 12. Priests and deacons may on no account marry, on pain of exclusion from the Church. 13. If the bishop or a priest has excommunicated any one, he must give notice to the neighboring cities or parishes, with a statement of the offense committed. If anyone, after receiving such information, nevertheless has intercourse with the excommunicated person, he shall be excommunicated for two years. 14. If freemen have sold or pledged themselves for money, they return immediately into their state as soon as they repay the sum received; and no more shall be demanded of them than has been given for them. 15. Of this only the following words remain: “Si quis Christianorum diocesim, quae ab anterioribus episcopis.” This Synod is perhaps identical with that which is mentioned by the almost contemporaneous Frankish historian Fredegar. It was held by Chlotar, with the bishops and barons of Burgundy, in the thirty-third year of his reign (618), in the Villa Bonogelo (Bonneuil, in the neighborhood of Paris and Meaux). Among the Synods is reckoned also a meeting in Kent, where the three bishops, Mellitus of London, Lawrence of Canterbury, and Justus of Rochester, took the resolution to leave the Anglo-Saxon kingdom and to flee to Gaul, because, in the kingdoms of Kent and Essex, heathenism had again become dominant. A rather large and wordy set of minutes exist of the provincial Synod which Isodore of Seville held with his suffragans in the Jerusalem Church of his episcopal city on November 13, 619 (Hispalensis II.). Two royal officials were also present, and many clerics. They decreed, with many references to analogies in secular legislation:— 1. The bishopric of Malaga shall receive back those districts which were torn from it by war, and came to the bishoprics of Astigis, Elvira, and Agabro (Egabra). 2. The controversy about boundaries between the bishops of Astigis and Corduba shall be decided by a commission. 3. No cleric may, without the consent of his bishop, pass into the service of another church. 4. In the diocese of Astigis some men who had married widows were recently ordained Levites. This ordination is invalid. 5. The departed Bishop Anianus of Egabra ordained a priest and two deacons in this wise, that he, being blind, only laid his hand on them, whilst a priest gave the benediction. This ordination is invalid. 6. The priest Fragitanus of Corduba, whom his bishop improperly deposed, is restored, and it is declared that no individual bishop, but only the provincial Council, may depose a priest or deacon. 7. The setting up and consecration of an altar, and also the confirmation, the public reconciliation of a penitent in the Mass, etc., can be completed only by a bishop, not by a priest. 8. Elisaeus, a freedman of the Church of Egabra, is condemned to slavery again, because he has injured the bishop and the Church of Egabra. 9. Some of the bishops present have laymen for stewards. According to c. 26 of Chalcedon (sec. 200, vol. 3, p. 410), only clerics are to be appointed to such a post. 10. The newly-erected monasteries in the province of Baetica are confirmed, and every kind of plundering or the removal of a monastery is forbidden to bishops on pain of missing salvation. 11. The convents for women in Baetica shall be administered and guided by monks. The latter must, however, dwell apart, and they may converse only with the superior, and with her before witnesses. 12. A Monophysite bishop from Syria, after disputations for several days, put forward an orthodox confession of faith, and was received. 13. Further, the orthodox doctrine, in opposition to the Monophysites, of the duality of the natures and the unity of the person was fully explained, and proved by many passages from the Bible and the Fathers. From an anonymous history of the Armenian patriarchs, Galanus, who translated it (Conciliatio Ecclesiastes Armen . t. 1, p. 185), gained the intelligence, that the Armenian patriarch Esra (Jeser Necainus), who was attached to the orthodox faith, endeavored to drive away the Monophysite heresy from his people, and to this end asked help of the Emperor Heraclius, who had come to Armenia in his expedition against the Persian King Chsoroes. Supported by him the patriarch, about the year 622, held a great Synod at Garin or Charnum (later, Theodosiopolis) in Greater Armenia. Many Armenian bishops and nobles, also Greeks and Syrians, were present at the command of the Emperor, and it was resolved to adopt the decrees of Chalcedon, to leave out, in the Trisagion , the addition, “who was crucified for us” (secs. 208, 213), and no longer to celebrate the birth and the baptism of Christ on one day. It is stated by Tschamtschean, in his Armenian National History (Bd. 2, S. 537 ff.), that the Emperor Heraclius called the Catholicus Esra to him, and invited him to union with the orthodox Church. The catholicus at first laid down the condition that, on the orthodox side, they should give up the Council of Chalcedon. When, however, the Emperor threatened him, that he would appoint another catholicus for the parts of Armenia which were subject to him, he was more compliant, examined the confession of Chalcedon, found nothing wrong in it, accepted it at the Synod of Garin, with a number of other high Armenian ecclesiastics, and rejected the Synod of Dovin (sec. 240). On the other hand, Tschamtschean denies (1) that this union with the orthodox Church in Armenia had any long continuance, and (2) that anything was decided at the Synod of Garin in regard to the doxology or the Christmas festival. Tschamtschean also believed that the Synod should be assigned to the year 627 or 629. Later on, in the history of the Monothelite controversies (sec. 291), we shall come back to this. We cannot ascertain with exactness the time of a Synod held at Macon. It falls between 617 and 627, and was occasioned by a quarrel between Abbot Eustasius of Luxovium and his monk Agrestin. The latter, supported by Bishop Apellinus of Geneva, set every lever in motion in order to do away with the rule of St. Columbanus, who had founded the monastery at Luxovium. But the Synod decided against him, in favor of the rule and in favor of the abbot. The Acts of the Synod are not extant; but we have a short notice of it from Jonas in his Vita Eustasii Abbatis Luxoviensis . We obtain information respecting the first Synod of Reims through Flodoard, the historian of the Church of Reims (sec. 10), and he gives us even the names of the bishops present, and their twenty-five canons; but he is silent as to the year in which it was held. Sirmond thought we ought to place it about the year 630, because Rusticus of Cahors (Cadurci, who was present there, was made a bishop under King Dagobert, and Dagobert succeeded his father, Chlotar II., in the year 628. In opposition to this it has been remarked by several, and most effectively by Mansi (t. 10, p. 591, note 1), that Dagobert received Austrasia as his own kingdom so early as the year 622, during the lifetime of his father, and that our Synod should be placed in 624 or 625. Among those present we find Senocus or Sanctius of Elosa and Arnulf of Metz. Now Senocus was made bishop of Elosa in 624, so that the Synod cannot have been held earlier . Arnulf, however, resigned in the year 625, so that the Synod cannot be placed later. Archbishop Sonnatius (Sunnatius) of Reims presided, and there were, says Flodoard, forty or more bishops assembled around him. We find among them, besides those already mentioned, the Archbishops Theodoric of Lyons, Sindulf of Vienne, Modoald of Trier, and St. Cunibert, bishop of Coln, and Lupoald of Mainz. They decreed:— 1. Church property may not, by prescription, pass into the possession of another. 2. Clergymen who enter into conspiracies and lay snares for the bishop are to be deposed. 3. The canons of the general Synod of Paris under King Chlotar (above) shall have force. 4. The clergy must carefully follow up the heretics in Gaul, and convert them. 5. No one shall be hastily excommunicated; and the excommunicated can appeal at the next Synod. 6. The secular judge who punishes or dishonors a cleric without knowledge of the bishop, and on any ground whatever, is to be excommunicated. The bishops, however, shall punish one in fault. The census-takers of the State may not be received into the religious state (as clerics or monks) without permission of the prince or judge. 7. The right of asylum is vindicated to the Church. 8. Incestuous marriages are forbidden, and are to be punished by the secular power with loss of offices, even military, and with seizure of property. 9. Communion must not be held with a murderer. If he has done penance, the viaticum may be administered to him at his death. 10. Clerics and laymen who keep back or wish to annul presents made by their parents or themselves to churches and monasteries, are to be excluded from the Church. 11. Christians must not be sold to Jews or heathens. If anyone does so, he is excommunicated and the purchase is invalid. If a Jew wants to pervert his Christian slaves to Judaism, or cruelly tortures them, he loses them, and they fall to the Exchequer. Jews must not hold a public office, and their insults against Christians are to be wholly suppressed. 12. A cleric shall not travel without letters testimonial from his bishop.

Without such he may not otherwise be received. 13. A bishop may not sell the property, or even the slaves, of the Church. 14. If anyone imitates sorcery and other heathenish usages, and partakes with the heathen in superstitious banquets, he must undergo penance. 15. Slaves cannot be accusers; and generally, if an accuser does not prove his first accusation, he may not proceed to a second. 16. If anyone, after the death of a bishop, before the opening of the Testament, touches any of the property he has left, he is to be completely excluded from the Church. 17. A freeman may not be made a slave. 18. Clerics may not apply to the secular judge without permission of the bishop, either in private or in ecclesiastical cases. 19. In the rural parishes no layman must be appointed archpresbyter. 20. If anything is presented to the bishop, whether to him and the Church together or to him alone, it does not belong to the bishop as personal property, but is the property of the Church; for he who presents it has a care for the salvation of his soul, not for the use of the bishop. Justice also demands that, as the bishop has what is left to the Church, so the Church should have what is given to the bishop. If anything, however, is left in trust to the bishop or the Church, so that it has to come to another afterwards, the Church may not retain this as her property. 21. If a bishop takes anything away from another church, whether for his own advantage or for that of his church, as he cannot be excommunicated, he must be deposed. 22. If a bishop, except in urgent need, for the redemption of prisoners, alienates the vessels of the church, he is to be deposed. 23. Maidens and widows who have dedicated themselves to God, no one, even with permission of the King, may seize and marry. 24. Judges who violate the canons in opposition to the royal commands and the edict issued by the King at Paris, are to be excommunicated. 25. If a bishop dies, only a native of his city shall be chosen as his successor, by the vote of the whole people and the assent of the provincial bishops. A considerable number of other canons were ascribed by Burchard of Worms and Ivo of Chartres to the Council of Reims. We find, moreover, in the collections, twenty-one other Statuta synodalia ecclesiae Rhemensis per Dominum Sonnatium (Mansi and Hardouin, ll .cc .), which perhaps proceed from a diocesan Synod under Archbishop Sonnatius.

