The Council of Arles, AD 314

**The first council in the archive convened by imperial summons rather than by the bishops themselves**, and the earliest for which a subscription list of western sees survives.

Constantine called it to settle the Donatist appeal against the ruling of the Roman synod of 313. It confirmed the earlier decision against the Donatists, and issued canons on matters the archive can read as social evidence: the date of Easter to be kept uniformly and letters sent from Rome to announce it; **clergy not to lend at interest**; charioteers and actors excluded while they continue in those trades; and — the canon most argued over — that those who **throw down their arms in peacetime** be excluded from communion.

## The British bishops

**This is the reason the archive treats Arles as a major event.** The subscription list names bishops from Britain — traditionally **Eborius of York, Restitutus of London and Adelfius**, whose see is given in a corrupt form the manuscripts do not agree on.

**That is the earliest documentary evidence for organised Christianity in Britain**, and it is not a Christian claim about itself: it is a name on an attendance list at a council in Gaul. Three bishops with sees means a province with structure, in AD 314, eleven years after the Great Persecution began.

**⚠ The manuscript tradition is not clean**, and the record says so. Adelfius's see appears variously as *Colonia Londinensium*, *Colonia Lindi* and other forms; **Lincoln and Caerleon have both been proposed and neither is secure.** The names are attested; the third see is not.

## What it settled and did not

It confirmed against the Donatists and **the Donatists did not accept it** — they appealed again, to Constantine personally. The archive holds the Donatist controversy across several of its events, and Arles is the point at which appeal to the emperor becomes the normal recourse.