Archdiocese of Lyon

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The Roman Catholic Metropolitan Archdiocese of Lyon is a Roman Catholic ecclesiastical territory in France. It incorporates the ancient Archdiocese of Vienne. The current Cardinal-Archbishop is Philippe Cardinal Barbarin.

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Persecution

The "Deacon of Vienne", martyred at Lyon during the persecution of 177, was probably a deacon installed at Vienne by the ecclesiastical authority of Lyon. The confluence of the Rhône and the Saône, where sixty Gallic tribes had erected the famous altar to Rome and Augustus, was also the centre from which Christianity was gradually propagated throughout Gaul. The presence at Lyon of numerous Asiatic Christians and their almost daily 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 St. Blandina, and St. Pothinus, first Bishop of Lyon, sent to Gaul by St. Polycarp about the middle of the second century. The legend according to which he was sent by St. Clement 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 Lyon, and relating the persecution of 177, is considered by Ernest Renan as one of the most extraordinary documents possessed by any literature; it is the baptismal certificate of Christianity in France. The successor of St. Pothinus was the illustrious St. Irenaeus (177-202).

The discovery on the Hill of St. Sebastian of ruins of a naumachia capable of being transformed into an amphitheatre, and of some fragments of inscriptions apparently belonging to an altar of Augustus, has led several archæologists to believe that the martyrs of Lyon suffered death on this hill. Very ancient tradition, however, represents the church of Ainay as erected at the place of their martyrdom. The crypt of St. Pothinus, under the choir of the church of St. Nizier was destroyed in 1884. But there are still revered at Lyon the prison cell of St. Pothinus, where Anne of Austria, Louis XIV, and Pius VII came to pray, and the crypt of St. Irenaeus built at the end of the fifth century by St. Patiens, which contains the body of St. Irenaeus. There are numerous funerary inscriptions of primitive Christianity in Lyon; the earliest dates from the year 334. In the second and third centuries the See of Lyon enjoyed great renown throughout Gaul, witness the local legends of Besançon and of several other cities relative to the missionaries sent out by St. Irenaeus. Faustinus, bishop in the second half of the third century, wrote to St. Cyprian and Pope Stephen I, in 254, regarding the Novatian tendencies of Marcian, Bishop of Arles. But when Diocletian's new provincial organization (tetrarchy) had taken away from Lyon its position as metropolis of the three Gauls, the prestige of Lyon diminished for a time.

[edit] Merovingian period

At the end of the empire and during the Merovingian period several saints are counted among the Bishops of Lyon: St. Justus (374-381) who died in a monastery in the Thebaid (Egypt) and was renowned for the orthodoxy of his doctrine in the struggle against Arianism (the church of the Machabees, whither his body was brought, was as early as the fifty century a place of pilgrimage under 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 Lérins and the author of homilies, from whom doubtless dates the foundation at Lyon of the "hermitages" of which more will be said below; St. Patiens (456-98) who successfully combated the famine and Arianism, and whom Sidonius Apollinaris praised in a poem; St. Lupicinus (491-94); St. Rusticus (494-501); St. Stephanus (d. Before 515), who with St. Avitus of Vienne, convoked a council at Lyon for the conversion of the Arians; St. Viventiolus (515-523), who in 517 presided with St. Avitus at the Council of Epaone; St. Lupus, a monk, afterwards bishop (535-42), probably the first archbishop, who when signing in 438 the Council of Orléans added the title of "metropolitanus"; St. Sardot or Sacerdos (549-542), who presided in 549 at the Council of Orléans, and who obtained from King Childebert the foundation of the general hospital; St. Nicetius or Nizier (552-73), who received from the pope the title of patriarch, and whose tomb was honoured by miracles. The prestige of St. Nicetius was lasting; his successor St. Priseus (573-588) 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; St. Ætherius (588-603), who was a correspondent of St. Gregory the Great and who perhaps consecrated St. Augustine, the Apostle of England; St. Aredius (603-615); St. Annemundus or Chamond (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. Lambertus (c. 680-690), also Abbot of Fontenelle.

At the end of the fifth century Lyon was the capital of the Kingdom of Burgundy, but after 534 it passed under the domination of the kings of France. 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 time of St. Patiens and the priest Constans (d. 488) the school of Lyon was famous; Sidonius Apollinaris was educated there. The letter of Leidrade to Charlemagne (807) 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 tenth century Englishmen went there to study.

[edit] Carolingian Period

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 Leidrade (798-814) and Agobard (814-840). When Felix of Urgel continued rebellious to the condemnations pronounced against Adoptionism from 791-799 by the Councils of Ciutad, Friuli, Ratisbon, Frankfort, and Rome, Charlemagne conceived the idea of sending to Urgel with Nebridius, Bishop of Narbonne, Benedict of Aniane, and Archbishop Leidrade, 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, and then brought him 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 Leidrade's retirement to the abbey of St. Médard of Soissons, composed a long treatise against that heresy.