Of a Council at Clichy near Paris (Clippiacense), which was held about this time, we were unable to say anything in the first edition of this work except the name. The Acts of this Synod have, for the first time, become known to us through the work of Friedrich already mentioned, lie found them, like those of the Synod of Paris of 614 and the Synod of Ehsa of 551, in a parchment codex belonging to the Court and State Library at Munich.

From the introduction to the minutes of the Synod it appears that the bishops assembled at the wish of King Chlotar II.; from the close of the document, however, it appears that this took place on the V. Kal . Oct . ann . xlvi . of King Chlotar, therefore on the 27th of September 626. They only repeated the canons of the Synod of Reims (of the year 625), and with them implicitly those of the Paris Synod of 614. The only new part is their express mention, in c. 5, of the Bonosians (Bonosiaci ) among the heretics (vol. 3, sec. 164; and below, sec. 290), besides c. 1, which is also new: “Episcopus, presbyter, vel diaconus usuras ab episcopatibus (?) exigens ant desinat aut certe damnetur. Nam neque centesima exigant aut turpia lucra requirant. Sexsuplum vel decaplum prohibemus omnibus Christianis.”

The minutes were subscribed by forty bishops (at their head the archbishops of Lyons, Bourges, Vienne, Sens, Tours, Reims, and Elusa), an abbot, and the deacon Samuel of Bordeaux. The bishops of Besancon, Trier, and Coln, whom we met (A.D. 614) at Paris as archbishops, subscribed here after the other bishops. As we know from St. Boniface, the metropolitan arrangements in the Frankish kingdom, in the seventh century, had departed from the ordinary usage.

About the year 630, Pope Honorius required the Irish (Scots) to adopt the Roman rule for finding Easter. They arranged a national Synod (A.D. 630- 633) at Lenia (Leighlin, in the south of the island), and here after very lively discussions they united in the resolution to send some men to Rome, in order to see with their own eyes how it stood there. These deputies declared after their return that they had seen in Rome of the faithful from all parts of the world celebrating Easter on the same day; and it was particularly Abbot Laserian of Lenia, one of the deputies to Rome, and Abbot Cummian (a disciple of Columba), who recommended with great ardor the adoption of the Roman practice. In consequence this use was adopted in the south of Ireland, but not in the north, and still less by the Picts and Scots of Caledonia. Abbot Cummian, however, soon found it necessary, on account of his adhesion to the Roman manner, to defend himself in a special tract, in which, among other things, he says: “Can anything more preposterous be imagined than the contention: Rome is in error, Jerusalem is in error, Antioch is in error, the whole world is in error.

Only the Scots and Britons do not err! SEC. 290. THE SYNODS NOT REFERRING TO MONOTHELETISM BETWEEN A.D. 633 AND 680.

Chronology would require us now to speak of the Alexandrian Synod in June 633, which was occasioned by the Monotheletic controversies. That would soon be followed by alternating Councils, some of them having no connection with this controversy, and others which were related to it. In the interest of the connection of subject, however, we prefer to separate the one class from the other, and first to treat of those Synods which were held between the years 633 and 680, — up to the time of the sixth OEcumenical Council, — but without touching on the Monothelite controversy. The first of them is the Spanish general or national Synod in the Church of St. Lescadia at Toledo (Toletana IV .), December 5, 633. It was convoked by King Sisenad, and attended by sixty-two bishops from Spain and Narbonensian Gaul, under the presidency of St. Isidore of Seville. At the very beginning the King devoutly threw himself on the ground before the bishops, and asked with tears for their intercession with God. He then exhorted them to preserve the rights of the Church in accordance with the ancient canons, and to correct abuses which had crept in; and they fulfilled this commission in seventy-five Capitula . They began — 1. with the confession of the orthodox faith, with the filioque , and then ordain:— 2. In all Spain and Gaul (Narbonensis ) one and the same kind of psalmody, celebration of mass, vespers, and matins shall be introduced. 3. Every year a Council shall be held at least once. If the matter in question is a point of faith or any other subject of universal interest, a general Synod must be convoked from all Spain and Gaul. In other cases each province can hold its own Council on the 18th of May. If anyone wishes to make complaint of bishops, judges, magnates, or anyone whatever, he must do so before such a Council, and an executor regius will give effect to the judgment of the Council. He will also admonish the judges and men of the world to appear at the Synod. 4. Prescriptions, how Synods are to be held (given in vol. 1, 64 sqq.). 5. Since sometimes a difference has come in, regarding the announcement of Easter, through erroneous Easter tables, the metropolitans shall henceforth take counsel with each other, by letter, three months before the Epiphany, respecting the time of Easter, and then make known the right date to their comprovincials. 6. As in Spain some in baptizing dip only once and others three times, and so with many doubts arise whether someone has been validly baptized, we will receive instructions in regard to this difference from the apostolic see, namely, from Pope Gregory of blessed memory. The latter, in his letter to Bishop Leander, approves as well the single as the triple immersion; but he adds: “If hitherto, in Spain, only the heretics (Arians) have used a triple immersion, in order dum mersiones numerant , divinitatem dividant , the orthodox must no longer employ the triple immersion.” Accordingly the Synod decrees the universal introduction of the single immersion as a symbol of the death and resurrection of Christ, and of the unity in the Trinity. 7. In some churches there is no divine service on Good Friday. This should not be. Rather on this day the mystery of the cross should be preached, and God should be publicly entreated by all people for the forgiveness of sins. 8. Some cease their fast at the ninth hour on Good Friday. This should not be. 9. In the Gallican churches, in the Easter vigil, neither lamp nor taper is blessed, while they are in Spain. In future this should be done there also. 10. Some clerics in Spain say the Pater Noster only on Sunday. It must be said daily; and if any cleric omits this in the public or private office, he is to be deposed. 11. During the whole of Lent the Alleluia is not to be sung. So also not on the 1st of January, which is kept by many as a fast day, in opposition to heathenish customs. 12. The Laudes are to be sung, not before, but after the Gospel. 13. It is not right to reject all the hymns composed by Hilary and Ambrose, and to sanction only biblical hymns in the use of the Church. 14. In all Spain and Gaul the Hymn of the Three Children (boys) in the Furnace shall be sung in every office. (Missa , cf. sec. 219 ad fin .) 15. At the end of the Psalms not merely shall the Gloria Patri , etc., be sung, as is done by some, but Gloria et honor Patri , etc., after Psalm 38:1 and Revelation 5:13. 16. In the chants this rule shall be followed: If it is joyful, the Gloria is to be added; if it is sad, the beginning is to be repeated. 17. The Apocalypse is to be recognized as a sacred book, and to be read in the office (Missa ) from Easter to Pentecost. 18. Some receive the Holy Communion immediately after the Lord’s Prayer (Pater Noster ), and afterwards give the blessing to the people.

In future, after the Pater Noster the bread and chalice shall be united (mixed), then the people blessed, and then only the sacrament of the Body and Blood of the Lord received; and this by the celebrant and the Levites before the altar, by the clergy in the choir, and by the people outside the choir. 19. The old ordinances on the point, who may not be ordained a bishop, are collected and appended; also, that the consecration of an ordinary bishop must be celebrated on a Sunday by at least three bishops, at the place appointed by the metropolitan, but the consecration of the latter in the metropolitan city. 20. Only one who is twenty-five years old can become a Levite, and one who is thirty, a priest. 21. The Sacerdotes (bishops and priests) must be chaste. 22. They must also avoid all appearance of evil, and therefore the bishops must always be surrounded in their dwelling by witnesses of their walk. 23. So with priests and Levites, if on account of the altar or of sickness they live in their own cells, and not in the dwelling of the bishop. 24. All younger clerics must reside in one locality and be under the oversight of a tried cleric of higher rank, who shall be their teacher and the witness of their walk. 25. The priests shall be instructed in the Holy Scriptures and in the canons, and edify all by their knowledge of the faith and by the purity of their works. 26. If a presbyter is set over a rural parish, he shall receive a liber officialis from the bishop, so that he may rightly understand his duties.

If he comes to the litanies, or to the diocesan Synod, he shall give the bishop an account of his discharge of his office. 27. Such presbyters must swear to the bishop to live chastely. 28. If a bishop, priest, or deacon has been unjustly deposed, and is recognized as innocent in a later Synod, he must receive back his lost degree before the altar; in the case of the bishop, through reception of the orarium, the ring, and the staff; the priest, by reception of the orarium (stole) and planeta (chasuble); the deacon, by reception of the orarium and alb; the subdeacon, by reception of the paten and chalice; and similarly the others. 29. If a cleric consults soothsayers and the like, he is to be deposed, and confined in a convent to perpetual penance. 30. Bishops on the border of a hostile power must not enter into secret intercourse with the enemy. 31. If in certain eases clerics are appointed judges by the King, they may accept the office only on condition that the King first takes oath not to allow anyone who is found innocent to be executed. If the cleric does not make this condition, and gives occasion for the shedding of blood, he must be deposed. 32. If a bishop sees that a judge oppresses the poor, he shall admonish him; and if he does not amend, he must inform the King of him. If he fails in this, he is to be punished by the Council. 33. It sometimes happens that bishops, from covetousness, take for themselves what was given for churches, so that there is often a lack of clerics for these churches, and for the repair of the church buildings.

Bishops may claim only one-third of the oblations, tributes, and fruits.

