Christianity in Gaul
By the middle of the 3rd century, there were several churches organized in Roman Gaul, and soon after the cessation of persecution, the bishops of the Latin world assembled at Arles in AD 314.
The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia speculates that early missionaries may have arrived at Marseilles by sea, and continued up the river Rhône to the central metropolis at Lyon.
The sole account of this persecution is a letter preserved by Eusebius[3] from the Christians of Lyon and Vienne, the latter still known then as Vienna Allobrogum and the capital of the continental Celtic Allobroges.
The forty-eight martyrs of Lyon (ancient Lugdunum, "citadel of Lugus" the Gallic equivalent of Mercury) represented every rank of Gallo-Roman society.
Among them were Vettius Epagathus, an aristocrat; the physician Attalus of Pergamus, from the professional class; from the Church, Saint Pothinus Bishop of Lyon, with the neophyte Maturus and the deacon Sanctus; and the young slaves Blandina[4] and Ponticus.
Easter was not celebrated on the same day in all Christian communities; towards the end of the 2nd century, Pope Victor wished to universalize the Roman usage and excommunicated the Churches of Asia Minor which were Quartodeciman.
About the same time, in an inscription found at Autun (ancient Augustodunum, the capital of the Celtic Aedui), a certain Pectorius celebrated in Greek verse the Ichthys or fish, symbol of the Eucharist.
Bishop Faustinus of Lyon and other colleagues in Gaul are mentioned in 254 by St. Cyprian[7] as opposed to Novatian, whereas Marcianus of Arles was favourable to him.
According to him, in the year 250, Rome sent seven bishops, who founded as many churches in Gaul: The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia considers Gregory's account more credible than the local legends, but maintains some reservations, assessing the narrative overall as tradition rather than fact.
Signatures on surviving documents show that bishops from the following dioceses were in attendance: During the 4th and 5th centuries, Christianity slowly began to spread among the educated classes in Gaul.
These included: Rural areas in Gaul remained strongholds of traditional Gallic and ancient Roman religions, and syncretic fusions of the two.
In the 6th century, in the city of Arles, one of the regions where Christianity had gained its earliest and strongest foothold, Bishop Caesarius was still attempting to suppress traditional beliefs, and some of his sermons are important sources of information on folk-lore.
Rutilius Namatianus, a pagan, denounced the monks of Lérins as a brood of night-owls; even the effort to make chastity the central virtue of Christianity met with much resistance, and the adversaries of Priscillian in particular were imbued with this hostility to a certain degree.
The series of Gallic councils before the Merovingian epoch bear witness at once to the undecided state of discipline at the time, and also to the continual striving after some fixed disciplinary code.
Its bishops seem to have been greatly preoccupied with Arianism; as a rule they clung to the teaching of the Council of Nicaea, in spite of a few temporary or partial defections.
It was condemned in 380 at the Synod of Saragossa where the Bishops of Bordeaux and Agen were present; nonetheless it spread rapidly in Central Gaul, Eauze in particular being a stronghold.
When in 385 Magnus Maximus put Priscillian and his friends to death, Saint Martin was in doubt how to act, but repudiated with horror communion with the bishops who had condemned the unfortunates.
About the middle of the 3rd century the pope was appealed to for the purpose of settling difficulties in the Church of Gaul and to remove an erring bishop (Cyprian, Epist.
At the Council of Arles (314) the bishops of Gaul were present with those of Brittany, Spain, Africa, even Italy; Pope Sylvester sent delegates to represent him.
"The traditional authority", says Duchesne, "in all matters of discipline remained always the ancient Church of Rome; in practice, however, the Council of Milan decided in case of conflict."
The Acts of this council follow very closely the principles laid down in the Breviarium Alarici—a summary of the Theodocian Code drawn up by Alaric II, the Visigothic king, for his Gallo-Roman subjects—and met with the approval of the Catholic bishops of his kingdom.
The bishops were guardians of the classical traditions of Latin literature and Roman culture, and long before the appearance of monasticism had been the mainstay of learning.
Throughout the 6th and 7th centuries manuscripts of the Bible and the Church were copied to meet the needs of public worship, ecclesiastical teaching, and Catholic life.
[15] After the waning of Caesarius's influence and the establishment of Merovingian rule, the focus of the soon-to-be Frankish Church shifted north, to deal with the growing problem of adjusting to "deeply embedded Germanic practices"; rather than Pelagianism or Predestinatarianism, bishops now had to deal with problems involving "marriage, the relations between a warrior aristocracy and clergy, or monks and nuns, the conflicts born of royal influence and control, or of property rights".
