Council of Tours

In the medieval Roman Catholic church there were several Councils of Tours, that city being an old seat of Christianity, and considered fairly centrally located in France.

The Council was called by Perpetuus, Bishop of Tours, to address the worldliness and profligacy of the Gallic clergy. Athenius, Bishop of Rennes, took part in the First Council of Tours in AD 461. The last to sign the canons was Mansuetus, episcopus Brittanorum ("bishop of the Britons" [in Armorica]). Also in attendance were Leo, Bishop of Bourges, and Victurius of Le Mans, and three others.

The Breton bishops declined to attend, as Bishop Eufronius claimed authority over the Breton church. Among those who did attend was Chaletricus of Chartres.

At the Second, it was decreed that the sanctuary gates were to remain open so that the faithful might at any time go before the altar for prayer (canon IV); a married bishop should treat his wife as a sister (canon XII). No priest or monk was to share his bed with someone else; and monks were not to have single or double cells, but were to have a common dormitory in which two or three were to take turns in staying awake and reading to the rest (canon XIV). If a monk married or had familiarity with a woman, he was to be excommunicated from the church until he returned penitent to the monastery enclosure and thereafter underwent a period of penance (canon XV). No woman was to be allowed to enter the monastery enclosure, and if anyone saw a woman enter and did not immediately expel her, he was to be excommunicated (canon XVI). Married priests, deacons and subdeacons should have their wives sleep together with the maidservants, while they themselves slept apart, and if anyone of them were found to be sleeping with his wife, he was to be excommunicated for a year and reduced to the lay state (canon XIX).

The council also noted that some Gallo-Roman customs of ancestor worship were still being observed. Canon XXII decreed that anyone known to be participating in these practices was barred from receiving communion and not allowed to enter a church.

The bishops of the Kingdom of Paris were particularly concerned about the Merovingian practice of seizing ecclesiastical properties in outlying areas in order to fund their internecine wars.

The Council noted that "every day is a festival" between Christmas Day on December 25 and Epiphany on January 6. This may be the earliest acknowledgement of what came to be known as the twelve days of Christmas, or Christmastide.

A Council of Tours in 813 decided that priests should preach sermons in rusticam romanam linguam (rustic romance language) or Theodiscam (German), a mention of Vulgar Latin understood by the people, as distinct from the classical Latin that the common people could no longer understand. This was the first official recognition of an early French language distinct from Latin.