The Council of Epaone or Synod of Epaone was held in September 517 at Epaone (or Epao, near the present
Anneyron) in the
Burgundian Kingdom
The Kingdom of the Burgundians or First Kingdom of Burgundy was established by Germanic Burgundians in the Rhineland and then in eastern Gaul in the 5th century.
History
Background
The Burgundians, a Germanic tribe, may have migrated from the ...
.
It was one of three national councils of bishops held around that time in former
Roman Gaul
Roman Gaul refers to GaulThe territory of Gaul roughly corresponds to modern-day France, Belgium and Luxembourg, and adjacient parts of the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany. under provincial rule in the Roman Empire from the 1st century ...
: the
council of Agde
The Council of Agde was a regional synod held in September 506 at Agatha or Agde, on the Mediterranean coast east of Narbonne, in the Septimania region of the Visigothic Kingdom, with the permission of the Visigothic King Alaric II.
The Council ...
was held in 506 in the
Visigothic Kingdom
The Visigothic Kingdom, officially the Kingdom of the Goths ( la, Regnum Gothorum), was a kingdom that occupied what is now southwestern France and the Iberian Peninsula from the 5th to the 8th centuries. One of the Germanic peoples, Germanic su ...
in the south and the
council of Orléans in 511 for the
Kingdom of the Franks
Francia, also called the Kingdom of the Franks ( la, Regnum Francorum), Frankish Kingdom, Frankland or Frankish Empire ( la, Imperium Francorum), was the largest post-Roman barbarian kingdom in Western Europe. It was ruled by the Franks duri ...
. The synod enacted the first legislation against wooden
altar
An altar is a table or platform for the presentation of religious offerings, for sacrifices, or for other ritualistic purposes. Altars are found at shrines, temples, churches, and other places of worship. They are used particularly in paga ...
s, forbidding the building of any but stone altars.
[Hassett, Maurice. "History of the Christian Altar." The Catholic Encyclopedia]
Vol. 1. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. 29 January 2019 It also witnessed to the rise of the practice of mitigation of canonical penance in view of the changing times and social conditions of Christians.
Attendees
*
St. Viventiolus (515-523), who presided
[Goyau, Georges. "Lyons." The Catholic Encyclopedia]
Vol. 9. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. 29 January 2019
*
St. Avitus, also presiding.
[
* St. Constantinus, ]bishop of Gap
The Diocese of Gap and Embrun (Latin: ''Dioecesis Vapincensis et Ebrodunensis''; French: ''Diocèse de Gap et d'Embrun'') is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of Southe ...
.
* Catulinus, bishop of Embrun.
* Laymen were also present and had a chance to question the morality of the local clergymen.
Edicts passed
* Canon 12: forbade bishops from alienating ecclesiastical property without the permission of their metropolitan.
* Canon 15: Attendance at Jewish banquets prohibited.
* Canon 16: allowed baptized heretics to be admitted to the Church by a rite of unction (''Presbyteros, . . . si conversionem subitam petant, chrismate subvenire permittimus''). This was the practice also in the East, but in Rome and Italy admission was by laying on of hands.
* Canon 26: forbade the consecration of any but stone Altars.[
* Clergy forbidden to hunt.
* Completely abrogated in the entire Kingdom the consecration of widows who are named ]Deaconess
The ministry of a deaconess is, in modern times, a usually non-ordained ministry for women in some Protestant, Oriental Orthodox, and Eastern Orthodox churches to provide pastoral care, especially for other women, and which may carry a limited ...
es.
* Canon 29 reduced to two years the penance that apostates were to undergo on their return to the Church, but obliged them to fast one day in three during those two years, to come to church and take their place at the penitents' door, and to leave with the catechumens. Any who objected to the new arrangement were to observe the much longer ancient penance.Charles Louis Richard, ''Bibliothèque sacrée'' (Méquignon, 1823)
/ref>
References
The fullest reference appears to be ''The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. IV: Draeseke–Goa'' which includes facsimile images of the pages along with a searchable text version. The relevant data is on pages 149–150 and is reproduced below.
* "EPAO, SYNOD OF: A synod held in Sept., 517, at Epao or Epaone, a village to the south of Vienne, near the present Anneyron, at that time part of the kingdom of Burgundy, where a year earlier the Arian king Gundobad had been succeeded by his orthodox son Sigismund. It was attended by twenty-four bishops from all parts of the kingdom, on the invitation of Avitua of Vienne (q.v.). Laymen seem to have been present, after their participation had been declared lawful; canon axiv. permitted them to bring charges against any clergy who were justly accused of immorality. The forty canons passed at this meeting should be considered in connection with those of the synods of Agile (506) and Orleans (511; qq.v.). They were intended to do for the Burgundian kingdom what these had done for the Visigothic or Frankish — though the speedy dissolution of the former made their effect slight. Several of them, however, were included in a later (Spanish) collection of the canons of Agile (though with some modifications in the direction of less severity), and thus continued to have an influence on subsequent practise. The spirit of Avitus breathes through them all. An important section deals with the inalienability of ecclesiastical property; a more vigorous repression of Arianism is demanded, though the return of individuals to the Church is made easy. It appears that priests and deacons were married, and that the episcopal oversight embraced the monasteries. The enforcement of the rights of bishops corresponds to the treatment of the metropolitan power. The number of forbidden degrees for marriage is increased, in har mony with older legislation, apparently with an eye to the case of a royal official who had married his deceased wife's sister; this led to an attempt on the king's part to discipline the bishops, and to a firm pronouncement on their part at the first Synod of Lyons (before 523), at which eleven of the members of the Synod of Epao were present."
**Bibliography: The ''Acta'', ed. R. Peiper, are in MGH, ''Auct. ant.'', vi. 2 (1883), 165-175, cf. (ed. Friedrich Maassen
Friedrich Bernard Christian Maassen (24 September 1823 – 9 April 1900, age 76) was a German jurist, professor of law, and Roman Catholic scholar.
Biography
Maasen was born in Wismar, Mecklenburg-Schwerin. After studying the humanities in his n ...
) MGH, ''Concil''., i (1893), 15 sqq.; Harduin
Jean Hardouin ( en, John Hardwin; la, Johannes Harduinus; 1646 – 3 September 1729), was a French classical scholar. He is most known for his theory that most texts from Antiquity were forgeries.
Biography
He was born at Quimper in Brittany. ...
, ''Concilia'', ii. 1045 sqq.; Hefele, ''Conciliengeschichte'', ii . 880 sqq., Eng. travel., iv. 107 sqq.; Neander Neander may refer to:
;Surname
* August Neander (1789–1850), a German theologian and church historian
* Ernst Neumann-Neander (1871–1954), founder of the now defunct Neander motorcycle manufacturer
* Joachim Neander (1650–1680), Calvinist tea ...
, Christian Church, ii. 191, iii. b, 100."
External links
*http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/encyc/encyc04/htm/0165=149.htm
*http://www.rotula.de/aniane/literatur/feuillebois.htm (in French)
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6th century in Francia
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