Orange

Orange was settled as a colony for veterans of the second legion around 35 BCE, on a plain where a Roman army had been destroyed by migrating Cimbri and Teutones sixty years before. Two structures from the colony survive in exceptional condition. The theatre retains its stage wall almost to full height, a rarity anywhere in the Roman world, and is still used for performance; the triumphal arch on the northern road carries reliefs of naval and military trophies. Both were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1981. The town became a bishopric early and held several church councils, of which the second, in 529, is the one that matters outside the region. In the middle ages the county became a small sovereign principality, and it passed by inheritance in the sixteenth century to the house of Nassau, which is why the ruling house of the Netherlands is called the House of Orange, and why the word attached itself to Protestant political identity in Ireland and to the Orange Free State in southern Africa.

The principality itself was ceded to France in 1713. The town today has fewer than thirty thousand inhabitants, and its name travels a great deal further than it does. Two other councils met at Orange before the famous one, in 441 and in 529 at the dedication itself, and the canons of 441 deal with practical church order, asylum, the ordination of deacons and the treatment of penitents, which is a useful reminder that most councils in this period were local, administrative and unremembered.

The second council of Orange met in 529 at the dedication of a church, with Caesarius of Arles presiding and only fourteen bishops present, which makes the reach of its decisions altogether out of proportion to its size. The argument it closed had run for a century. Augustine had taught that grace precedes and enables every good act, including the first movement toward faith; monks in southern Gaul, John Cassian among them, held that the initial turning could come from the person, with grace completing what the person had begun.

The council found for the Augustinian side on that point, ruling that even the beginning of faith and the desire to be cleansed are themselves the work of grace, and that human nature after the fall cannot of itself will the good. It then stopped well short of where some of Augustine's followers had gone, stating explicitly that it does not believe anyone is predestined to evil, and holding baptismal grace sufficient for the salvation of all who are baptised and willing. Boniface II confirmed the canons in 531. The decisions were largely forgotten during the middle ages and recovered in the sixteenth century, when Catholic and Reformed writers alike found the council quotable, which is why a small provincial gathering is still cited in arguments about grace.