Council of Arles

council · 314 · Arles

Constantine, newly master of the West, called the western bishops to Arelate for 1 August 314 and paid for them to get there. It is the first council an emperor summoned, and the rehearsal for Nicaea eleven years later; Turner notes in his preface that the fathers of Nicaea borrowed some of their canons from this one. It confirmed the judgment against the Donatists and refused to rebaptize anyone baptized in the name of the Trinity, however bad the man who baptized him. Three of the twenty-two canons are worth naming. The first orders Easter kept on one day and at one time throughout the world, with the bishop of Rome to send out the letters. The twentieth forbids any bishop to ordain another alone — seven consecrators, and if seven cannot be had, never fewer than three, which is the mechanics of succession set down in the West for the first time. The tenth forbids a young Christian husband who catches his wife in adultery to marry again while she lives. The subscription list is why this council matters to Britain. Among the Gaulish bishops it records Eborius of York, Restitutus of London and Adelfius, with Sacerdos a presbyter and Arminius a deacon. That is the first firm evidence of an organised church in Britain; everything earlier — Tertullian on the Britons, the legend of King Lucius — Harnack dismisses by name. What the manuscripts do not agree about is Adelfius. The Corbey copy makes him bishop of the colony of the Londoners, which Haddan and Stubbs judge a corruption and read as Legionensium, Caerleon-on-Usk; other copies give him a Culnia, or a Culucitana in the African province of Byzacena. Turner prints two families of manuscripts side by side and they differ again over the fifth man, one calling Sacerdos a presbyter and the other a bishop. The record keeps the disagreement instead of choosing.

The Donatist appeal: were sacraments given by clergy who lapsed under persecution valid? And could the West keep one date for Easter?

The judgment against the Donatists confirmed, rebaptism of validly baptized heretics rejected, twenty-two canons — and the first firm evidence of an organised church in Britain.