The Archdiocese of Lyon (Latin: Archidiœcesis Lugdunensis; French: Archidiocèse de Lyon), formerly the Archdiocese of Lyon–Vienne–Embrun, is a Latin Church metropolitan archdiocese of the Catholic Church in France, seated in the city of Lyon. It is the oldest diocese in France and one of the oldest in Western Christianity. The archbishops of Lyon hold the honorary title of primates of Gaul. They are traditionally elevated by the pope to the rank of cardinal.
Olivier de Germay was appointed archbishop of Lyon on 22 October 2020. He is assisted by three auxiliary bishops: Patrick Le Gal (since 2009), Loïc Lagadec, and Thierry Brac de La Perrière (both since 2022).
In the Notitia Galliarum of the 5th century, the Roman Provincia Gallia Lugdunensis Prima contained the cities of Metropolis civitas Lugdunensium (Lyon), Civitas Aeduorum (Autun), Civitas Lingonum (Langres), Castrum Cabilonense (Chaâlons-sur-Saône) and Castrum Matisconense (Mâcon).
The confluence of the Rhône and the Saône, where sixty Gallic tribes had erected the altar to Rome and Augustus, was also the centre from which Christianity was propagated throughout Gaul.
The presence at Lyon of numerous Asiatic Christians and their communications with the Orient were likely to arouse the susceptibilities of the Gallo-Romans. A persecution arose under Marcus Aurelius. Its victims at Lyon numbered forty-eight, half of them of Greek origin, half Gallo-Roman, among others Saint Blandina, and Saint Pothinus, first Bishop of Lyon, sent to Gaul by Saint Polycarp about the middle of the 2nd century. The legend according to which Pothinus was sent by Pope Clement I dates from the 12th century and is without foundation.
The "Deacon of Vienne", mentioned in the letter of the faithful of Vienne and Lyon to the Christians of Asia and Phrygia, who was martyred at Lyon during the persecution of 177, was probably a deacon installed at Vienne by the ecclesiastical authority of Lyon. Tradition represents the church of Ainay as erected at the place of their martyrdom. The crypt of Saint Pothinus, under the choir of the church of St. Nizier, was destroyed in 1884. But there still exists at Lyon the purported prison cell of Pothinus, where Anne of Austria, Louis XIV, and Pius VII came to pray, and the crypt of Saint Irenaeus built at the end of the 5th century by Archbishop Patiens, which contains his remains.
Irenaeus sent out missionaries through the Gauls, as local legends of Besançon and of several other cities indicate. There are numerous funerary inscriptions of primitive Christianity in Lyon; the earliest dates from the year 334. Faustinus, bishop in the second half of the 3rd century, wrote to Cyprian of Carthage, who speaks of him in a letter to Pope Stephen I, in 254, regarding the Novatian tendencies of Marcian, Bishop of Arles.
But when Diocletian's new provincial organization (the Tetrarchy) had taken away from Lyon its position as metropolis of the three Gauls, the prestige of Lyon diminished.
Around the year 470, Lyon fell into the hands of the Burgundians, and around 479 the city of Langres as well.
From Saint Eucherius (c. 433–50), a monk of Lérins and the author of homilies, doubtless dates the foundation at Lyon of the "hermitages". Bishop Patiens (456–98) successfully combated famine and Arianism, and whom Sidonius Apollinaris praised in a poem; Bishop Stephanus (d. before 515), with Bishop Avitus of Vienne convoked a council at Lyon for the conversion of the Arians. Bishop Viventolius (515–523) in 517 presided with Bishop Avitus at the Council of Epaone.
When Burgundian power collapsed under the repeated assaults of the Franks in 534, its territory was divided up, and the third son of Clovis, the Merovingian Childebert I, received Lyon.
Lupus, a monk, afterwards bishop (535–42), was probably the first to be called a metropolitan archbishop; in 538, the Council of Orléans used the title of "metropolitanus". Sacerdos (549–542) presided in 549 at the Council of Orléans, and obtained from King Childebert the foundation of the general hospital; Saint Nicetius (552–73) received from the pope the title of patriarch, and whose tomb was honoured by miracles. The prestige of Saint Nicetius was lasting; his successor Saint Priseus (573–588) bore the title of patriarch, and brought the council of 585 to decide that national synods should be convened every three years at the instance of the patriarch and of the king; (Ætherius) Etherus, the Bishop of Lyon (588–603), who was a correspondent of Pope Gregory I, and who perhaps consecrated Saint Augustine, the Apostle of England; Saint Annemundus or Chamond (c. 650), friend of Saint Wilfrid, godfather of Clotaire III, put to death by Ebroin together with his brother, and patron of the town of Saint-Chamond, Loire; Saint Genesius or Genes (660–679 or 680), Benedictine abbot of Fontenelle, grand almoner and minister of Queen Bathilde; Saint Lambertus (c. 680–690), also abbot of Fontenelle.
At the end of the 5th century Lyon was the capital of the Kingdom of Burgundy, but after 534 it passed under the domination of the Frankish kings.
Ravaged by the Saracens in 725, the city was restored through the liberality of Charlemagne who established a rich library in the monastery of Ile Barbe in the Saône, just north of Lugdunum. The letter of Leidradus to Charlemagne (807) shows the care taken by the emperor for the restoration of learning in Lyon. With the aid of the deacon Florus he made the school so prosperous that in the 10th century Englishmen went there to study.
Under Charlemagne and his immediate successors, the Bishops of Lyon, whose ascendancy was attested by the number of councils over which they were called to preside, played an important theological part. Adoptionism had no more active enemies than Leidradus (798–814) and Agobard (814–840). When Felix of Urgel continued rebellious to the condemnations pronounced against adoptionism from 791 to 799 by the Councis of Ciutad, Friuli, Ratisbon, Frankfort, and Rome, Charlemagne sent to Urgel Nimfridius of Narbonne, Benedict of Aniane, and Archbishop Leidradus, a native of Nuremberg and Charlemagne's librarian. They preached against Adoptionism in Spain, conducted Felix in 799 to the Council of Aachen where he seemed to submit to the arguments of Alcuin; he was then brought back to his diocese. But the submission of Felix was not complete; Agobard, "Chorepiscopus" of Lyon, convicted him anew of adoptionism in a secret conference, and when Felix died in 815 there was found among his papers a treatise in which he professed adoptionism. Then Agobard, who had become Archbishop of Lyon in 814 after Leidradus' retirement to the Abbey of St. Medard, Soissons, composed a long treatise against that heresy.
Archbishop Agobard of Lyon displayed great activity as a pastor and a publicist in his opposition to the Jews and to various superstitions. His rooted hatred for all superstition led him in his treatise on images into certain expressions which savoured of Iconoclasm. The five historical treatises which he wrote in 833 to justify the deposition of Louis the Pious, who had been his benefactor, are a stain on his reputation. Louis the Pious, having been restored to power, caused Agobard to be deposed in 835 by the Council of Thionville, but three years later gave him back his see, in which he died in 840. During the exile of Agobard the See of Lyon had been for a short time administered by Amalarius of Metz, whom the deacon Florus of Lyon, the master of the cathedral school, charged with heretical opinions regarding the "triforme corpus Christi." Florus also took part in the controversies with Gottschalk on the subject of predestination.
It has been contended that there was a university (studium generale) at Lyons by the 13th century, but this has been strongly denied.
Amolon (841–852) and Remy (852–75) continued the struggle against the heresy of predestination. At the Council of Valence in January 855, presided over by Archbishop Remy, this heresy was condemned. Remy also was engaged in strife with Archbishop Hincmar of Reims.