Eborius or Eburius (

fl. ''Floruit'' ( ; usually abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for 'flourished') denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indic ...

314) is the first bishop of Eboracum (the later

York York is a cathedral city in North Yorkshire, England, with Roman Britain, Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers River Ouse, Yorkshire, Ouse and River Foss, Foss. It has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a Yor ...

) known by name.

Biography

Eborius is only mentioned as one of the three bishops from

Roman Britain Roman Britain was the territory that became the Roman province of ''Britannia'' after the Roman conquest of Britain, consisting of a large part of the island of Great Britain. The occupation lasted from AD 43 to AD 410. Julius Caes ...

attending the Council of Arles in 314. That council was convoked by

Constantine the Great Constantine I (27 February 27222 May 337), also known as Constantine the Great, was a Roman emperor from AD 306 to 337 and the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. He played a Constantine the Great and Christianity, pivotal ro ...

with the special object of settling the question of the Bishopric of Carthage, disputed between

Cyprian Cyprian (; ; to 14 September 258 AD''The Liturgy of the Hours according to the Roman Rite: Vol. IV.'' New York: Catholic Book Publishing Company, 1975. p. 1406.) was a bishop of Carthage and an early Christian writer of Berbers, Berber descent, ...

and Donatus. Among the bishops from ‘the Gauls’ present at the council was ‘Eborius episcopus de civitate Eboracensi, provincia Britanniæ.’ Although suspicious, the similarity between the names ''Eborius'' and ''Eboracum'' can be explained if the bishop's actual name was Ivor, a common Welsh name which can easily be Latinised into ''Eborius''. The other two British bishops at Arles were ‘ Restitutus, episcopus de civitate Londinensi’ (

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

) and ‘ Adelfius episcopus de civitate colonia Londinensium.’ The latter name has variously been read as '' Lindum'' ( Lincoln) or ''

Camulodunum Camulodunum ( ; ), the Roman Empire, Ancient Roman name for what is now Colchester in Essex, was an important Castra, castrum and city in Roman Britain, and the first capital of the province. A temporary "wikt:strapline, strapline" in the 1960s ...

'' (

Colchester Colchester ( ) is a city in northeastern Essex, England. It is the second-largest settlement in the county, with a population of 130,245 at the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 Census. The demonym is ''Colcestrian''. Colchester occupies the ...

). A presbyter and a

deacon A deacon is a member of the diaconate, an office in Christian churches that is generally associated with service of some kind, but which varies among theological and denominational traditions. Major Christian denominations, such as the Cathol ...

, ‘Sacerdos presbyter’ and ‘Arminius diaconus,’ also attended the council with Adelfius, which suggests, according to W.H.C. Frend, that he held seniority among the three bishops. Jeremy Knight states that the bishops all represented different provinces of Roman Britain, and thus the priest and deacon may have been at Arles to represent Britannia Prima. The mention of these names is the most definite piece of evidence of the existence of an organised Christian church in the Roman province of Britain, and of its close dependence on the church of Gaul. Among the canons they subscribed was one fixing a single day for the celebration of Easter throughout the world. So that the different custom of the British church on that question had not yet arisen. The above facts are in Labbe's ‘Concilia’ from a Corvey MS., and Isidorus Mercator's list substantially agrees in including ‘Eburius,’ though it describes him only as ‘ex provincia Britanniæ’. The passage is wrongly punctuated in Migne's edition; but in Crabbe the reading is ‘ex provincia Bizacena, civitate Tubernicensi, Eburius episcopus.’ Tillemont conjecturally identifies Eborius with the Hibernius who joins in a synodal letter to Pope Sylvester I, but this seems quite arbitrary.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Eborius 3rd-century births 4th-century deaths 4th-century Romano-British bishops Clergy from York Bishops of York

Biography

See also

References