Ado (archbishop)

Ado of Vienne (Latin: Ado Viennensis, French: Adon de Vienne; d. 16 December 874) was archbishop of Vienne in Lotharingia from 850 until his death and is venerated as a saint. He belonged to a prominent Frankish family and spent much his early adulthood in Italy. Several of his letters are extant and reveal their writer as an energetic man of wide sympathies and considerable influence. Ado's principal works are a martyrologium, and a chronicle, Chronicon sive Breviarium chronicorum de sex mundi aetatibus de Adamo usque ad annum 869.

Born into a noble family, he was sent as a child for his education, first to Sigulfe, abbot of Ferrières, and then to Marcward, abbot of Prüm near Trier. After the death of Marcward in 853, Ado went to Rome where he stayed for nearly five years, and then to Ravenna, after which Remy, archbishop of Lyon, gave him the parish of Saint-Romain near Vienne. The following year he was elected archbishop of Vienne and dedicated in August or September 860, despite opposition from Girart de Roussillon, Count of Paris, and his wife Berthe.

Ado participated in the Council of Tousy, near Toul in Lorraine, on 22 October 860, and held a council at Vienne in 870. After his death on 16 December 876, his body was buried in the Church of the Apostles in Vienne, now called St. Peter's Church, the usual place of burial of the archbishops of Vienne. His feast day is celebrated on 16 December.

Ado's chronicle is based on that of Bede, with which he combines extracts from the ordinary sources, forming the whole into a consecutive narrative founded on the conception of the unity of the Roman Empire, which he traces in the succession of the emperors, Charlemagne and his heirs following immediately after Constantine VI and Irene. "It is," says Wattenbach, "history from the point of view of authority and preconceived opinion, which exclude any independent judgment of events."

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