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ScholarWorks > Arts & Sciences > Medieval Institute Publications > medpros > Vol. 31 (2016) > Iss. 1

 

Abstract

The signatures attached to Faustus of Riez’s Letter 1— addressed to the Lyonese priest Lucidus—in the MS Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 2166, show that, before the gathering of the Council of Arles in 470, Faustus managed to gain ecclesiastical support for his condemnatory approach to Lucidus’s views on grace and predestination. From the prosopographical analysis of this list of subscriptions it can be inferred that bishops Auxanius of Alba, Paulus of Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteux, Eutropius of Orange and Pragmatius (of Carpentras or Cavaillon?) subscribed to Faustus’s Letter 1 in the course of an episcopal conuentus which took place in 469, most probably in Avignon on the occasion of the episcopal consecration of Iulianus. Shortly thereafter in 469, a new episcopal conuentus took place on the occasion of the dedication of a new church in Lyons—the real epicentre of this theological controversy. This celebration gave Faustus the opportunity to preach against the allegedly “predestinarian views” of Lucidus (sermo extrauagans 3) and to obtain the subscriptions to his Letter 1 of bishops Patiens of Lyons, Euphronius of Autun, Megethius (of Besancon or Belley?), Claudius, Leocadius, and Iulianus of Avignon, as well as of the priest Lucidus himself. The fact that Lucidus submitted to the authority of Faustus and Patiens before the gathering of the Council of Arles casts doubts on the “theological emergency” of the “Lucidus affaire” being the ultimate reason for the convening of this synod, which is best explained as an exercise of supra-metropolitan authority by Leontius of Arles in a political context where the policy of the Arian King Euric required the unity of the Gallic Nicene Church.

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