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 ORLEANS

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ORLEANS

Orleans, CorxciLS of. — Six national councils were lulil at Orleans in the Merovinsian period. I. — At the first, eonyoked by Clovis (July, 511), thirty- three bishops assisted and passed thirty-one decrees on the duties and oblisations of individuals, the right of sanctuary, and ecclesiastical discipline. These de- crees, equally ai)[)lical)le to Franks and Romans, first established equality between conquerors and con- quered. The council claimed the right of sanctuary in fa\'Our of churches and episcopal residences; it stip- ulated that ecclesiastics need not produce the culjirit, if the pursuer would not swear on the Gospels to do him no injury. It settled the conditions of free- dom for a slave upon whom Holy orders had been con- ferred; ruled that freemen should not be ordained without the king's consent, or authorization of the judge; determined the immunities of ecclesiastics and church property and committed to the bishops the welfare of the sick and the poor; settled the relations of monks with their abbots and of abbots with the bishops. The i)ractice of divination was forbidden. Clovis approved the decrees of the council, which thus appears as the first treaty between the Frankish State and the Church. II. — The second national council held under Childebert (June, 533), attended by twenty-five bishops, decreed that, conformably to the earnest desire of Pope Hormisdas, annual provincial councils should be held; further, that marriage could not be dissolved by will of the contracting parties for infirmities consequent on the contract; forbade the marriage of Christians and Jews; and excommunicated those who partook of flesh offered in sacrifice to idols. III. — The third national council (May, 538), attended by thirteen bishops, determined impediments of mar- riage; pronounced excommunication against ecclesi- astics in the higher orders who lived incontinently; decreed that the archbishops should be elected by the bishops of the pro\ince, with the consent of the clergj- and the citizens; tlie bishops by the archbishop, the clergy, and the people of the city.

IV. — The fourth national council (541) assembled thirty-eight bishops and maintained the date fixed by Pope Victor for Easter, contrary to Justinian's or- dinances, and ordered those who had or wished to have a parish church on their lands to take the necessary measures for the dignity of Divine worship. Finally it perfected the measures taken by the Council of 511 relative to the emancipation of slaves: slaves emanci- pated by bishops were to retain their freedom after the death of their emancipators, even though other acts of their administration were recalled; it au- thorized the official ransom of Christians who had fallen into the power of the Jews but had invoked the right of sanctuary to recover their freedom; it de- clare<l that Jews who exhorted Christian slaves to become Jews in order to be set free should be forbid- den to own such slaves. V. — The fifth national coun- cil (October, 549) assembled nine archbishops and forty-one bishops. After defending Mark, Bishop of Orleans, from attacks made on him, it pronounced an anathema against the errors of Nestorius and Euty- ches, it prohibited simony, prescribed that elections of bishops take place in all freedom, with consent of the clergy, the people, and the king, and that no bishop be consecrated until he had been one year in the clergy. It censured all who attempted to subject to any servi- tude whatsoever slaves emancipated within the Church, and those who dared take, retain, or dispose of church property. It threatened with excommuni- cation all wlio (mibezzled or appropriated funds given by King Childebert for the foundation of the hospital of Lyons, and it placed lepers under the special charge of each bishop. VI. — The sixth national council, helfl under Clovis II about 638 or 639 at the request of Sts. Eloi and Ouen, condemned and expelled from the kingdom a Greek partisan of Monothelitism, at the request of Salvius, Bishop of Valence. VII. — The

seventh national council, held in 1022 under Bishop Odolric, proceeded against the Maiiicha'ans and their few adherents in the city. In Seiilcmlier, 1478, Louis XI held at Orl(5ans a fruitless as.scmbly of the clergy and the nobility to discuss the Crusade, the necessity for a general council, and the re-establishment of the "pragmatic sanction".

DncHATE.^n, Hist, ^du diocise d'OMans '(Orleans, lSfl2); Hefele, Hist, des Connies, new French tr. Leclercq (Paris, 1907 sqq.).

Georges Goyau.

Orleans, Diocese of (Aureliandm), comprises the Department of Loiret, suffragan of Paris since 1622, previously of Sens. After the Revolution it was re-established by the Concordat of 1802, when it included the Departments of Loiret and Loir et Cher, but in 1822 Loir et Cher was included in the new Dio- cese of Blois. The present Diocese of OrliJans differs considerably from that of the old regime; it has lost the arrondissement of Romorantin which has passed to the Diocese of Blois and the canton of Janville, now in the Diocese of Chartres. It includes the arrondisse- ment of Montargis, formerly subject to Sens, the ar- rondissement of Gien, once in the Diocese of Auxerre, and the canton de Chdtillon sur Loire, once belonging to Bourges. To Gerbert, Abbot of St. Pierre le Vif at Sens (1046-79), is due a detailed narrative according to which Saints Savinianus and Potentianus were sent to Sens by St. Peter with St. Altinus; the latter, it was said, came to OrWans as its first bishop. Before the ninth century there is no historical trace in the Dio- cese of Sens of this Apostohc mi-ssion of St. Altinus, nor in the Diocese of Orleans before the end of the fif- teenth. Diclopitus is the first authentic bishop; he figures among the bishops of Gaul who (about 344) ratified the absolution of St. Athanasius. Other bish- ops of the early period are: St. Euvertius, about 355 to 385, according to M. Cuissard; St. Aignan (.\nianus) (385-453), who invoked the aid of the "patrician" j^iltius against the invasion of Attila, and forced the Huns to raise the siege of Orleans; St. Prosper (453- 63); St. Monitor (about 472); St. Flou (Flosculus), d. in 490; St. Eucherius (717-43), native of Orleans and a monk of Jumicges, who protested against the depreda- tions of Waifre, a companion of Charles Martel, and was exiled to Cologne by this prince, then to Liege, and dietl at the monastery of St. Trond.

Of the eighth-century bishops, Theodulfus was no- table. It is not known when he began to govern, but it is certain that he was already bishop in 798, when Charlemagne sent him into Narbonne and Provence as missus dommicus. Under Louis le Df^'bonnaire he was accused of aiding the rebelhous King of Italy, was deposed and imprisoned four years in a monastery at Angers, but was released when Louis came to Angers in 821. The "Capitularies" which Theodulfus ad- dressed to tlie clergy of Orleans are considered a most important monument of Catholic tradition on the du- ties of priests and the faithful. His Ritual, his Peni- tential, his treatise on baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist, his edition of the Bible, a work of fine pen- manship preserved in the Puy cathedral, reveal him as one of the foremost men of his time (see P. L., CV, 187). His fame rests chiefly on his devotion to the spreafl of learning. The Abbey of Ferrieres was then becoming under .Mcuin a centre of learning. Theodul- fus oiM'ncd the .Vblicy of Fleury to the young noble- men sent thither by Charlemagne, in\ited the clergy to establish free schools in th<' country districts, and quoted for Ihcni, "These that are learned shall shine as the brightness of thi> firmaniciil : and they that in- struct many to justice, as stars to all eternity" (Dan., xii, 3). One nioTminent of his time still suivives in the diocese, the ajjse of the church of Germigiiy modelled after the imperial chapel, and yet retaining its unique mosaic decoration. Other noteworthy bishops are: Jonas (821-43), who wrote a treatise against the Icon-