Moreover, not the donor, but the bishop has the administration of the property presented by anyone to the Church. 34. If a bishop has had possession for thirty years, without protest, of a diocese ( = parish, sec. 22, c. 54, of Agde) which belongs to another bishop, it remains with him, in ease it is in the same ecclesiastical province (as his diocese). 35. Newly built churches belong to the bishop in whose district they lie. 36. Bishops must visit their dioceses, to ascertain what repairs each church may need. 37. If a bishop, by the assistance (suffragium ) of anyone, has obtained a benefit for the Church, and has for this promised a reward to anyone, he must keep this promise. 38. If anyone who has made presents to the Church afterwards becomes poor, the Church must support him. 39. The deacons may not raise themselves above the presbyters, and stand in the first choir whilst the priests are in the second. 40. No bishop or priest, much less a deacon, may wear two oraries (stoles). The latter must wear the orarium on the left shoulder, because he orat , id est proedicat . The right side of the body he must have free, in order that he may, without hindrance, do his service. 41. All clerics, even lectors, must, like the Levites and priests, shave the whole front part of the head, and leave behind only a circular crown. In Galicia, heretofore, the clerics have worn long hair, like the laity, and have only shorn a little circle in the middle of the head. This may not, in future, be so; for in Spain only heretics had such a (small) tonsure. 42. No woman may reside with clerics, except a mother, sister, daughter, or aunt. 43. If clerics have intercourse with strange women, the latter shall be sold, the clerics do penance. 44. Clerics (of lower rank) who, without permission of the bishop, marry a widow, a deserted woman, or a prostitute, must be separated by their bishops (separari , i .e . excluded from the clergy. Cf. Florez, Espana Sagrada , t. 6, p. 163). 45. Clerics who, on occasion of a riot, voluntarily take up arms, are to be deposed, and shut up in a convent for penance. 46. A cleric who destroys graves is to be deposed, and punished with penance for three years. The secular laws punish this crime with death. 47. At the command of King Sisenand, the Synod decreed that all free clerics should be free from all public indictions (i .e . feudal dues and taxes, see Du Cange, s.v.) and services, in order that they may be able to serve God without disturbance. 48. Bishops shall select stewards from among their own clergy, according to canon 26 of Chalcedon (see sec. 200 in vol. 3). 49. If a man becomes a monk either by the piety of his parents or by his own will, he may not return into the world again. 50. If any clerics wish to become monks, and to choose a melior vita , the bishop may not hinder them. 51. The Synod learnt that some bishops use the monks for work like slaves, and regard the convents almost as their own property, This may not be. The bishops have only those rights over the monks which are reserved in the canons; namely, they may exhort the monks to a holy life, institute abbots and other presidents, and reform all irregularities. 52. It happens that monks return to the world, or even marry. They must be brought back to the convent which they have left, and have penance imposed upon them. 53. Religious who are neither clerics nor monks, and vagrant religious, shall be brought to order by the bishop of the neighborhood where they are found, and placed among the clergy or sent into a convent. Only in the case of the old and sick can the bishop make an exception. 54. One who receives penance in peril of death, without confessing open crime, but simply declaring himself to be a sinner, may after his recovery become a cleric. But he who has done penance in such wise that he has openly confessed a mortal sin, can never become a cleric. 55. Laymen who have received penance and have shorn themselves, but afterwards, sinning again, have become laymen, i .e . have left the position of penitents (see secs. 222 and 224), must be called back by the bishop to the life of penitence. If they do not return, they are to be solemnly anathematized as apostates. The like shall be done with those who have cast off the religious habit, and have assumed the secular one again; also with virgins and widows dedicated to God. 56. There are two kinds of widows, the secular and those dedicated to God (sanctimoniales ). The latter have laid aside the secular dress, and have assumed the religious habit in the church. They may no longer marry. 57. Henceforth no Jew may be compelled to the reception of Christianity. Those who were compelled under King Sisebut, and received the sacraments, must remain Christians. 58. Many clerics and laymen in the past have allowed themselves to be bribed by Jews, and have protected them. Whoever does so in the future is to be anathematized and excommunicated. 59. In regard to the Jews who have adopted the Christian faith, but subsequently relapse into Jewish usages, and even circumcise others, the holy Synod decrees, with the consent of King Sisenand, that such transgressors shall be compelled by the bishop to return to the faith. If those circumcised by them are their sons, they shall be separated from their parents; if they are slaves, they shall be liberated. 60. The (baptized) sons and daughters of Jews, generally shall be separated from their parents, and shall be brought up either in convents or by Christian men or women. 61. Although baptized Jews who have again apostatized have deserved the confiscation of their goods, yet shall their children, if they are believing, inherit the property of their parents. 62. Baptized Jews must have no intercourse with the unbaptized. 63. If a Jew has a Christian wife, if he wishes to continue to live with her, he must become a Christian. If he does not, they are to be separated, and the children are to follow the mother. In like manner the children of unbelieving (Jewish) mothers and Christian fathers must be Christians. 64. Baptized Jews who have fallen away from the faith may not be witnesses, even though they maintain that they are Christians. 65. On command of the King, the Synod orders that Jews and the sons of Jews shall discharge no public offices. 66. Jews may not buy or possess Christian slaves. If they have such, they become free. 67. Bishops may not liberate the slaves of the Church, unless they indemnify the Church for the same out of their own resources. If otherwise, the successor of the bishop may recover those whom he has freed. 68. If the bishop wishes to emancipate a slave of the Church, without reserving to the Church the right of protection (patrocinium , see canon 70), he must, in presence of the Council, give to the Church in compensation two other slaves of like value. 69. Bishops who leave any property to the Church may emancipate slaves belonging to the Church to the value of their bequest. 70. Those emancipated by the Church remain, with their descendants, in the patrocinium of the Church, and owe obedience to the bishop. 71. If they wish to withdraw from the patrocinium of the Church, they shall lose their freedom again. 72. The Church must defend the freedmen who stand under her protection. 73. Those who were emancipated without the patron having reserved an obsequium for himself, may become clerics. Those, on the contrary, in the case of whose emancipation an obsequium was reserved, still owe service to their patron, and cannot become clerics, because the master has it in his power to make them slaves again. 74. Slaves of the Church may become priests and deacons, if they are previously emancipated. Whatever they earn, however, or may have presented to them, they must, at their death, leave to the Church. If they complain and testify against the Church, they lose their clerical rank and their freedom. 75. The oath of fidelity given to Kings must be preserved inviolate. The most zealous warnings are given against riots, conspiracies, and plots to murder, formed against the King, under threats of anathema and entire exclusion from Christianity. Nor must anyone make an attempt on the throne; but when the Prince dies the heads of the people shall, in common with the bishops, appoint a successor in the government. At the same time, King Sisenand and all subsequent Kings are exhorted to govern with mildness and justice, and to pronounce sentences of death and other great punishments, not by himself alone, but only when the tribunal has found the guilt to be undeniable. Cruel and unjust Princes are warned that Christ the Lord would condemn them. Neither Suinthila (the former King), who, on account of his crimes, deprived himself of his kingdom, and laid down the scepter, nor his wife and children, shall ever again be raised to honor and dignity, and shall retain only so much of their unjustly gotten property as the King grants them. Gelanes, the brother of Suinthila, who was faithless to him as to Sisenand, shall, with his family, be expelled from the nation, and lose his goods, except what the King leaves him. Finally, the Synod closed with a doxology to God, and with pious wishes for the welfare and happiness of the King. — The first signatures were those of the six metropolitans, Isidore of Seville, Selva of Narbonne, Stephen of Emerita, Julian of Braga, Justus of Toledo, and Andar of Tarragona, in order of consecration; and after them fifty-six bishops and seven representatives of absent bishops. That the care of the Fathers of Toledo, shown in the last canon, for the peace of the kingdom was not superfluous, was soon shown by the events which took place after the death of King Sisenand in March 636. Almost contemporaneously with him died the Metropolitans Justus of Toledo and Isidore of Seville, the former a few days before, and the latter a few days after the King. The selection of a new King, as it appears, was difficult.

They found great difficulty in coming to an agreement, and several candidates had not the requisite qualifications. Finally, at the beginning of April 636, Chintila, brother of Sisenand, was elected King, and he immediately convoked a Synod, partly for the confirmation of his throne, and partly to arrange ecclesiastical affairs. This is the fifth Synod of Toledo, a Spanish national Council. Two and twenty bishops and two representatives assembled in the Church of St. Leocadia in Toledo, under the presidency of the new archbishop of that place, Eugenius I. (successor of Justus); and the King, too, was present with the heads of the people and the officials of the palace. Immediately after his entrance into the Synod, the King prayed the bishops for their intercession with God; and they drew up the following decrees: 1. Annually, in the whole kingdom, from the 14th of December, three days onwards, litanies (intercessory processions) shall be held. If a Sunday falls on one of those days, they are to be put off until the next week. 2. That which was provided, in regard of the kingdom, in the former Synod (canon 75), remains in force, and it is added, that the descendants of the King, protected in their lawful property, must not be robbed by a later King. 3. If anyone makes an attempt on the throne without being elected by general consent, and raised by the nobility of the Gothic people, he shall be punished with anathema, and expulsion from all communion with Catholics. 4. So, too, shall he be who, in a superstitious manner seeks to find out the death of the Prince, and during his lifetime makes plans and plots in regard to the succession. 5. So, too, he who utters execrations against the Prince. 6. The faithful servants of a Prince, if they survive him, shall not be cut down by his successor, and deprived of presents which they have received. 7. At the close of every Synod in Spain, canon 75 of Toledo in regard to the kingdom shall be read again and inculcated anew. 8. The right of pardoning those who fail in the above points we reserve for the King. 9. Honor be to God; thanks to the King.

Thereupon the bishops subscribed the minutes, and the King confirmed and published the decrees by an edict of June 30, 636. In the same year, at a Synod at Clichy near Paris (Clippiacum ), St. Agilus was made abbot of the newly founded monastery of Rebais by King Dagobert (Mansi, t. 10, p. 658); the general Synod at Paris, however, which confirmed anew the immunity of the monastery of St. Denis, and is generally assigned to the year 638, belongs, according to Mansi’s reckoning (t. 10, p. 569), to the year 658, but more correctly to the year 653 (see below).

In the January of the year 638, however, by the wish of King Chintila, the sixth Synod of Toledo was celebrated in the Church of St. Leocadia by fifty-two bishops out of all the provinces of Spain and Narbonensian Gaul.

