At the
Council of Clermont in 535, fifteen
prelateA prelate is a high-ranking member of the clergy who either is an ordinary or ranks in precedence with ordinaries. The word derives from Latin prælatus, the past participle of præferre, literally, "carry before," or "to be set above, or over," or "to prefer," hence a prelate is one set over...
s of the kingdom of
AustrasiaAustrasia formed the north-eastern portion of the Kingdom of the Merovingian Franks, comprising parts of the territory of present-day eastern France, western Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Metz served as its capital, although some Austrasian kings ruled from Rheims, Trier, and...
assisted, under the presidency of Honoratus, Bishop of Bourges, at a
synodA synod is a council of a church, usually a Christian church, convened to decide an issue of doctrine, administration or application...
in the city now called
Clermont-FerrandClermont-Ferrand is a city and commune of France, in the Auvergne region, with a population of 140,700 . Its metropolitan area had 409,558 inhabitants at the 1999 census....
. Among those bishops attending was the bishop of Clermont, canonized as saint Gal.
At the
Council of Clermont in 535, fifteen
prelateA prelate is a high-ranking member of the clergy who either is an ordinary or ranks in precedence with ordinaries. The word derives from Latin prælatus, the past participle of præferre, literally, "carry before," or "to be set above, or over," or "to prefer," hence a prelate is one set over...
s of the kingdom of
AustrasiaAustrasia formed the north-eastern portion of the Kingdom of the Merovingian Franks, comprising parts of the territory of present-day eastern France, western Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Metz served as its capital, although some Austrasian kings ruled from Rheims, Trier, and...
assisted, under the presidency of Honoratus, Bishop of Bourges, at a
synodA synod is a council of a church, usually a Christian church, convened to decide an issue of doctrine, administration or application...
in the city now called
Clermont-FerrandClermont-Ferrand is a city and commune of France, in the Auvergne region, with a population of 140,700 . Its metropolitan area had 409,558 inhabitants at the 1999 census....
. Among those bishops attending was the bishop of Clermont, canonized as saint Gal.
They drew up seventeen canons, of which the first sixteen are contained in the
Decretum GratianiThe Decretum Gratiani or Concordia discordantium canonum is a collection of Canon law compiled and written in the twelfth century as a legal textbook by a jurist named Gratian...
compiled in the twelfth century by
GratianGratian, was a 12th century canon lawyer from Bologna. He is sometimes wrongly referred to as Franciscus Gratianus, or Johannes Gratianus, or Giovanni Graziano...
; they have become part of the corpus of
canon lawCanon law is the body of laws and regulations made by or adopted by ecclesiastical authority, for the government of the Christian organization and its members. It is the internal ecclesiastical law governing the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox churches, and the Anglican Communion of...
of the Catholic Church, the
Corpus Iuris Canonici.
The following is a summary:
- bishops are prohibited from submitting to the deliberations of councils any private or temporal affairs, before having dealt with matters regarding discipline;
- clerics are forbidden to appeal to seculars in their disputes with bishops;
- excommunication is pronounced against bishops who solicit the protection of princes in order to obtain the episcopacy, or who cause forged decrees of election to be signed.
The council also declared itself forcefully against the marriages of Christians with Jews,
marriages between relativesConsanguinity refers to the property of being from the same lineage as another person. In that respect, consanguinity is the quality of being descended from the same ancestor as another person...
, and the misconduct of the clergy.