had decreed that each ecclesiastical province, which was coterminous with the Imperial Roman province, should have as its metropolitan the bishop of the capital city of the province. Aix had been the capital of the Roman Imperial province of Gallia Narbonensis Secunda, one of the seventeen Roman provinces in Gaul. Gallia Narbonensis Secunda included the cities of Aix, Gap, Sisteron, Apt, Riez, Fréjus, Antibes and Nice. By the end of the fourth century, certainly by the time of Theodosius the Great in 381, however, the number of provinces had been reduced to fifteen, and Gallia Narbonensis Secunda had been combined with Gallia Narbonensis Prima. Who, then, was the metropolitan of the ecclesiastical province of Gallia Narbonensis Prima et Secunda? The Council of Turin, which met in September 401 (?), was faced with competing claims, from the metropolitan of Viennensis, the metropolitan of Arles, and Proculus the bishop of Marseille (who had been the delegate of the Gauls at the Council of Aquileia in 381). The decision of the Council was that the bishop of Marseille had no claim to the metropolitan status over Gallia secunda, since it was not in his own province. Bishop Proculus could continue to hold the title of metropolitan during his lifetime, but only out of respect for his personal qualities, not as a matter of principle. Thereafter, with regard to the claims of the archbishops of Vienne and Arles, whichever of the two could prove his right to metropolitan status over Gallia secunda should be the metropolitan. There seems to have been no bishop of Aix present, nor even a representative, to speak for the city of Aix or present proof of its status. The first historically known bishop of Aix, Lazarus, occupied this see about the beginning of the 5th century. He had been ordained by Bishop Proculus of Marseille, which caused a scandal and reproaches from Pope Zosimus, since he had been condemned at the Council of Turin as a calumniator. He was ordained under the reign of the usurper Constantine, and on his fall in 411, Lazarus resigned. The issue of metropolitan status was settled by Pope Zosimus in a letter of 29 September 417 to the bishops of the Province of Vienne and the Province of Gallia Narbonensis Secunda, declaring that the archbishop of Arles was the metropolitan, not Proculus of Marseille or Simplicius of Vienne. In a letter of May