Lyon

Bishop of Lyon · c. 177 (Pothinus, first attested bishop, dies in the persecution)

The first see in Gaul, and the church that wrote its own martyrdom down. Pothinus was over ninety when the amphitheatre took him in 177; his presbyter Irenaeus was away in Rome carrying the confessors letter and came back to succeed him, and spent the rest of his life arguing that an unbroken line of named bishops is what answers a claim of secret tradition. Lyon kept the primacy of Gaul long after. The line is numbered from Duchesne's Fastes episcopaux, which prints the three surviving redactions of the Lyon catalogue - the oldest in a mid-9th-century evangeliary from Autun - and then goes through them naming what each name rests on. His numbering is not the manuscript's: all three copies interpolate Salonius and Veranus, the two sons of Eucherius, after their father, and dropping them moves everything below Eucherius two places. Numbers here stop where his do, at his 49th holder around the year 900, because he declines to settle the tenth-century variants and a number nobody prints is worse than none.

The bishops

19 holders in the record.

Of the 18 links in this chain, 9 rest on a recorded succession; 8 are inferred from the numbering — the register numbers the two holders consecutively and no source says one followed the other; 1 are named by no register at all: nothing joins those two rows. Each holder below says which it is.

• Pothinus #1 · № Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, t. II (2nd ed., 1907), p. 161, commentary no. 1
• Irenaeus #2 · c. 178–c. 202 · link inferred · № Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, t. II (2nd ed., 1907), p. 161, commentary no. 2 · bishops in between are missing
• Just of Lyon #13 · link inferred · № Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, t. II (2nd ed., 1907), p. 162, commentary no. 13
• Alpinus of Lyon #14 · link inferred · № Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, t. II (2nd ed., 1907), p. 162, commentary no. 14
• Martin de Lyon #15 · № Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, t. II (2nd ed., 1907), p. 163, commentary no. 15 · bishops in between are missing
• Eucherius of Lyon #19 · link inferred · № Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, t. II (2nd ed., 1907), p. 163, commentary no. 19
• Patiens of Lyon #20 · 449–490 · № Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, t. II (2nd ed., 1907), p. 163, commentary no. 20
• Lupicinus of Lyon #21 · 491–494 · № Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, t. II (2nd ed., 1907), p. 163, commentary no. 21
• Saint Rusticus #22 · 494–25 Apr 501 · № Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, t. II (2nd ed., 1907), p. 163-164, commentary no. 22
• Stephen of Lyon #23 · 501–514 · № Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, t. II (2nd ed., 1907), p. 164, commentary no. 23
• Viventiolus #24 · 515–523 · № Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, t. II (2nd ed., 1907), p. 165, commentary no. 24 · bishops in between are missing
• Sacerdos of Lyon #27 · 549–552 · link inferred · № Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, t. II (2nd ed., 1907), p. 166, commentary no. 27
• Nicetius of Lyon #28 · 553–573 · № Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, t. II (2nd ed., 1907), p. 166, commentary no. 28
• Priscus of Lyon #29 · 573–585 · № Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, t. II (2nd ed., 1907), p. 168, commentary no. 29 · dates here from Wikidata; Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule reads ?–586
• Éthère de Lyon #30 · link inferred · № Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, t. II (2nd ed., 1907), p. 168-169, commentary no. 30 · bishops in between are missing
• Goduinus #39 · link inferred · № Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, t. II (2nd ed., 1907), p. 171, commentary no. 39 · bishops in between are missing
• Leidrad of Lyon #44 · 798–814 · № Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, t. II (2nd ed., 1907), p. 171, commentary no. 44
• Agobard #45 · link inferred · № Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, t. II (2nd ed., 1907), p. 172, commentary no. 45 · the numbering ends here; what follows holds no place in the list
• Burchard I of Lyon 949–957 · link unrecorded · № named by no register

the communion today