The third council of national stature, or third Council of Orléans, was a synod of the Catholic bishops of France. It opened around 7 May 538 and was presided over by Loup, Archbishop of Lyon. It established mainly:
- Sunday as day of the Lord;
- prohibition of field work on Sundays;
- prohibition of clerics practicing usury;
- prohibition of the conjuring of priests, as a critic of their bishop (canon 24, recall of canon 18 of the Council of Chalcedon, 451).
- The bishop must redeem a Christian slave in the service of a Jew if he takes refuge in the church, while the constitutions of the Lower Roman Empire demanded to return them to their master, without further guarantees.
A conciliabule, of which we do not know the subject, took place in Orleans in 540.
References
- Charles Mériaux. Les clercs ruraux et la hiérarchisation de la société carolingienne. Bilan et perspectives dans la province de Reims. Colloque Hiérarchie, ordre et mobilité dans l'Occident médiéval, à Auxerre, 27-29 novembre 2006. online , accessed 3 December 2006.
- Karl-Joseph von Hefele, Isidore Goechler and Oden Jean-Marie Delarc, Histoire des conciles d'après les documents originaux : 451-680. Traduit de l'allemand, t. 3, Paris, Adrien Le Clère et Cie, 1870. The minutes of the council report 33 canons p 360-361.
- Michel Rouche et Brigitte Basdevant-Gaudemet, Baptême de Clovis, son écho à travers l'histoire : l'évêque, d'après la législation de quelques conciles mérovingiens, vol. 2, Presses de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1997, ISBN 9782840500797, p. 479.
- W. Parker et B. Blumenkranz, Les esclaves chrétiens des Juifs. Troisième concile d'Orléans (538), Archives juives de Paris, vol. 21, nos 1-2, 1985, p. 3-4