At their head stood the five metropolitans, Selva or Silva of Narbonne, Julian of Braga, Eugenius of Toledo, Honoratus of Seville, (the successor of St. Isidore), and Protasius of Tarraco. They ranked, as at the earlier Spanish Synods, in the order of their consecration. Only one metropolitan, of Emerita, was absent. 1. In their first Cap . the bishops, first of all, set forth the orthodox faith in a new formula, which is like the previous one (of Toledo, 4), and uses hominum instead of humanam naturam , but is considerably more complete. It shows no trace of the Monothelite controversies having then touched Spain. 2. The litanies ordered at the previous Synod are confirmed. 3. God is thanked for this, that King Chintila had lately, by a decree, ordered that all Jews should be obliged to leave Spain, and that only Catholics should be allowed to dwell in the country. In agreement with the King and the nobility, etc., it is at the same time decreed that every future King, before ascending the throne, together with other oaths, should be required to take this, that he would not tolerate Jewish unbelief, and would uprightly maintain the present laws. If he violates this oath, let him be anathema maranatha (see Toledo, 3, sec. 287) before God, and food for eternal fire. Finally, the decrees of the fourth Synod of Toledo in regard to the Jews are confirmed. 4. A Simonist may not receive consecration; and if he has already received it, he is to be excommunicated, and, together with his consecrator, punished with confiscation of his property. 5. If a cleric receives any Church property for his use from the bishop, he must set forth a petitionary document (viz. that he has received, at his petition, preces , something for usufruct), so that a prescriptive right may not grow up, to the damage of the Church, by long possession.

Moreover, he must not neglect the Church property which he has received. 6. Men, maidens, widows, who have once put on the religious habit, or have entered a monastery, and so, too, a man who has entered the choir of a church, may not return to the world. 7. Since it often happens that those who have assumed the religious habit, and entered the state of penitents, return to the old life, wear secular clothing, and dress their hair, such persons shall be confined in convents by the bishop against their will. If they refuse, they are to be excommunicated; and so, too, the bishop, if he allows himself to be bribed by them. 8. As Pope Leo before, so we now permit that a young married man, who becomes a penitent when in danger of death, after his recovery, if he is not continent, may return to his wife until he comes to the age at which he can preserve continence. He shall thereby be preserved from the danger of sinning with others, and committing adultery. The same holds of a young wife. We add, however, the limitation: If that one of the pair who did not take penance upon him dies before they have both come back to continence (by a more advanced age), the surviving partner may not marry again. If, however, the one who has not received the benediction of penance be the survivor, he may marry again, if he cannot contain. Moreover, the bishop shall decide, in every particular case, with regard to age, whether the person is to be dispensed from continence or to hold it fast. 9. At every entrance upon office of a new bishop, the emancipated of the Church and their posterity must exhibit the certificate of their emancipation to the new bishop. He must confirm it anew, and they must themselves declare that they will render the obsequium belonging to the Church. 10. The children of these freedmen must go to the church which is their patron for instruction, and nowhere else. 11. No one who is accused may be condemned without inquiry. If a person not having the right of complaint accuses, no regard is to be paid to his accusation, unless it has to do with high treason. 12. Every traitor to his country is to be excommunicated and punished with long penance. If he acknowledges his wrong-doing before the excommunication has been decreed, he may, upon the intercession of the bishops, obtain favor from the King. 13. The high functionaries of the palace shall receive respect. 14. The faithful servants of a King may not be injured by his successor, in dignity or property, according to canon 6 of the fifth Council of Toledo. The King may pardon unfaithful servants. If their unfaithfulness, however, comes out after his death, they must be punished. 15. What the King or others have presented to the Church must remain to it. 16. The children of a King who has died must not be injured. Their property and their peace must be secured. Praise of King Chintila. 17. During the lifetime of the King, no one may form plans for the future occupation of the throne. After the death of the King, no tonsured person, no offspring of a slave, no stranger, but only a Goth, may be elected King. 18. All offenses against the King are threatened with eternal damnation, and the earlier decrees referring to this (canon 75 of the fourth Synod of Toledo) renewed. 19. Honor be to God; thanks to the King. That the Synod at Chalons on the Saone (Cabilonensis) was held by command of Chlodwig II. (i .e . his guardian Aega, for Chlodwig was only a few years old), on the 25th of October, in the Church of St. Vincent there, we see from the Praefatio of the minutes and from the synodal letter; but the year is uncertain, and the learned waver between 644 and 656. Mansi, in particular, endeavored (t. 10, p. 1198) to show that the date 644 is the correct one. The earlier collectors of Councils give the preference to the year 650. There were present thirty-eight bishops and six representatives of bishops, all from the kingdom of Chlodwig, i .e . from Neustria and Burgundy. They belonged to the five ecclesiastical provinces of Lyons, Vienne, Rouen, Sens, and Bourges; and Candericus of Lyons presided.

They ordained:— 1. The faith of Nicaea, etc., and of Chalcedon shall be held fast by all. 2. The old canons remain in force. 3. No cleric may have intercourse with a strange woman. 4. Two bishops may not be in one city. 5. Neither the property of rural parishes, nor the parishes themselves, may be given over to people of the world. 6. No one may take any Church property in possession before the decision of the rightful tribunal (audientia = judicium ; cf. Du Cange). 7. If a priest or abbot has died, neither the bishop, nor the archdeacon, nor anyone else may take away anything from the goods of the parish, or the xenodochion, or the monastery. 8. Penance is wholesome, and the bishops shall impose it on penitents after confession is made. 9. No slave shall be sold outside the kingdom of Chidwig. 10. If the bishop of a city has died, no one may elect a new one save the comprovincials, the clergy, and the laity. 11. The secular judges must in no way presume in rural parishes and convents without the invitation of the abbot or the archpresbyter. 12. Two abbots may not be in one city. 14. No bishop may retain by himself the cleric of another, nor ordain one from a strange diocese, without the assent of his bishop. 14. Some bishops complain that several magnates withdraw the oratories which are in their villas from episcopal supervision, and try to hinder the archdeacon from punishing, when necessary, the clerics in the oratories. These oratories are under the bishop as well in regard to the placing of the clergy as in regard to the property and the ordering of divine service. 15. The abbots, monks, and stewards of convents may not go to the King without permission of the bishop. 16. Prohibition of simony. 17. No layman may begin a quarrel, take weapons, and wound or kill anyone in the church or within the churchyard. 18. Labor in the fields, ploughing, sowing, reaping, etc., are forbidden on Sunday. 19. It is not permitted to sing indecent songs at the dedication of churches, the feasts of martyrs, in the church or the porch, nor yet in the churchyards (atrium ). 20. Agapius and Bobo, two bishops of Dinia (Digne), are deposed, because they have both violated the canons in many ways.

Besides these twenty canons we have a letter of the Synod to Bishop Theodosius of Arles. It is there said that Theodosius has not chosen to appear at the Synod, because rumor accused him of an indecent life, and of manifold violation of the canons. There were even writings shown from his own hand, from which it appeared that he had made a penitential confession, tie will himself know that one who has made such a confession, can, by the canons, no longer be bishop. Therefore he must refrain from the exercise of his episcopal office, and the administration of the property of the Church, until the next Synod. Several other canons attributed to the Synod of Chalons in the Corpus jur . can . and elsewhere, belong to other Synods.

The excellent King Chingila of Spain died in 640, and out of gratitude they elected his son Tulga as his successor, in spite of his youth. As, however, he was too weak to exercise authority, many nobles of the country offered the crown to one of their number, Chindaswinth, and he possessed himself of the power, A.D. 642, and had the hair of the youthful Tulga shorn, as a sign that he had entered the monastic state. Another part of the nation was against Chindaswinth, united with those outside the country, and procured help from Gaul and Africa, so that a civil war arose, which only after some years ended in favor of Chindaswinth. Immediately afterwards, in order to provide for the needs of Church and State, he convoked a national Synod, the seventh of Toledo, on the 18th of October 646. There were present twenty-eight bishops (among them the four metropolitans, Orontius of Emerita, Antony of Seville, Eugene of Toledo, Protasius of Tarragona) and eleven representatives of bishops. In the ordinary Collections of Councils a rather lengthy preface is prefixed to the minutes; as, however, this, in its contents, is plainly connected with the piece designated as cap. 1, the two new Collections of Spanish Councils, which appeared in 1808 and 1809, have probably united the two as cap. 1. 1. The contents of this are: Because not only many laymen, but also many clerics, took part in the recent civil wars, and betook themselves to foreign lands in order to injure the Gothic kingdom and King, it is ordained that such traitors to their country and their assistants of the clerical order be deposed and punished with lifelong penance. Only at death can they, if penitent, partake of the communion. The King may not prevent this excommunication, and, if a bishop at his command gives the communion to one so excommunicated (before his death), he shall himself be excommunicated to the end of his life. Moreover, in the case of the confiscation of goods on account of treason against the country, the King, in accordance with the old law, may only modify the punishment to this extent, that he may give back the twentieth part of his former property to the person in question. (So far the Synod had the opponents of Chindaswinth in view: in the following passage it threatens those clerics who helped him against Tulga.) If, however, a cleric, during the lifetime of the King, takes part for another who aspires to the throne, unmindful of his state, and this pretender conquers, such a cleric, be he bishop or anything else, shall be excommunicated until his death. If the King prevents the excommunication of his adherent, it shall take effect immediately after the King’s death. (The third section of cap. 1, which now begins, relates to the laity and to the possibility of pardon.) The layman, also, who goes abroad, in order there to act against his country and King, shall be punished with loss of goods and excommunication until his death, unless he adopts the means pointed out by us before (Toledo 6, c. 12), and obtains communion through the intercession of the bishops with the King. In the case of other injuries or conspiracies against the King, he can himself decide whether the offender shall again be admitted to communion or not (Toledo 5, c. 8); but in regard to disloyal clerics and laymen who have gone into foreign lands, we adjure the King not to remove the sentence of excommunication without the intercession of the bishops (Toledo 6, c. 12). 2. If the priest is taken ill during the Mass, so that he cannot finish it, then the bishop or another priest may continue it. Similarly in the case of other clerics; but he who continues the service must be fasting. 3. All clerics must be present at the burial of their bishop, and, at the right time invite another bishop to the obsequies. 4. In order to meet the covetousness with which the bishops of Galicia burden the rural churches which are subject to them, no bishop of this province may in future demand more than two solidi yearly from each church, in accordance with the decrees of Braga (sec. 285): the convent churches are, however, quite free from this tax. Also at the visitations of his diocese the bishop must not fall heavily upon anyone (with more than fifty persons and horses), and may not stay more than one day at a church. 5. Only quite upright monks may, apart from the convent, live in cells as reclusi , and so become the teachers of others (in high asceticism).

