Councils of Attigny

In 765, St. Chrodegang of Metz and thirty-seven other bishops mutually promised in an assembly held at the royal residence of Attigny near Vouziers (Ardennes) that after the death of each the survivors would cause the psalter to be said one hundred times and would have one hundred Masses celebrated for the repose of the soul of the departed. Each one would also say thirty Masses for the same intention. In 785, Charlemagne held a council at Attigny. Widukind and Aboin, two conquered Saxon kings, presented themselves for instruction and were baptized. In 822, Pope Paschal I was present at a Council of Attigny, convened for the reconciliation of the emperor Louis the Pious with his three younger brothers, Hugo, Drogo, and Theodoric, whom he had caused to be violently tortured and whom he had untended to put to death. In the council he confessed publically his wrong-doing; also the violence practiced by him on his nephew, Bernard, King of Italy, and his brother, the Abbot, Adelard Wala, and proposed to perform public penance in imitation of the emperor Theodosius I. He also exhibited an earnest desire to correct abuses arising from the negligence of the bishops and the nobles and confirmed the rule (Aquensis Regula) that the Council of Aachen had drawn up (816) for canons and monks. In 870, thirty bishops and six archbishops met at Attigny, to pass Judgment on Karlmann, the king's son, made an ecclesiastic at an early age, and accused by his father of conspiring against his life and throne. He was deprived of his abbeys and imprisoned at Senlis. In the council of 875, Hincmar, Bishop of Laon, appealed to the pope from his uncle, Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims.

THOMAS J. SHAHAN