[edit] Agobard

Agobard 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 life. 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 charged with heretical opinions regarding the "triforme corpus Christi", and who took part in the controversies with Gottschalk on the subject of predestination. Amolon (841-852) and St. Remy (852-75) continued the struggle against the heresy of Valence, which condemned this heresy, and also was engaged in strife with Hincmar. From 879-1032 Lyon formed part of the Kingdom of Provence and afterwards of the second Kingdom of Burgundy. When in 1032 Rudolph III of Burgundy, ceded his states 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, brother of Rudolph, claimed rights of sovereignty over Lyon as inherited from his mother, Mathilde 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.

Ledrad

[edit] Saint Gebuin

Lyon attracted the attention of Cardinal Hildebrand, who held a council there in 1055 against the simoniacal bishops. In 1076, as Gregory VII, he deposed Archbishop Humbert (1063-76) for simony. Saint Gebuin (Jubinus), who succeeded Humbert was the confidant of Gregory VII and contributed to the reform of the Church by the two councils of 1080 and 1082, at which were excommunicated Manasses of Reims, Fulk of Anjou, and the monks of Marmoutiers.

It was under the episcopate of Saint Gebuin that Gregory VII (20 April, 1079) established the primacy of the Church of Lyon over the Provinces of Rouen, Tours, and Sens, which primacy was specially 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.

Hugh of Die (1081-1106), the successor of St. Gebuin, the friend of St. Anselm, and for a while legate of Gregory VII in France and Burgundy, had differences later on with Victor III, who excommunicated him for a time, also with Paschal II. The latter pope came to Lyon in 1106, consecrated the basilica of Ainay, and dedicated one of its altars in honour of the Immaculate Conception. The Feast of the Immaculate Conception was solemnized at Lyon about 1128, perhaps at the instance of St. Anselm of Canterbury, and St. Bernard wrote to the canons of Lyon to complain that they should have instituted a feast without consulting the pope.

[edit] Sovereignty

As soon as Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, had been proclaimed Blessed (1173), his cult was instituted at Lyon. Lyon of the 12th century thus has a glorious place in the history of Catholic liturgy and even of dogma, but the twelfth century was also marked by the heresy of Peter Waldo and the Waldenses, the Poor Men of Lyon, who were opposed by Jean de Bellème (1181-1193), and by an important change in the political situation of the archbishops.

In 1157 Emperor Frederick Barbarossa confirmed the sovereignty of the Archbishops of Lyon; thenceforth there was a lively contest between them and the counts. An arbitration effected by the pope in 1167 had no result, but by the treaty of 1173 Guy, Count of Forez, ceded to the canons of the primatial church of St. John his title of count of Lyon and his temporal authority.

Then came the growth of the Commune, more belated in Lyon than in many other cities, but in 1193 the archbishop had to make some concession to the citizens. The 13th century was a period of conflict. Three times, in 1207, 1269, and 1290, grave troubles broke out between the partisans of the archbishop who dwelt in the château of Pierre Seize, those of the count-canons who lived in a separate quarter near the cathedral, and those of the townsfolk. Gregory X attempted, but without success, to restore peace by two Acts, 2 April, 1273, and 11 November 1274. The kings of France were always inclined to side with the commune; after the siege of Lyon by Louis X (1310) the treaty of 10 April, 1312, definitively attached Lyon to the Kingdom of France, but, until the beginning of the 15th century the Church of Lyon was allowed to coin its own money.

If the 13th century had imperilled the political sovereignty of the archbishops, it had on the other hand made Lyon a kind of second Rome. Gregory X was a former canon of Lyon, while Innocent V, as Peter of Tarantaise, was Archbishop of Lyon from 1272 to 1273. Innocent IV and Gregory X sought refuge at Lyon from the Hohenstaufen, and held there two general councils of Lyon. Local tradition relates that it was on seeing the red hat of the canons of Lyon that the courtiers of Innocent IV conceived the idea of obtaining from the Council of Lyon its decree that the cardinals should henceforth wear red hats. The sojourn of Innocent IV at Lyon was marked by numerous works of public utility, to which the pope gave vigorous encouragement. He granted indulgences to the faithful who should assist in the construction of the bridge over the Rhône, replacing that destroyed about 1190 by the passage of the troops of Richard Cœur de Lion on their way to the Crusade. The building of the churches of St. John and St. Justus was pushed forward with activity; he sent delegates even to England to solicit alms for this purpose and he consecrated the high altar in both churches.

At Lyon were crowned Clement V (1305) and Pope John XXII (1310); at Lyon in 1449 the antipope Felix V renounced the tiara; there, too, was held in 1512, without any definite conclusion, the last session of the schismatical Council of Pisa against Julius II. In 1560 the Calvinists took Lyon by surprise, but they were driven out by Antoine d'Albon, Abbot of Savigny and later Archbishop of Lyon. Again masters of Lyon in 1562, they were driven thence by the Maréchal de Vieuville. At the command of the famous Baron des Adrets they committed numerous acts of violence in the region of Montbrison. It was at Lyon that Henry IV of France, the converted Calvinist king, married Marie de Medicis (9 December, 1600).