Those unworthy, on the contrary, must be brought back to the convent, as well reclusi as vagi . In future no one shall be admitted to this highest kind of asceticism (as reclusus ) unless he has first lived in a convent, and obtained knowledge and practice of the monastic life. The vagi must cease altogether. 6. Out of respect for the King and his residence, as well as for the comfort of the metropolitan of Toledo, the neighboring bishops, when the King invites them, shall spend one month annually in this city; but not at the time of the harvest or vintage.

After the minutes of the Synod just mentioned, Mansi (l .c . p. 775) places several fragments of another Council of Toledo, the time of which is unknown, from which, however, something has been taken into the decretals of Gregory IX. in the Corpus jur . can . c. 2, 10, de officio archidiaconi (i. 23); c. 3, 10, de officio archipresbyteri (i. 24); c. 1, 10, de officio sacristae (i. 26); and c. 2, 10, de officio custodis (i. 27). To the same Council, Mansi thinks, belong also two confessions of faith.

Very uncertain is the time of the holding of a Synod at Rouen, of which we still possess sixteen canons. The old superscription calls it a (Frankish) general Synod under King Hlodoveus. By this some have understood King Lewis the Stammerer, who died A.D. 879, and have placed the Synod in the second half of the ninth century, especially as they believed that the contents of the canons would agree only with later times, as, e .g ., Pommeraye, in his Concilia Rothomag . 1677. On the other side, Bessin, in the new Collection of the Councils of Rouen (Concilia provinciae Rothomag . 1717) has assigned this Synod to the reign of the Merovingian Chlodwig II. (son of Dagobert the Great), and so to the middle of the seventh century (650); and Mansi has followed him in this. Bessin tried to show that the contents of the canons formed no difficulty in the way of this assumption. To me, however, it seems that canons 9, 12, and 16 rather refer to a later time, and particularly to the circulating episcopal tribunals of the Carolingian time. The canons run:— 1. After the offertory the oblations shall be incensed as a memorial of the death of the Lord. 2. The impropriety must cease of some priests, who, at the festival of the Mass, give the holy mysteries to some women and laymen, but without themselves partaking. Moreover, the Eucharist is not to be given to the laity into their hand, but into the mouth, with the words:” Corpus Domini et sanguis prosit tibi ad remissionem peccatorum et ad vitam aeternam.” 3. If anyone does not give tithes of all fruits, of oxen, sheep, goats, after being thrice admonished, he is to be anathematized. 4. Shepherds and huntsmen must not use adjurations, etc. 5. Heretics who are baptized into the Holy Trinity, are not to be baptized again at their conversion; but after they have made their confession, the laying on of hands (confirmation) will be imparted to them. If they are still children, their sponsors will answer for them at the confession of faith, as in baptism, and then they will also receive the manus impositio . 6. If anyone is excommunicated by his own bishop, he may not be received by another. 7. Prohibition of simony. 8. Unknown (vagabundi ) bishops and priests may not be admitted to functions without probatio synodalis . 9. Widows generally may not receive the veil, and virgins only from the bishop, and not from a priest. 10. The bishop shall diligently visit convents for men and for women. If a nun violates her chastity, she shall be severely punished and imprisoned by herself. No cleric or layman may enter a convent for nuns, and the priest only for the Mass. 11. The bishop may not desert his cathedral and often frequent another church of his diocese. 12. If anyone strikes another, so that he bleeds, he must, if he is a layman, do penance for twenty days; if an inferior cleric, thirty days; a deacon, six months; a priest, a whole year; and a bishop, two years and a half. 13. If anyone practices heathenish usages on the 1st of January, let him be anathema. 14. Shepherds and farm laborers shall come to Mass at least on Sundays and feast days. 15. On Sundays and feast days all the faithful shall come to Vespers, to Nocturns, and to Mass. The deans must be watchful as to this. 16. If a bishop travels over his diocese, the archdeacon or archpresbyter must precede him by two days, and require all the people in the parishes concerned to appear at the Synod. Whoever does not appear is to be excommunicated. The archdeacon or presbyter must also settle the lighter questions before the arrival of the bishop. In Spain, King Chindaswinth had, by the election of the nobles, received his son Receswinth at first as co-regent, and since 652 as successor; and the new King now convoked the bishops and magnates of the kingdom, on the 16th of December 653, to the eighth Synod of Toledo. The King was himself present, and besides him were the four metropolitans, Orontius of Emerita, Antony of Seville, St. Eugene of Toledo (his predecessor, Eugene I., had died in A.D. 647), here named regia urbs , and Potamius of Braga; further, forty-eight other bishops and many abbots, etc., and representatives of bishops; also sixteen Comites and Duces . The King opened the Synod with an address, and presented to them a tome, in which he first declared his orthodoxy, then expressed a wish for a revision of the severe laws against the betrayers of country and King, and exhorted all present to draw up the necessary decrees with his assent, called upon the magnates of the kingdom to complete them, and, on his side, promised the confirmation of them, and, finally, asked the bishops for instruction as to what should be done in regard to the Jews.

The Synod following the order of the points in the King’s tome, on their side also declared:— 1. First, the true faith in the form of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (with ex Patre et Filio procedentem ). 2. The subject of the second disputation (transaction, perhaps session) was the question of the offenders against country and King. All the people had sworn that everyone of those, without exception, should be punished. The fulfillling of this oath now seemed too harsh, and would have made many men unhappy. The Synod therefore endeavored, at the wish of the King, to find a reconciliation of their oath and gentleness, and found this by adducing many passages of Scripture and the Fathers (also from Isidore, the novissimum decus ecclesiae , in seculorum fine doctissimus ), in this, that the violation of that oath was a smaller injustice than the cruel treatment of so many brethren. 3. The Synod next, in their most bombastic style, threatened simonists with anathema and imprisonment in a convent; in the fourth Congressus enforced the duties of bishops; in the fifth and sixth, on deacons and subdeacons the duty of chastity; in the seventh, declared that even those who were ordained by compulsion, or in order to escape a danger, should not be allowed to marry, or to return to their old manner of life; in the eighth, declaimed against the ignorance of the clergy (requiring them to learn the psalter by heart); in the ninth, against the violation of fasts; in the tenth, ordained that the election of a new King should take place in the chief city, or else where the previous King died (by the nobles), with assent of the bishops and the high officials of the palace; but that the King should defend the catholic faith against Jews and heretics, and should ascend the throne only when he had sworn (further prescriptions for the Kings). 11. No one may violate the general ordinances of Synods, under pain of excommunication. 12. In regard to the Jews, the decrees of the (fourth) Synod of Toledo under Sisenand shall be confirmed. 13. Finally, the Synod confirmed two royal decrees, which are appended to their minutes, and treat of that bequeathed by the former and by every future King. As third appendix is finally added a memorial of the baptized Jews of A.D. 654, in which they promise true adhesion to the Christian faith. So early as in the following year, 655, the ninth Synod of Toledo took place in the Church of St. Mary there. It began on the 2nd of November, and lasted, as is mentioned at the close of the minutes, until the IV . or V . Kal . Decembr ., and was only a provincial Council under the presidency of Archbishop Eugene II. of Toledo. It was decreed to subjoin the later synodal ordinances to the old collections of canons, and to draw up seventeen more, specially for the reformation of bishops: 1. No one may encroach upon the property of another church, in order to appropriate it to himself or his church. The heirs of the founder have the right to watch over it, and to present to the bishop anyone who does this. If the bishop does it, the metropolitan must be informed; if the metropolitan, the King must be told. 2. The builders of churches have the right to care for them, and to present (offerre ) to the bishop suitable rectors for these churches. If they find no one suitable, then the bishop, with their assent, may name such. If, however, the bishop makes the appointment with evasion of the founders, this is invalid. At the same time it is complained that, through the fault of the bishops, many rural and convent churches are falling to ruins. 3. As often as the bishop or a deacon (as steward) forgives anyone a loan from the property of the Church, the reason for this must be accurately stated in the document, so that it may be seen that no fraud has crept in. If the document has not this form, it is invalid. 4. If bishops or other administrators of Church property, at the time of their entrance upon office, possessed but little private property (the two new Spanish collections have parum instead of carum ), all that they buy during their administration shall be assigned to their churches.

