[2] 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.

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.

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.

[12] Sacerdos (549-542) presided in 549 at the Council of Orléans, and obtained from King Childebert the foundation of the general hospital; Saint Nicetius (552-73) received from the pope the title of patriarch, and whose tomb was honoured by miracles.

[8] 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.

[8] 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.

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.

[16] Louis the Pious, having been restored to power, caused Agobard to be deposed in 835 by the Council of Thionville,[17] but three years later gave him back his see, in which he died in 840.

Finally Archbishop Burchard II, brother of Rudolph,[8] 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.

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.

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.

[36] 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.

Pope Paschal II came to Lyon, and on 29 January 1107 (1106, Roman Style), consecrated the church of Ainay Abbey,[45] and dedicated one of its altars in honour of the Immaculate Conception.

[47] In 1157 Emperor Frederick Barbarossa confirmed the sovereignty of the Archbishops over the city of Lyon, and the regalian rights over the extent of diocesan territory on the left bank of the Saône; they were also granted general jurisdiction over imperial territories, whether inside the diocese of Lyon or outside it; the archbishop was also named exarch of the royal palace in Burgundy and first dignitary in the imperial council.

[8] If the 13th century had imperiled the political sovereignty of the archbishops, it had on the other hand made Lyon a kind of refuge from an unfriendly Rome for the papal court.

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.

[49] Jean Charlier de Gerson, the former Chancellor of the University of Paris and leading theologian of the Council of Constance, whose old age was spent at Lyon in the abbey of St. Paul, where he instructed poor children, died there in 1429.

The general almshouse of Lyon, or charity hospital, was founded in 1532 after the great famine of 1531; it was under the supervision of eight administrators chosen from among the more important citizens.

[8] On 12 April 1549, Pope Paul III secularized the monastery of l'Ile Barbe, converting it into a collegiate church, with a Chapter headed by a Dean, who assumed the title of abbot, a Provost (the former Prior), and an Archdeacon (the former Cellerier).

It was at Lyon that Henry IV of France, the converted Calvinist king, married Marie de' Medici (9 December 1600).

The Curé Colombet de St. Amour was celebrated at St. Etienne in the 17th century for the generosity with which he founded the Hôtel-Dieu (the charity hospital) and free schools, and also fed the workmen during the famine of 1693.

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.

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.

[53] 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.

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.

[8] One of the first acts of the French Revolution was the abolition of feudalism and its institutions, including estates, provinces, duchies, baillies, and other obsolete organs of government.

The National Constituent Assembly ordered their replacement by political subdivisions called "departments", to be characterized by a single administrative city in the center of a compact area.

The Concordat of 1801, agreed between Pope Pius VII and First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte, assigned as the boundaries of the Archdiocese of Lyon the Departments of the Rhône and Loire and the Ain, and as suffragans the Dioceses of Mende, Grenoble, and Chambéry.