[edit] Later Middle Ages

Gerson, whose old age was spent at Lyon in the cloister of St. Paul, where he instructed poor children, died there in 1429. St. Francis de Sales died at Lyon, 28 December, 1622. The Curé Colombet de St. Amour was celebrated at St. Etienne in the seventeenth century for the generosity with which he founded the Hôtel-Dieu (the charity hospital), also free schools, and fed the workmen during the famine of 1693.

M. Guigue has catalogued the eleven "hermitages" (eight of them for men and three for women) which were distinctive of the ascetical life of Christian Lyon in the Middle Ages; these were cells in which persons shut themselves up for life after four years of trial. The system of hermitages along the lines described by Grimalaius and Olbredus in the ninth century flourished especially from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, and disappeared completely in the sixteenth. These hermitages were the private property of a neighbouring church or monastery, which installed therein for life a male or female recluse. The general almshouse of Lyon, or charity hospital, was founded in 1532 after the great famine of 1531 under the supervision of eight administrators chosen from among the more important citizens.

The institution of the jubilee of St. Nizier dates beyond a doubt to the stay of Innocent IV at Lyon. This jubilee, which had all the privileges of the secular jubilees of Rome, was celebrated each time that Low Thursday, the feast of St. Nizier, coincided with 2 April, i.e. whenever the feast of Easter itself was on the earliest day allowed by the paschal cycle, namely 22 March. In 1818, when this coincidence occurred, the feast of St. Nizier was not celebrated. But the cathedral of St. John also enjoys a great jubilee each time that the feast of St. John the Baptist coincides with Corpus Christi, that is, whenever the feast of Corpus Christi falls on 24 June. It is certain that in 1451 the coincidence of these two feasts was celebrated with special splendour by the population of Lyon, then emerging from the troubles of the Hundred Years' War, but there is no document to prove that the jubilee indulgence existed at that date. However, Lyonnese tradition places the first great jubilee in 1451; subsequent jubilees took place in 1546, 1666, 1734 and 1886.

"Among the Churches of France", wrote St. Bernard to the canons of Lyon, "that of Lyon has hitherto had ascendancy over all the others, as much for the dignity of its see as for its praiseworthy institutions. It is especially in the Divine Office that this judicious Church has never readily acquiesced in unexpected and sudden novelties, and has never submitted to be tarnished by innovations which are becoming only to youth".

[edit] Montazet controversy

In the 18th century Archbishop Antoine de Montazet, contrary to the Bull of Pius V on the Breviary, changed the text of the Breviary and the Missal, from which there resulted a century of conflict for the Church of Lyon. The efforts of Pope Pius IX and Cardinal Bonald to suppress the innovations of Montazet provoked resistance on the part of the canons, who feared an attempt against the traditional Lyonnese ceremonies. This culminated in 1861 in a protest on the part of the clergy and the laity, as much with regard to the civil power as to the Vatican. Finally, on 4 February, 1864, at a reception of the parish priests of Lyon, Pius IX declared his displeasure at this agitation and assured them that nothing should be changed in the ancient Lyonnese ceremonies; by a Brief of 17 March, 1864, he ordered the progressive introduction of the Roman Breviary and Missal in the diocese. The primatial church of Lyon adopted them for public services 8 December, 1869. One of the rites of the ancient Gallican liturgy, retained by the Church of Lyon, is the blessing of the people by the bishop at the moment of Communion.

[edit] Saints

The Diocese of Lyon honours as saints: St. Epipodius and his companion St. Alexander, probably martyrs under Marcus Aurelius; the priest St. Peregrinus (third century); St. Baldonor (Galmier), a native of Aveizieux, at first a locksmith, whose piety was remarked by the bishop, St. Viventiolus; he became a cleric at the Abbey of St. Justus, then subdeacon, and died about 760; the thermal resort of "Aquæ Segestæ", in whose church Viventiolus met him, has taken the name of St. Galmier; St. Viator (d. about 390), who followed the Bishop, St. Justus, to the Thebaid; Sts. Romanus and Lupicinus (fifth century), natives of the Diocese of Lyon, who lived as solitaries within the present territory of the Diocese of Saint-Claude; St. Consortia, d. about 578, who according to a legend, criticized by Tillemont, was a daughter of St. Eucherius; St. Rambert, soldier and martyr in the seventh century, patron of the town of the same name; Blessed Jean Pierre Néel, b. in 1832 at Ste. Catherine sur Riviere, martyred at Kay-Tcheou in 1862.

[edit] List of Archbishops of Lyon (incomplete)

[edit] References

  1. ^ HALINARD, Erzbischof von Lyon

This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archdiocese_of_Lyon"
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