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The Mysterious Affair at Mâcon: The Bishops and the Souls of Women

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Michael Nolan
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The decree of the Council of Mâcon (585 AD) that women do not have a soul has the honoured place in liberal demonology given to historical events that never happened. It is a tale to treasure. As the eponymous wine is sipped at elegant tables, the misguided deeds of bishops can be recalled, and the only regret must be that no Synod of Brie or Council of Camembert offers occasion for further mirth. On these occasions, facts become such skimble-skamble stuff as puts men from their dreams.

For the Council, of course, never decreed any such thing, if only for the persuasive reason that some of the bishops may themselves have been married. The penalties applied to a bishop who decrees that his wife does not have a soul are not recorded in canon law presumably as surpassing male imagination. The decrees do indeed contain stuff to fuel fires: the fifteenth requires laymen to doff their hat to a cleric the sixteenth forbids the widow of a sub-deacon to marry on pain of being confined to a convent. But neither the word ‘woman’ nor the word ‘soul’ occurs even once in the decrees.

One does not hope ever to be free of the myth—but it may be interesting to trace its history, which is complex. Briefly: in the late seventeenth century some Dutch publications alleged that the Council had debated whether women are human; this was linked in nineteenth- century France with earlier satirical literature from Italy which claimed to ‘prove’ from the Bible that women do not have a soul, and the upshot was the allegation that the Council had issued a decree to this effect. The allegation was refuted by scholars but persisted as a myth which later reachcd England first, and then Ireland, where it flourishes today.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 74 , Issue 876 , November 1993 , pp. 501 - 507
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Legislation from the period indicates that some bishops were in fact married, though of course they were obliged to live with their wife as with a sister. Cf. note 8 below.

2 There is a summary in Hefelé‐Leclercq, Histoire des Conciles, t. III, pt.1, p. 208–214. The full text is in Mansi, Cone, amplis, coll, t. ix, col.947. The latest edition is Munier, Concilia Gallica, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, 148.

3 New Encyclopaedia Brittanica, s.v.

4 Neue Deutsche Biographie, s.v., holds that Acidalius was not the true author: “er als angeblicher Verfasser einer antisozianischen, scherzhaften, aber als solcher verkannten Flugschrift… ausgesetzt war.

5 Mélanges d'Histoire et de Literature, p. 16. Cited by Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique, s.v. Geddicus.

6 Cited by Bayle, Dictionnaire critique, s.v. Geddicus.

7 Historiae Francorum, cited here as H. F. See Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, Arndt, W. and Krusch, B. ed., Vol I, Hanover, 1885Google Scholar; Migne Patrologia Latina, PL 71. There are recent translations by O.M. Dalton, Oxford, 1927; L. Thorpe, Penguin Classics, 1972; Latouche, Paris, 1963.

8 HF, VIII, 20. Gregory does not state that any of the bishops was in fact married, but such bishops did exist in the region. He mentions Domnola, “the daughter of Victorius, the Bishop of Rennes” (HF, VIII, 32) and Bodegisil, Bishop of Le Mans, “a very savage shepherd of his flock… his wife was even fiercer than he was.” (HF, VIII, 39).

9 HF, Vin, 1.

10 HF. VIII, 20.

11 Thorpe, p. 452; Dalton, II, p. 345; Latouche, II. p. 151.

12 Oxford Latin Dictionary, s.v.

13 De natura deorum 2, 43, 111.

14 HF DC, 26.

15 Miracula S. Martini, II, 30.

16 Dictionnaire, s.v. Geddicus.

17 The editio princeps of Gregory's History had been published in Paris in 1512: Josse Bard, B. Gregori Turonesis episcopi Historiarum precipue gallicarum. Lib X.

18 Dictionnaire de archéologie chrétienne, s.v. ‘Femme’.

19 Ibid.