Noyon, Council of

(Concilium Noviomense), an important ecclesiastical gathering of the Middle Ages, was convoked in consequence of a dispute between the French king, St. Louis, and bishop Milo, of Beauvais, in 1233. The prelate claimed that the king had violated his rights by bringing to punishment in Beauvais certain incendiaries who had raised a sedition there, in which murder had been committed. The bishop laid the province under an interdict, upon which the cathedral chapters made complaint that it had been done without their consent; and in a council held at St. Quentin on the Sunday before Christmas, at which eight bishops were present, the interdict was suspended. From this decision the bishop of Beauvais appealed to the pope, but he died before the question had been settled; it was not until some years after that his successor confirmed the removal of the interdict, and made peace with St. Louis. Five sessions were held. See Labbd, Conc. 11:446; Mansi, note; Raynald, 2:48.

Another Church council was convoked at Noyon, July 26,1344, by John of Vienne, archbishop of Rheims, and six bishops. Seventeen canons were published, relating chiefly to ecclesiastical immunities and the defense of the clergy:

4. Directs that in all churches divine service shall be conducted after the example of the cathedral church.

5. Excommunicates those lords who forbid their vassals to bny and sell with ecclesiastics, and to till their lands.

8. Directs that those clerks who submit voluntarily to the sentence of the secular judges, and who pay the fines inflicted upon them by such judges, shall be punished.

12. Forbids priests and other ecclesiastics, etc., publicly to solemnize (ut solemnizent in publico) miracles which they assert to have recently been done, without the consent of the ordinary.

13. Excommunicates those lords who stripped off the vestments and shaved the heads of ecclesiastics accused of crimes.

14. Excommunicates lay persons who pretended to be clerks and assumed the tonsure.

17. Condemns the exorbitant exactions of the proctors in the ecclesiastical courts.

See Labbe,' Conc. 11:1899.