GIONA D'ORLÉANS. — Bishop and theologian, born in Aquitania, probably before 780, died at Orléans between 841 and 843. Having succeeded Teodolfo in 818 in the see of Orléans, he soon became one of the most influential prelates at the court of Ludovico il Pio, to whom he was bound by a devoted friendship, which not even the critical period of the Emperor’s disastrous conflict with his sons could weaken. A zealous pastor, he looked after the interests of his diocese, promoted monastic reform in the spirit of s. Benedetto di Aniane (v.) and took an active part in the councils of his time
(Paris 825, 829; Aquisgrana 837: he drew up the acts of the last two).
He wrote: Vita s. Huberti (in Acta SS. Novembris, I, Paris 1887, pp. 806–16), followed by a brief Historia translationis s. Huberti episcopi Tungensis (PL 106, 389–394); De institutione laicali (ibid., 121–78), a kind of treatise on Christian morality, with particular reference to married life and with valuable information on the penitential discipline of the period and on the use, including extra-sacramental use, of Holy Oil; De institutione regia ad Pippinum regem (ibid., 279–306), a handbook for kings, interesting for its presentation of the political and religious ideas of the time; De cultu imaginum (ibid., 307–88), a work begun under Lodovico and completed at the request of Carlo il Calvo, to whom it is dedicated: it is Claudio di Torino (v.), in which G. advocates a middle way between Byzantine iconoclasm and Roman doctrine; it is nothing more than an echo of the ideas expressed in the Libri Carolini.
In these works, composed in a careful style not lacking in elegance, the author displays great biblical and patristic erudition, which is not matched by originality of thought. Lost are a Liber contra perfidos (probably against the iconoclasts), the Sermones, and an Hymnarius Ionae episcopi.