Council of Turin in the сontext of relations between the Gallic and the Italian episcopates at the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries

Abstract

The article is devoted to the Council of Turin in 398 or 399, at which the Italian bishops tried to help resolve a number of problems in the ecclesiastical life of Gaul. In particular, the controversy about the metropolitan status in the province of Vienne between the sees of Vienne and Arles, as well as the metropolitan rights of Proculus of Marseille in relation to the bishops of the province of Narbonensis II, were discussed. In the first case, the council proposed to the bishops of Arles and Vienne that they reach an amicable agreement, dividing the province into two metropolitanates. In the second case, the rights of the metropolitan were retained for Proculus, but they were thought as personal, and not belonging to the see of Marseille. The article critically examines the conception of the American historian R. Mathisen, who assesses both the format of the council and its decisions as non-canonical. The contextual interpretation of the council allows us to consider it as a rare case of horizontal arbitration. This term refers to the mediating participation of the episcopate of one ecclesiastical region in resolving a conflict in another ecclesiastical region. Horizontal arbitration does not imply a subordinate position of the disputing parties in relation to the chairman of the council considering the case. Roman see at the beginning of the 5th century actually opposed this kind of practice on the basis of the principle of hierarchical inter-church relations. The result of this was an attempt to endow the See of Arles with a preeminent position in Gaul, as well as the encouragement of the practice of transferring the most significant issues to the court of the Roman See.