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Reformation times '\ we there read, "no dignitary of the Church, no archbishop, or bishop could repeal or vary the Papal decrees"; and, after quoting Lynd- wood's explicit statement to this effect, the account continues: ''Much of the Canon Law set forth in archiepiscopal constitutions is merely a repetition of the Papal canons, and passed for the purpose of mak- ing them better known in remote localities; part was ttJ^a vires, and the rest consisted of local regulations which were only valid in so far as they did not contra- vene the 'jus commune', i. e. the Roman Canon Law."

Lyndwood's great work was frequently reprinted in the early years of the sixteenth century, but the best

edition is that produced at Oxford in 1679.

Rioo in Did. of Nat. Btog., a. v. Lyndwood; Mattland, Roman Canon Law in the Church of England (London, 1898); Arehctoloffia, XXXLV (London,) 406 sq.; Thurston in Am. Cath. Q. (April. 1899), 120-141: Galante. L'Efficaeia del Diritto Canonico in InghiUerra in Melanges Federico Ciccaglimu} (Catania, 1909).

Herbert Thurston.

I^yonSy Archdiocese of (Lugdunensis), com- prises the Departments of the Rh6ne (except the Can- ton of Villeurbanne, which belongs to the Diocese of Grenoble) and of the Loire. The Concordat of 1801 assigned as the boundaries of the Archdiocese of Lyons the Departments of the Rh6ne, the Loire, and the Ain and as suffra^ms the Dioceses of Mende, Grenoble, and Chamb^iy. The Archbishop of Lyons was authorised by Letters Apostolic of 29 November, 1801, to unite with his title the titles of the suppressed metropolitan Sees of Vienne and Embrun (see Grenoble; Gap). In 1822 the Department of Ain was separated from the /^"chdiocese of Lyons to form the Diocese of Belley; the title of the suppressed church of Embrun was trans- feired to the Archdiocese of Aix, and the Archdiocese of Lyons and Vienne had henceforth as suffragans Langres, Autun, Dijon, St. Claude, and Grenoble.

History, — It appears to have been proved by Mgr Du- chesne, despite the local traditions of many Churches, that in all three parts of Gaul in the second century there was but a single organized Church, that of Lyons. The "Deacon of Vienne^', martyred at Lyons during the persecution of 177, was probably a deacon instidled at vienne by the ecclesiastical authority of Lyons. The confluence of the Rhone and the Sa6ne, where sixty Gallic tribes had erected the famous altar to Rome and Augustus, was also the centre from which C^stianity was gradually propagated throughout Gaul. The presence at Lyons of numerous Asiastic Christians and their almost daily communications with the Orient were likely to arouse the susceptibili- ties of the Gallo-Romans. A persecution arose under Marcus Aurelius. Its victims at Lyons numbered forty-eight, half of them of Greek origin, half Gallo- Roman, among others St. Blandina (q. v.), and St. Pothinus, first Bishop of Lyons, sent to Gaul by St. Polycarp about the middle of the second century. The legend according to which he was sent by St. Cle- ment dates from the twelfth century and is without foundation. The letter addressed to the Christians of Asia and Phrygia in the name of the faithful of Vienne and Lyons, and relating the persecution of 177, is con- sidered by Ernest Renan as one of the most extraor- dinary documents possessed by any literature; it is the baptismal certificate of Christianity in France. The successor of St. Pothinus was the illustrious St. Irenaeus (q. v.), 177-202.

The discovery on the Hill of St. Sebastian of ruins of a naumachia capable of being transformed into an amphitheatre, andf of some fragments of inscriptions app>arently belonging to an altar of Augustus, has led several archseologiste to believe that the martyrs of Lyons suffered death on this hill. Very ancient tra- dition, however, represents the church of Ainay as erected at the place of their martyrdom. The cr3rpt of St. Pothinus, under the choir of the church of bt.

Nisier was destroyed in 1884. But there are still re- vered at Lyons the prison cell of St. Pothinus, where Anne of Austria, Louis XIV, and Pius VII came to pray, and the crypt of St. Irensus built at the end of the fifth century by St. Patiens, which contains the body of St. Irensus. There are numerous funerary inscriptions of primitive Christianity in Lyons; the earliest dates from the year 334. In the second and third centuries the See of Lyons enjoyed great renown throughout Gaul, witness the local legends of Besan- 5on (q. v.) and of several other cities relative to the missionaries sent out by St. Irensus. Faustinus, bishop in the second half of the third century, wi:pte to St. Cyprian and Pope Stephen I, in 254, regarding the Novatian tendencies of Marcian, Bishop of Aries. But when Diocletian by the new provincial organi- zation had taken away from Lyons its position as metropolis of the three Gauls, the prestige of Lyons diminished for a time.

^ At the end of the empire and during the Merovin- fldan period several saints are coimted among the Bishops of Lyons: St. Justus (374-381) who died in a monastery in the Thebaid and was renowned for the orthodoxy of his doctrine in the struggle against Arian- ism (the church of the Machabees, whither his body was brought, was as early as the fifth century a place of pilgrimage imder the name of the collegiate church of St. Justus), St. Alpinus and St. Martin (disciple of St. Martin of Tours; end of fourth century); St. Antiochus (400-410); St. Elpidius (410-422); St. Sicarius (422-33); St. Eucherius (c. 433-50), a monk of L^rins and the author of homilies, from whom doubtless dates the foundation at Lyons of the "her- mitages'' of which more will be said below; St. Patiens (456-08) who successfully combated the fam- ine and Arianism, and whom Sidonius ApoUinarus praised in a poem; St. Lupioinus (491-94); St. Rusti- cus (494-501); St. Stephanus (d. before 515), who with St. Avitus of Vienne, convoked a council at Lyons for the conversion of the Arians; St. Viven- tiolus (515-523), who in 517 presided with St. Avitus at the Council of Epaone; St. Lupus, a monk, after- wards bishop (538-42), probably the first archbishop, who when signing in 438 the Council of Orleans added the title of *'metropolitanus"; St. Sardot or Sacerdos (549-542), who presided in 549 at the Council of Orleans, and who obtained from King Childebert the foundation of the general hospital; St. Nicetius or Nisier (552-73), who received from the pope the title of patriarch, and whose tomb was honoured by mira- cles. The prestige of St. Nicetius was lasting; his successor St. Priscus (573-588) bore the title of patri- arch, and brought the council of 585 to decide that national synods should be convened every three years at the instance of the patriarch and of the king; St. JStherius (588-603), who was a correspondent of St. Gregory the Great and who perhaps consecrated St. Augustine, the Apostle of Encland; St. Aredius (603- 615); St. Annemundus or Cnamond (c. 650), friend of St. Wilfrid, godfather of Clotaire III, put to death by Ebroin together with his brother^ and patron of the town of Saint-Chamond; St. Genesius or Genes (660- 679 or 680), Benedictine Abbot of Fontenelle, grand almoner and minister of Queen Bathilde: St. Lam- bertus (c. 680-690), also Abbot of Fontenelle.

At the end of the fifth century Lyons was the capital of the Kingdom of Burgundy, out after 534 it passed under the domination of the kings of France. Rav- aged by the Saracens in 725, the city was restored through thejiberality of Charlemagne who established a rich library in the monastery of lie Barbe. In the time of St. Patiens and the priest Constans (d. 488) the school of Lyons was famous; Sidonius ApoUinaris was educated there. The letter of Leidrade to Charlemagne (807) shows the care taken by the em- peror for the restoration of learning in Lyons. With the aid of the deacon Florus he made the school so