Archdiocese of Lyon
The Archdiocese of Lyon, formerly the Archdiocese of Lyon–Vienne–Embrun, is a Latin Church metropolitan archdiocese of the Catholic Church in France. It is the oldest diocese in France and one of the oldest in Western Christianity. The archbishops of Lyon hold the honorary title of primates of Gaul. They are traditionally elevated by the pope to the rank of cardinal.
Olivier de Germay was appointed archbishop of Lyon on 22 October 2020. He is assisted by three auxiliary bishops: Patrick Le Gal, Loïc Lagadec, and Thierry Brac de La Perrière.
History
In the Notitia Galliarum of the 5th century, the Roman Provincia Gallia Lugdunensis Prima contained the cities of Metropolis civitas Lugdunensium, Civitas Aeduorum, Civitas Lingonum, Castrum Cabilonense and Castrum Matisconense.The confluence of the Rhône and the Saône, where sixty Gallic tribes had erected the altar to Rome and Augustus, was also the centre from which Christianity was propagated throughout Gaul.
Persecution
The presence at Lyon of numerous Asiatic Christians and their communications with the Orient were likely to arouse the susceptibilities of the Gallo-Romans. A persecution arose under Marcus Aurelius. Its victims at Lyon numbered forty-eight, half of them of Greek origin, half Gallo-Roman, among others Saint Blandina, and Saint Pothinus, first Bishop of Lyon, sent to Gaul by Saint Polycarp about the middle of the 2nd century. The legend according to which Pothinus was sent by Pope Clement I dates from the 12th century and is without foundation.The "Deacon of Vienne", mentioned in the letter of the faithful of Vienne and Lyon to the Christians of Asia and Phrygia, who was martyred at Lyon during the persecution of 177, was probably a deacon installed at Vienne by the ecclesiastical authority of Lyon. Tradition represents the church of Ainay as erected at the place of their martyrdom. The crypt of Saint Pothinus, under the choir of the church of St. Nizier, was destroyed in 1884. But there still exists at Lyon the purported prison cell of Pothinus, where Anne of Austria, Louis XIV, and Pius VII came to pray, and the crypt of Saint Irenaeus built at the end of the 5th century by Archbishop Patiens, which contains his remains.
Irenaeus sent out missionaries through the Gauls, as local legends of Besançon and of several other cities indicate. There are numerous funerary inscriptions of primitive Christianity in Lyon; the earliest dates from the year 334. Faustinus, bishop in the second half of the 3rd century, wrote to Cyprian of Carthage, who speaks of him in a letter to Pope Stephen I, in 254, regarding the Novatian tendencies of Marcian, Bishop of Arles.
But when Diocletian's new provincial organization had taken away from Lyon its position as metropolis of the three Gauls, the prestige of Lyon diminished.
Around the year 470, Lyon fell into the hands of the Burgundians, and around 479 the city of Langres as well.
Merovingian period
From Saint Eucherius, a monk of Lérins and the author of homilies, doubtless dates the foundation at Lyon of the "hermitages". Bishop Patiens successfully combated famine and Arianism, and whom Sidonius Apollinaris praised in a poem; Bishop Stephanus, with Bishop Avitus of Vienne convoked a council at Lyon for the conversion of the Arians. Bishop Viventolius in 517 presided with Bishop Avitus at the Council of Epaone.When Burgundian power collapsed under the repeated assaults of the Franks in 534, its territory was divided up, and the third son of Clovis, the Merovingian Childebert I, received Lyon.
Lupus, a monk, afterwards bishop, was probably the first to be called a metropolitan archbishop; in 538, the Council of Orléans used the title of "metropolitanus". Sacerdos presided in 549 at the Council of Orléans, and obtained from King Childebert the foundation of the general hospital; Saint Nicetius received from the pope the title of patriarch, and whose tomb was honoured by miracles. The prestige of Saint Nicetius was lasting; his successor Saint Priseus bore the title of patriarch, 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; Ætherius, who was a correspondent of Pope Gregory I, and who perhaps consecrated Saint Augustine, the Apostle of England; Saint Annemundus or Chamond, friend of Saint Wilfrid, godfather of Clotaire III, put to death by Ebroin together with his brother, and patron of the town of Saint-Chamond, Loire; Saint Genesius or Genes, Benedictine abbot of Fontenelle, grand almoner and minister of Queen Bathilde; Saint Lambertus, also abbot of Fontenelle.
At the end of the 5th century Lyon was the capital of the Kingdom of Burgundy, but after 534 it passed under the domination of the Frankish kings.
Carolingian period
Ravaged by the Saracens in 725, the city was restored through the liberality of Charlemagne who established a rich library in the monastery of Ile Barbe in the Saône, just north of Lugdunum. The letter of Leidradus to Charlemagne shows the care taken by the emperor for the restoration of learning in Lyon. With the aid of the deacon Florus he made the school so prosperous that in the 10th century Englishmen went there to study.Under Charlemagne and his immediate successors, the Bishops of Lyon, whose ascendancy was attested by the number of councils over which they were called to preside, played an important theological part. Adoptionism had no more active enemies than Leidradus and Agobard. When Felix of Urgel continued rebellious to the condemnations pronounced against adoptionism from 791-799 by the Councis of Ciutad, Friuli, Ratisbon, Frankfort, and Rome, Charlemagne sent to Urgel, Benedict of Aniane, and Archbishop Leidradus, a native of Nuremberg and Charlemagne's librarian. They preached against Adoptionism in Spain, conducted Felix in 799 to the Council of Aachen where he seemed to submit to the arguments of Alcuin; he was then brought back to his diocese. But the submission of Felix was not complete; Agobard, "Chorepiscopus" of Lyon, convicted him anew of adoptionism in a secret conference, and when Felix died in 815 there was found among his papers a treatise in which he professed adoptionism. Then Agobard, who had become Archbishop of Lyon in 814 after Leidradus' retirement to the Abbey of St. Medard, Soissons, composed a long treatise against that heresy.
