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Saturninus of Arles

French Roman Catholic bishop

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 15, 2024
Entity authorityQ3474056 ↗
Source-derived summary

Saturninus of Arles (bishop from 347 - 361) was a Gallo-Roman Arian bishop of Arles in the early 4th century who under Constantius II was Primate of Gaul. He is known for his opposition to Saint Hilary of Poitiers, bishop of Poitiers, at the Church Council of Arles of 353.

Council of Arles

Arianism had been condemned at the First Council of Nicaea in 325. However, there were still a number of Arian bishops in the empire protected by the Arian Roman Emperor Constantius II.

The Church Council of Arles of 353 was called by Pope Liberius to reconcile the remaining Arian bishops and it was in this setting that Saturninus came into opposition with Saint Hilary, bishop of Poitiers.

The acts of this council are lost, and nothing is known of what was said except what was reported about them by chroniclers who were hostile to Constantius. When the emperor threatened bishops who did not condemn the creed of Athanasius, all bishops in the Synod led by Saturninus acquiesced, except Paulinus of Trier, a friend of Athanasius who was then exiled to Phrygia in Asia Minor where he died in 358 of ill-treatment.

Council of Rimini

In 359 Saturninus, with the support of the bishops of the Viennoise and the Narbonnaise, called the Council of Rimini, which defined an Arian dogma in opposition to the Nicene Creed.

When Constantius II died and was replaced by the pagan emperor Julian the Apostate, Hilary, with the exiled bishops, was allowed to return, whereupon he held the Council of Paris.

First Council of Paris

The First Council of Paris was held in 361, under the presidency of Hilary of Poitiers, to condemn Arianism and its defenders, including Saturninus, whom Hilary deposed and excommunicated.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Saturninus of Arles” as french Roman Catholic bishop. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current 291-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Saturninus, Arles and French can be independently traced.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as french Roman Catholic bishop. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 15, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q3474056. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

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This entry incorporates text from “Saturninus of Arles” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.