If, however, they have an inventory (compendium , see Du Cange, s.v.) of their property, then all that they have earned after their ordination shall be distributed between their heirs and the Church, in the proportion of their private property to their income from the Church. If a cleric has received anything as a present from anyone, he can do with that as he will. If, however, at his death he has made no disposition of it, it falls to his church. Cf. Thomassin, De nova et veteri ecclesiae disciplina , etc., pt. 3, lib. 2, c. 42, n. 6 sqq. 5. If the bishop wishes to build a convent in his diocese, he may spend for that purpose the fiftieth part of the property of the Church; if he wishes to found another church, the hundredth part. But he may do only the one or the other. 6. The bishop, by ancient right, may claim the third part of the income of every church, and he can spend this portion at his pleasure on one or another church (see sec. 200, Toledo 4; and sec. 229, Tarragona, c. 8; and Thomassin, l .c . c. 15, n. 8, 9. This third part, however, the bishop might expend, not for himself but for the repairing of churches. For himself the bishop could require from every church only two solidi). 7. The heirs of a departed bishop or of another cleric may not arbitrarily take possession of what he has left. 8. If a cleric has made unlawful disposition of a part of the property of the Church, the thirty years’ time of prescription begins, not with the day of that disposition, but only with his death. (See c. 34 of Toledo 4, in sec. 290; and c. 17 of Chalcedon, in sec. 200, vol. 3.) 9. The bishop who holds the obsequies of a brother in office, and takes the inventory of what he has left, may, if the church is rich, claim a pound of gold; if it is poor, half a pound. The metropolitan has nothing to claim. 10. Since the incontinence of the clergy continues, we ordain: If a cleric, from a bishop down to a subdeacon, begets children in abominable union with a maid or a free woman, the parents are to be punished according to the canons; but the children cannot inherit from the parents, and are forever slaves of the Church at which the father serves. 11. If slaves of the Church are called into the clerical office, they must obtain emancipation from the bishop. 12. If a bishop emancipates the slaves of the Church, the years are to be reckoned from his death, not from the day of the drawing up of the document. 13. The emancipated, who were formerly slaves of the Church, and their posterity, may not marry with the freeborn. 14. If this is done, their offspring remain bound to render obsequium towards the Church. 15. The freedmen of a Church and their posterity shall faithfully and uprightly serve the Church to which they owe their freedom. 16. The freedmen of the Church and their posterity may not alienate to a stranger what they have from the Church. If they wish to sell it, they must offer it to the bishop. They may, however, sell it or present it to their children and relations, who belong as servants or clients to the same Church. 17. Baptized Jews shall be present at Christian feast days as well as Jewish at the episcopal divine service, so that the bishop may see their fidelity. Whoever does not this shall be punished, according to his age, with blows or fasting. 18. At the close, the date for the next Easter was announced, and notice given of a new Synod for the 1st of November of the following year. This assembled, however, about a month later, on December 1, 656, at Toledo; at least the minutes are dated from this day. It was a general Synod, in which the three metropolitans took part Eugene II. of Toledo, Fugitivus of Seville, and Fructuosus of Braga. From the provinces of Merida, Tarragona, and Narbonne, the metropolitans were not present, but other bishops appeared. Altogether they numbered twenty bishops and five deputies. They ordained:— 1. Uniformity in regard to the dates for the festivals is highly necessary If, for example, we should not hold Pentecost on the right day, then could we not be filled with the gifts of the Holy Ghost. In regard to the festivals of our Lord unity prevails in Spain, but not in regard to the Feast of Mary. This day, on which the angel brought the message to Mary, can often not be celebrated rightly on account of Lent and Easter; and therefore we transfer it, for all Spain, to the 18th of December, eight days before Christmas, and it shall be celebrated in like manner as Christmas. 2. Every cleric and monk who has violated his oath against King and country is to be deposed; only the King can pardon him. 3. No bishop may appoint his relations and favorites as presidents over churches and convents. 4. A widow who wishes to take the vow of chastity, must do so in writing, and then wear the dress unaltered which the bishop or minister of the Church has given her. She shall cover her head with a red or black cloth (pallium ), so that she may be known, and that no one may permit to himself anything against her. 5. All women who have once worn the religious habit remain bound to the ascetic life. If they refuse, at the exhortation of the bishop, to return to it, they are to be shut up in a convent. They must also make their vow in writing, and cover their head with the pallium. 6. When parents have given the tonsure, or the religious habit, to a little child, or when children, without knowledge of their parents, have assumed the one or the other, and the parents, when they remarked it, have not immediately made an objection, these children remain bound to the vita religiosa . Moreover, parents may bring to the church only children under ten years. If they are older, they can, of their own accord, dedicate themselves to the religious life, whether by the will of their parents, or from their own piety. 7. It was loudly complained that clerics sell Christian slaves to Jews, and this was entirely forbidden, with the quotation of many passages from the Bible.

While the bishops were occupied with the drawing up of these canons, Archbishop Potamius of Braga addressed a document to them in which he brought an accusation against himself. The bishops held a special private session, and Potamius, invited to it, acknowledged voluntarily that he had failed through uncl4eanness, and therefore he had, for nine months, given up the administration of his church. It was decreed, from regard to his voluntary confession, that he should not be treated according to the rigour of the canons (special reference is made to c. 4 of the Synod of Valence, A.D. 374, sec. 90, vol. 2), and that he should not be deprived of his dignity, but that he should be bound to continued penance. The administration of the diocese of Braga, together with the metropolitan authority, they transferred to Fructuosus, bishop of Dumio.

Finally, two testaments were laid before the Synod, that of the departed Bishop Martin of Braga, and that of Recimir, the previous bishop of Dumio. The latter had bequeathed so much to the poor, and had emancipated so many slaves, that the Church property of Dumio had thereby been encroached upon. When this complaint was raised, the Synod decreed certain limitations of the testament. Two Frankish Synods, held at Paris and Clichy, in the fifteenth and sixteenth years of Chlodwig II., and so in the years 653 and 654, confirmed several privileges to the convent of St. Denis. Almost about the same time King Chlodwig II. († 656) is said to have assembled a Synod in a place unknown to us, and ordered the return of the relics of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica, which had been brought to France, and for which Pope Vitalian had made application. Under his successor, Chlotar III., and in the third year of his reign, i .e . 658, the Synod of Sens confirmed its liberties to the convent St. Petri Vivi . Probably in the same year, 658, the Synod of Nantes was also held, with the consent of which Bishop Vivard of Reims rebuilt, in another place, the monastery of Hautvillier (Villaris super ripam Maternae ), which had been destroyed by barbarians. It is supposed by Pagi (ad . ann . 600, n. 14, 15) and Sirmond, that to this Synod belong those twenty canons which are assigned, in the Collections of Councils, to a Concilium Namnetense at the end of the ninth century. They are to the following effect:— 1. Before the Mass the priest shall ask whether anyone is present from a strange parish, because he despises his own parish priest, and whether any one of those present has enmity against anyone. Such people must be sent away. 2. Generally, no strangers from another parish may assist at Mass, unless they are travelling. 3. A cleric may not have even his mother, sister, or aunt in the house with him, because horrible incests have happened. Moreover, no woman may serve at the altar. 4. On the conduct of the cleric at the visitation of the sick. 5. A sick man who confesses shall be absolved only under the condition that he shall do penance after being restored to health. 6. For burial the cleric shall demand no fees; and no one may be buried inside the church. 7. No bishop may consecrate a strange cleric. 8. No priest may have more than one church, unless he has, at each of them, several priests under him, who hold the officium nocturnum and diurnum , and say Mass daily. 9. On all Sunday and feast days, the priest shall impart eulogies (blessings) to the non-communicating, and first dedicate these with the following prayer: “Domine Sancte, Pater omnipotens, aeterne Deus, benedicere digneris hunc panem tua sancta et spirituali benedictione, ut sit omnibus salus mentis et corporis, atque contra omnes morbos et universas inimicorum insidias tutamentum.” 10. Four parts are to be made of the income of every church: for the fabric, for the poor, for the priest and his clerics, for the bishop. 11. Trial of those who wish to be ordained. 12. If a spouse commits adultery, the other spouse may separate from him, but may not marry again. The guilty one is to be punished with seven years’ penance. If the innocent one will continue matrimonial union with the guilty, both must do penance for seven years. 13. Fornication of the unmarried is punished with three years’ penance. 14. If an unmarried person commits adultery with a married one, the former is to be punished with five, the latter with seven years of penance. 15. Prescriptions for the fraternities. 16. If a priest dies, his neighbor must not endeavor to get his church through favor of the secular ruler. 17. If anyone has been intentionally guilty of murder, he must be excluded five years a communione orationum , and fourteen years more from the Eucharist. 18. If anyone, without intention, by accident has given a deathblow, he must do penance for forty days on bread and water. 19. Virgins or widows dedicated to God may not appear in public affairs, except at the command of the King or bishop. 20. The bishops must endeavor to root out the remains of heathenism. Two somewhat more recent French [Frankish] Synods we have for the first time become acquainted with through Professor Fr. Maassen, who discovered the minutes of them in a codex of the City Library at Albi (sec. 9), and published it (Graz 1867) under the title, “Two Synods under King Childerich II.” As Childerich the Second was made King of Austrasia in 660, and in 670 King also of Neustria and Burgundy, and in 673 was murdered, these two Synods must fall between 660 and 673; and it cannot be ascertained whether Childerich, at the time of this Synod, was already sole regent, or only King of Austrasia. The first of these Synods, entitled Burdigalensis , was held at Bordeaux in castro Modogarnomo , in the Church of St. Peter, at the command of King Chilperich, and in the presence of Duke Lupo, his lieutenant. There were present, under the presidency of Archbishop Adus of Bourges, eighteen bishops, from the three ecclesiastical provinces of Bourges, Bordeaux, and Elusa (Eauze), with several secular magnates from Aquitaine. The latter are named (Roman) provinciales , as the great mass of the inhabitants of Aquitaine were of old Roman origin, and not West Gothic or Frankish. In the Preface it is said that the Synod had been held pro statu ecclesiae vel (= et ) stabilitate regni . The latter point was quite particularly accentuated in canon 4 of the Synod, and this therefore might have been a chief aim of the Synod. It was intended also to put an end to gross abuses among the clergy, of whom many, as the Preface says, despised their bishops, wore secular clothing, and in different points were worse than the laity. The four canons of the Synod run:— 1. The clergy must wear the habit appointed for them (abitum habitare , more correctly habituare , see Du Cange, s .v .), and must not carry lances and other weapons. Whoever acts otherwise, is to be punished according to the canons. 2. No cleric may, without the consent of his bishop, have a secular patron (mundeburdum ). 3. With reference to the mulieres subintroductae , every cleric (of the higher degrees) is to be punished, if he has such with him, except such women as are allowed by the canons (e .g . c. 10 of Tours, 567, sec. 285; and c. 1 of Macon, 581, sec. 286). 4. The bishops must in every respect show a good example, love the clergy, be a model in dress, in walk, in speech, and in obedience, and putting away the secular, must hold fast religion, ut et stabilitas regni per eos debeat stare , et salus populi , sicut decet , per eos debeat Domino auxiliante durare .

The second Frankish Synod, whose Acts Professor Fr. Maassen edited, is called Latunensis , and was celebrated at Latona (S. Jean de Losne, at the effluence of the Ouche into the Saone), in the ecclesiastical province of Lyons, close to the diocese of Chalons on the Sagne. The subscriptions of the bishops are no longer extant, and even the number of those present is unknown; but the assembly seems to have been a Frankish general Council.

