Primate of the Gauls

The Primate of the Gauls is a title given since 1079 to the archbishop of Lyon, former capital of the Three Gauls then land of the Roman Empire, and has described the authority he has exercised in the past over the other bishops of France. The primacy of a title conferred on Archbishop guarantees a theoretical jurisdiction over several ecclesiastical provinces. In France, only the title of Primate of the Gauls and Primate of Normandy, respectively assigned to the archbishops of Lyon and Rouen, are still used (although the honorific title of Primate of Lorraine brought by the Bishop of Nancy and Toul does exist).

The current Primate of the Gauls is Cardinal Philippe Barbarin.

The first Christian missionary work in what is today France was centered on Lyon. A wave of persecution in Asia Minor had seen migration of Christians to the cities of Lugdunum (Lyon), and Vienne. It was here the first bishops were established there. The Bishop of Lugdunum, Saint Pothinus (c.177) and his disciple Saint Irenaeus who succeeded him were at the center of this immigration.

Irenaeus had been a student of Polycarp the disciple of John the Evangelist, and was a skilled theologian in his own right. Similarly it is probable that Pothinus of Lyon had known Polycarp, who no doubt sent the immigrants out in the first place The Bishop of Lugdunum with such close ties to the disciples, a strong theological reputation and the fact that it was the oldest bishopric naturally assumed primacy in the expanding Church of Gaul. The first two Bishops were known as Primate of the Gauls. Thereafter the title lapsed for some centuries although the Archbishops did exert some inter Diocesan authority.

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