Agobard and Remy
Archbishop Agobard of Lyon displayed great activity as a pastor and a publicist in his opposition to the Jews and to various superstitions. His rooted hatred for all superstition led him in his treatise on images into certain expressions which savoured of Iconoclasm. The five historical treatises which he wrote in 833 to justify the deposition of Louis the Pious, who had been his benefactor, are a stain on his reputation. Louis the Pious, having been restored to power, caused Agobard to be deposed in 835 by the Council of Thionville, but three years later gave him back his see, in which he died in 840. During the exile of Agobard the See of Lyon had been for a short time administered by Amalarius of Metz, whom the deacon Florus of Lyon, the master of the cathedral school, charged with heretical opinions regarding the "triforme corpus Christi." Florus also took part in the controversies with Gottschalk on the subject of predestination.It has been contended that there was a university at Lyons by the 13th century, but this has been strongly denied.
Amolon and Remy continued the struggle against the heresy of predestination. At the Council of Valence in January 855, presided over by Archbishop Remy, this heresy was condemned. Remy also was engaged in strife with Archbishop Hincmar of Reims.
Political realignments
From 879-1032 Lyon formed part of the Kingdom of Provence and afterwards of the second Kingdom of Burgundy. In 1032 Rudolph III of Burgundy died, and the Burgundian kingdom eventually went to Conrad II. The portion of Lyon situated on the left bank of the Saône became, at least nominally, an imperial city. Finally Archbishop Burchard II, brother of Rudolph, claimed rights of sovereignty over Lyon as inherited from his mother, Matilda, daughter of Louis IV of France; in this way the government of Lyon, instead of being exercised by the distant emperor, became a matter of dispute between the counts who claimed the inheritance and the successive archbishops.In 1025, the second Archbishop Burchard held a council at Anse, on the Saône some 28 km north of Lyon, attended by the archbishops of Vienne and Tarentaise, and nine bishops. At the council the bishop of Mâcon complained that Archbishop Burchard of Vienne had ordained priests from the abbey of Cluny, which was in his diocese and under his jurisdiction. Abbot Odilon testified for the archbishop of Vienne, but the council ruled that his actions were uncanonical and the archbishop of Vienne was made to apologize and make reparation. In the next year, however, the monks of Cluny obtained a privilege from Pope John XIX, which allowed their action.
Pope Victor II was appointed at Mainz in September 1054 by the Emperor Henry III, who had met there with representatives from Rome, including the Subdeacon Hildebrand, following the death of Pope Leo IX. Victor was known to be a promoter of church reform. He immediately appointed two papal vicars for France, Archbishop Raimbaud of Arles and Archbishop Pontius of Aix. The subdeacon Hildebrand, was sent to Lyon, where he held a council there in 1055, to deal with simoniacal bishops. In 1076, as Gregory VII, he deposed Archbishop Humbert for simony.
Primacy of Lyon confirmed
, who succeeded Humbert, was the confidant of Gregory VII and contributed to the reform of the Church. The papal legate, Hugues de Die, presided at the two councils of Lyon in 1080 and 1082, at which Manasses of Reims, Fulk of Anjou, and the monks of Marmoutiers were excommunicated. Archbishop Achard of Arles was deposed.It was during the episcopate of Gebuin, and at his request, that Pope Gregory VII, in the Bull "Antiquorum Sanctorum Patrum" of 20 April 1079, confirmed. The primacy of the Church of Lyon over the Provinces of Rouen, Tours, and Sens.
In 1112, Archbishop Jauceran, having decided to hold a council at Anse, sent out summonses to attend to all the bishops of the ecclesiastical provinces of Sens, Rouen, and Tours, including the archbishop of Sens and all his suffragan bishops, including Ivo of Chartres. Archbishop Daimbertus of Sens immediately held a provincial synod, and the bishops collectively sent a tart and lengthy synodal letter to Archbishop Jauceran, protesting the tone and content of his letter of summons, and his application of the relevant documents. They were happy, they said, to accept his invitation, but not on the terms stated. It was unheard of that a bishop be summoned outside of his own province, except under papal orders. Archbishop Jauceran replied in a letter directed to Archbishop Daimbertus, relying on contentious rhetoric and fallacious reasoning. He also procured from Pope Paschal II a bull, "Caritatis bonum est," dated 14 March 1116, confirming the privileges of the archbishops of Lyon, including the primacy over the ecclesiastical provinces of Rouen, Tours and Sens.
The dignity was confirmed by Callistus II, despite the letter written to him in 1126 by Louis VI in favour of the church of Sens. As far as it regarded the Province of Rouen this letter was later suppressed by a decree of the king's council in 1702, at the request of Jacques-Nicolas Colbert, Archbishop of Rouen.