King Childerich was himself present at the Synod, and it must fall in the time when Childerich had come to reign also over Neustria and Burgundy, since it was held in Burgundy. Accordingly we must place it between and 673. With this view the following harmonizes. In their 11th canon our Synod settles that a Council should again be held in the September of the fourteenth regnal year of Childerich. The fourteenth year of Childerich, however, was the year of his death, and as, according to canon 20 of Macon, A.D. 585 (sec. 286), a Synod was ordered to be celebrated every three years in Burgundy, we may certainly assign ours to the year 670 or 671. In the Preface to the minutes, the bishops declare their resolve to hold fast by the ordinances of the five OEcumenical Councils (the sixth had not yet taken place), and added to this their own twenty-two short canons:— 1. Bishops must not encumber themselves with secular affairs, but live according to the canons. 2. No bishop or cleric may bear weapons. 3. A bishop may not himself conduct a trial, but only through his advocate. 4. No cleric may have a woman in his house except those who are allowed in the old canons. 5. Only he may become a bishop who is of the legal age, is (regularly) elected, and has for himself the consensus populi . 6. Two bishops may not be in one city. 7. No cleric may receive another cleric without a letter of the bishop or abbot. Monks may not ramble about in the country without letters. 8. Bishops must be in their cities at Easter, Christmas, and Pentecost (Quinquagesima ), unless a command of the King prevents them. 9. Laymen may not receive the office of an archpresbyter (dean). 10. Bishops who do not live spiritualiter , must reform within the prescribed time, or be deposed. 11. The synodalis concilius shall be celebrated in the middle of September, in the fourteenth regnal year of Childerich, at the place which the King appoints. 12. Widows who change their raiment and wish to persevere in the state of widowhood, stand under the protection of the King. 13. Those widows (dedicated to God) who live piously according to the judgment of the bishops, may remain in their houses. If, however, they are negligent in regard to chastity, they shall be shut up in a convent. 14. The privileges of convents remain in force. 15. Bishops, priests, and deacons may not go hunting like people of the world. 16. No bishop may select a successor. 17. Bishops or abbots who are either condemned for neglect, or have voluntarily deserted their churches, may no longer return to them. 18. The bishop must preach on all Sundays and feast days. 19. Monks who travel about without letters testimonial from the abbot, may not be received. 20. Anyone acting in opposition to this, for the future, shall be suspended from communion for a whole year. 21. Bishops who do not come to the Synod are to be punished according to the canons. 22. If a bishop himself designates his successor, he himself loses his grade.

On the Synod in the convent of Streaneshalch ( = Sinus Phari , thence Synodus Pharensis ) near Whitby, in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, A.D. 664, we receive information from the Venerable Bede.

The Roman missionaries and their disciples had diffused the Roman reckoning for Easter over the whole Heptarchy, and so also in Northumbria. But into the latter country came also the old British or Scottish use from the island of Hy [Iona] through St. Aidan, who reestablished the Church in Northumbria, after it had gone down. As long as St. Aidan lived, the two ways of keeping Easter remained peacefully side by side in Northumbria; but after his death, Finan and Colman became zealous for the Scottish fashion, and in order to remove this difference, our Synod was now convoked by King Oswy of Northumbria. Distinguished ecclesiastical and secular persons of both parties assisted, among them the famous Abbess Hilda of Streaneshalch (daughter of a Northumbrian King), who herself was attached to the old British way of Easter. So was King Oswy, whilst his consort Eanfeld and his son Alchfrid followed the Roman manner. Bishop Colman of Lindisfarne, already named, spoke for the British practice, Abbot Wilfrid of Ripon for the Roman; and as the latter finally laid chief stress on this, that Christ had given the highest authority to Peter, King Oswy declared: As the apostle of the Scottish Church, St.

Columba, cannot be compared with St. Peter, so it is reasonable that we should follow Peter rather than him. All Northumbria now adopted the Roman practice. — The second point of controversy was the fashion of the tonsure; and here, too, the Roman practice prevailed. — The Scots, however, who had come to the Synod, went home unconverted. On the 6th of November 666, Proficius, metropolitan of the Lusitanian province, in his cathedral Church of Jerusalem at Emerita (Merida ), celebrated a provincial Synod with eleven suffragans. Like the other Spanish Synods since the conversion of the nation, this also placed — 1. At the head of its decrees the confession of the orthodox faith in the form of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed received at the third Synod of Toledo, A.D. 589 (sec. 287), with the addition et (ex ) Filio procedentem , and an anathema against all heretics. The further Capitula treat of the subjects of worship and discipline. 2. In the Lusitanian province, as elsewhere, in the evening when the light is kindled on feast days, vespers shall be sung before the sonus (i .e . before the psalm, Venite exultemus , with which matins begin, and which, on account of the high tone which was used with it, was called sonus ; cf. Du Cange, s .v .). 3. Whilst King Receswinth is at war, the bishops shall daily offer the sacrifice for him and his army. 4. All bishops must, at their ordination, promise to live chastely, moderately, and uprightly. 5. If a provincial Synod is announced by the will of the metropolitan and at the command of the King, all the bishops of the province must appear. Whoever cannot possibly appear in person shall send the archpresbyter, or, if this cannot be, another presbyter, but not a deacon. 6. If a metropolitan requires a comprovincial bishop to celebrate Christmas or Easter with him, he must appear. 7. If a bishop does not appear at a provincial Synod, he will be shut out from communion until the next Council, and must remain as a penitent during that time, at the place appointed by the metropolitan and the bishops present at the Synod. His house and his possessions are, in the meantime, to be administered by the metropolitan. 8. After King Receswinth, acting on the proposal of the departed Archbishop Orontius of Emerita, has restored the Lusitanian province in accordance with the old canons, the strife between Bishop Selva of Egitania and Justus of Salamanca on the boundaries of their dioceses, shall now be settled by a commission (in accordance with the ordinance of Seville, A.D. 619, c. 2, sec. 289). 9. Nothing may be demanded for chrism or for baptism, on penalty of excommunication for three months; but a voluntary gift may be accepted. 10. Every bishop shall have in his cathedral an archpresbyter, archdeacon, and primiclerus. 11. The priests, abbots, and deacons must show respect to the bishop, receive him worthily at his visitation, and prepare what is necessary for him; nor must they undertake any secular business or offices without his permission. 12. The bishop may at his pleasure remove the priests and deacons of rural parishes to the cathedral. Besides that which the bishop gives them, the incomes of their previous office remain to them, after deducting the cost of a substitute. 13. The bishop shall specially reward the able clergy. 14. That which is offered in money in a cathedral church on feast days shall be divided into three parts; and one part shall belong to the bishop, a second to the priests and deacons, and the third to the remaining clerics. Similarly the clergy in the rural churches shall share. 15. The bishops henceforth may not have the slaves of the Church mutilated for an offense, but the royal judge shall inquire into the offense, and the bishop must then not impose the severest punishment on the guilty. It has also frequently happened that priests who have fallen ill, accuse the slaves of the Church of having brought this evil upon them, and for this reason torture them. This may no longer be done. On the contrary, the accusation of such an offense (maleficium ) must be inquired into by the judge at the request of the bishop, and if the judge discovers a fault, it shall be punished by the bishop. 16. By the old canons it is settled that the bishop is to receive from the rural churches a third of their income. This rule may not be transgressed by any bishop of the Lusitanian province; nor may he take this third part from every church, but must spend it for the repairs of some. All priests in the rural Churches who have church property (virtutem , see Du Cange) in possession, must give a promise (placitum , see Du Cange) to the bishop to have their churches properly repaired.

If they do not so, the bishop must compel them. If the churches have no property, the bishop must provide for their repair. 17. No one may revile a departed bishop. 18. the priests in the rural churches shall, in proportion to the amount of Church property intrusted to them, select fit men from the service of the Church for clerics and for their assistants. 19. If several poor Churches have only one priest among them, he shall hold Mass on Sunday in each of these. 20. If the slaves of Churches were freed under the observance of the canons hereto referring, they are to remain free; but if they are illegally made free, then they and their posterity shall become slaves. But even those who are set free in a regular manner remain slaves of the Church, etc. 21. If bishops have presented to those belonging to them anything of Church property, but, on the other hand, have left at least three times as much to the Church from their property, those presents remain in force; so, too, if they have given anything for services which anyone has rendered to the Church. 22. In some of the ordinances drawn up there is added a cavendi modus , i .e . the measure of the punishment to be feared on transgression. Other points which are not connected with special means of coercion must be observed with punishment of excommunication. 23. Honor be to God; thanks to the King. A Synod at Ereta, A.D. 667, under Paul the metropolitan of that place, pronounced deposition upon Bishop John of Lappa or Lampa, at Ereta, in an uncanonical manner. He appealed to the Pope, was imprisoned for this, escaped to Rome, and was so fortunate as to be found innocent by a Roman Synod under Pope Vitalian. About the same time, perhaps somewhat earlier, Archbishop Numerian of Trier, with some other bishops and abbots, granted, perhaps at a Synod at Trier, certain privileges to the convent of Vallis Gallilaeae (St. Dieudonne) in Lothringen (Lorraine), founded by St. Deodatus, bishop of Nevers. In the old collections there is a number of canons, under the title of Angustodunenses , which must have been given by St. Leodegar of Autun at a Synod at Autun about the year 670. In his remarks on Pagi (ad ann . 633, n. 5), Mansi tried to show that this supposed Synod of Autun is identical with that at Christiacus or Marlacus , which took place in the year 677. Subsequently, however, he reformed his hypothesis, and distinguished the two Synods, that of Autun about 670, and that of Marly near Paris, or Morlay in the diocese of Toul, in 677. The latter deposed the irregularly- appointed Bishop Chranilin of Embrun, and the former issued a number of ordinances on the discipline in convents. We gain firmer ground again with the Anglo-Saxon national Synod of Hereford, held by the celebrated Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury, on the 24th of September 673. The older canons were all confirmed, and respect for them promised, besides ten separate Capitula which Theodore regarded as peculiarly pressing, and which were read by him and confirmed by all present, namely:— 1. Easter shall be celebrated by all on the Sunday after the fourteenth day of the first lunar month (Nisan). 2. No bishop may encroach on the diocese of another. 3. He may not disturb or rob the convents. 4. Monks may not wander from one convent to another. 5. No cleric may leave his bishop and go to another. 6. Travelling clergy may officiate only with permission. 7. Every year a Synod shall take place, on the 1st of August, at Clofeshooh (Cloveshoe). 8. Bishops rank according to the order of their consecration. 9. With the growth of the Christian population a greater number of bishops is necessary. 10. On marriage and divorce, only in casu adulterii and without remarriage. King Receswinth of Spain was of a great age, and died in the year 672 and the magnates of the kingdom immediately elected as his successor one of their own number, Wamba, a man illustrious for his virtues. He refused the offered crown twice; and only when one of the electors drew his sword and threatened to stab him as the greatest enemy of his country if he should longer refuse, he gave at last his consent, and in the September of 672 was solemnly anointed King, in the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul at Toledo, by Archbishop Quiricius. From his head a miraculous pillar of smoke is said to have risen as a good omen, and in the midst of it a bee flew up.

Even the great reputation of Wamba, however, could not prevent the outbreak of several risings in the provinces of Navarre, Asturia, and especially Gallia Narbonensis; and after the King had happily suppressed them in the years 673 and 674, he held, in the year 675, two provincial Synods, the one at Toledo, the other at Braga. Which of the two was the earlier cannot be determined with certainty, as only the one of Toledo is provided with a date, November 7. The Collections of Councils put it before the Council of Braga. Ferreres, in his History of Spain , decided for the opposite.

To me it seems that; the two provincial Synods were held almost contemporaneously, as the third Council of Toledo (c. 18) ordered that Synods should be held in the beginning of November. We know, indeed, that the fourth Synod of Toledo (c. 3) wanted to introduce a different date; but, in spite of this, we have since then found that practically the Spanish Synods met mostly in November, and the ninth of Toledo again expressly brought in the beginning of November as the term of meeting (sec. 290, Toledo 9, ad fin .).

The eleventh Synod of Toledo, held in St. Mary’s Church there, November 7, 675, was attended by seventeen bishops, two representatives of bishops, and six abbots, together with the archdeacon of St. Mary’s Church. They all belonged to the province of Toledo, or, as it was called, to the Carthaginian province, and at its head stood the Metropolis Quiricius. In the Preface they give a sad picture of the eighteen years immediately preceding, during which time no Synod had been held (at Toledo), and heresy and incontinence had increased among the clergy. Now, called together by the will of God and the King, they decided to open their transactions with the confession of the true faith. On the first day the Metropolitan read aloud a very complete confession of faith prepared by him, on which the bishops took counsel, with fasting, on the following \lays; and finally, on the third day, recited it in common. In this symbol, among other things, it is said that the Son of God is Son by nature and not by adoption, hic etiam Filius Dei natura est filius , non adoptione — in opposition to the Bonosians, and that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, and is missus ab utrisque . Subsequently, in the very complete and beautiful christological division, it is also said of the Son: Missus tamen Filius non solum a Patre , sed a Spiritu Sancto missus , credendus est , and a se ipso quoque missus accipitur , and for this reason, quod inseparabilis non solum voluntas , sed operatio totius Trinitatis agnoscitur . — No reference is made to the Monothelite question which had already begun to ferment in a high degree.

On the following day, after the unanimous acceptance of this creed, sixteen Capitula were drawn up:— 1. Quiet must prevail at the Council, and speech must not be loud; no contention, no laughter, etc. 2. All clerics, particularly bishops, must read diligently in Holy Scripture. The superiors must keep the clergy who are placed under them to this duty, and must instruct the ignorant therein. 3. Worship must everywhere be held as in the metropolis. Only the convents may have some special officia with permission of the bishop. 4. The offerings of those who live in enmity are not to be received, and they must do penance twice as long as their enmity lasted. 5. How bishops who have committed deeds of violence, or even homicide, or have appropriated the possessions of others, are to be punished. If they have any property, they must pay from this the compensations prescribed in the (civil) laws, and on the side of the Church they will be punished by temporary excommunication. If, however, they have no property, the compensation may not be paid from the property of the Church, and they themselves must not (as was the case with insolvent; laymen) be sold as slaves, but must be punished with twenty days of penance for every ten solidi which they would have to pay as compensation. If a bishop has been guilty of impurity with the wife, or daughter, or any other relation of a magnate (magnati ), he must lose his dignity, and be for ever excommunicated and exiled. Only at his death communion may be granted to him. The like must be done with those who have intentionally committed murder, or have seriously injured persons of high position. 6. No cleric may pronounce sentences of death, or issue a command for a mutilation. 7. Bishops may impose punishments upon their clergy only according to the ordinances. 8. No cleric may demand, or even accept anything for baptism, chrism, ordination (promotionibis graduum ). If this was done with the knowledge of the bishop by his subordinates, he is to be excommunicated for two months. If it happened, however, without knowledge of the bishop, then a priest who has taken anything is to be excommunicated for three months, a deacon four months, a subdeacon and (inferior) clerics must be beaten and excommunicated. 9. Every bishop must, at his consecration, swear that he has not given nor will give money to anyone in order to attain to office. If anyone is discovered to be a simonist, he is to be excommunicated. If he has sorrowfully done penance for two years in exile, he may not only receive communion, but he may be again restored to his office. 10. Every cleric must, before his ordination, promise that he will hold fast the catholic faith, observe the canons, live uprightly, and show reverence and obedience to his superiors. 11. It is permitted to the sick, who, on account of dryness of mouth, cannot partake of the holy bread, to receive only the chalice. This modifies canon 14 of the first Synod of Toledo (vol. 2, sec. 112). But if anyone, who is in good health, takes the body of the Lord out of his mouth, he shall be for ever excommunicated. If an unbeliever does so, he is to be beaten, and for ever exiled. 12. To those who are in danger of death, reconciliation is to be imparted immediately, after, by the imposition of hands, they have been brought into a state of penance. For those, however, who die after receiving penance, but before the reception of reconciliation, divine service may be held (cf. vol. 2, sec. 163; Frank, Penitential Discipline , 1867, S. 913; and Kober, Kirchenbann , S. 528 sq.). 13. Persons possessed may not serve at the altar. 14. If it is possible, every cleric who sings or offers (says Mass) should have an assistant behind him, who, in case of sickness, may step into his place. 15. Every year a provincial Synod shall be held. The date shall be determined by the King and metropolitan. If anyone does not appear, he is to be excommunicated for a year. The like punishment is to be inflicted upon all the bishops of the province, if they, not being prevented by the King, let a year pass over without a Council. 16. Honor to God; thanks to the King. That King Wamba had made a new division of dioceses, is related by all the Spanish historians. A comparison of the division existing after him and before him, however, shows that no great or essential alterations took place under him, but rather, that only some disputes were appeased, some modifications introduced, and the already existing hierarchical division fully fixed.

That this happened precisely at the eleventh Synod of Toledo, is asserted only by a single ancient superscription of this Synod, which is lacking in other MSS. (cf. Collection can . eccl . Hispaniae , p. 467). In the minutes of the Synod no indication of this point occurs, and it is not to be supposed that a mere provincial Synod would have decided on the division of the dioceses of the whole of Spain. The provincial Synod at Braga, called Bracarensis IV ., was attended by eight bishops of Galicia, among them the Metropolitan Leodecisius, and left nine Capitula :— 1. In the first, the bishops declare the orthodox faith by setting forth the Niceno-Constantinopolitan symbol (with ex Filio procedentem ), and enumerate many improprieties existing among the clergy, which are particularly forbidden in the following chapters. 2. It must no longer happen that milk should be used at the holy sacrifice instead of wine, or that a vine should be offered, and its grapes given round (pro complemento communionis ). Nor shall the holy bread be dipped in the wine, for the Bible speaks (at the institution of the Eucharist) of the bread and wine as separate. In the cup the wine must be mixed with water. 3. The vessels of the Church may not be employed for profane use. The like is ordered for the decorations, cloths, etc., of the Church. 4. At the Mass, the priest must wear the orarium, and it must be placed in front over the cross. 5. No cleric must have private intercourse without witnesses, with any other woman than his own mother. 6. Some bishops hang relies on their necks at the feasts of martyrs, and then have themselves borne by Levites in albs to their seats in the church, as if they were the shrines of relies. This must cease; and in the future, as in the past, the Levites shall bear the shrines of relies on their shoulders, as the Old Testament Levites bore the Ark of the Covenant.

If the bishop himself wishes to carry the relics, he must go on foot. 7. Priests, abbots, and Levites may not be punished with blows, except in case of serious offenses. 8. Simony forbidden. 9. Rectors of churches must be diligent and zealous in caring for Church property. For some time the episcopal see for Northumbria had been removed from York to the island of Lindisfarne. Aidan, the second apostle of Northumberland, had done this from love of solitude, A.D. 635. The archiepiscopal dignity of the Northumbrian Church went along with this.

Almost a half century afterwards Ceadda, and after him Wilfrid, resided again at York, but in subordination to the archbishop of Canterbury. The celebrated Theodore, who then occupied the latter chair, allowed himself to be misled by King Egfrid of Northumbria, A.D. 678, into dividing this country, and so the ancient diocese of York, into four dioceses, so that for Wilfrid only the small diocese of Lindisfarne remained. That this was done at a convention of bishops, and thus at a Synod, is stated by Wilfrid himself. As the latter did not consent to this division, Theodore deprived him even of the Church of Lindisfarne. But he appealed to the Pope, and betook himself to Rome, in order, personally, to defend his cause.

Theodore also sent an agent thither, who arrived before Wilfrid; and after the latter at last had come, Pope Agatho held a Roman Synod in October 679. Fifty persons, among them sixteen bishops, were present; and after Wilfrid had related the whole circumstances, and had with much modesty declared that he was willing to consent to the division of his diocese, when it was necessary; only bishops should be given to him with whom he could live side by side; it was then decreed that Wilfrid was to be restored, and that he should, in agreement with the Synod to be held in England, himself select his three assistants (the three bishops of the other dioceses of Northumbria). The archbishop of Canterbury was then to consecrate them, but the three already appointed were to be removed. The proposition was also made (was it adopted?) at this Synod, that in the whole of England there should be twelve bishoprics, and that these should form one province.