JONAH OF ORLÉANS. - Bishop and theologian, b. in Aquitaine, probably before 780, d. at Orléans between 841 and 843. Having succeeded Theodulf in the see of Orléans in 818, he soon became one of the most influential prelates of the court of Louis the Pious, to whom he was bound by devoted friendship, which not even the critical period of the Emperor's disastrous struggle against his sons was able to weaken. A zealous pastor, he looked after the interests of his diocese, promoted monastic reform in the spirit of St. Benedict of Aniane (v.) and took an active part in the councils of his time
(Paris 825, 829; Aachen 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 special reference to married life and with valuable information on the penitential discipline of the time and on the use, even extrasacramental, of Holy Oil; De institutione regia ad Pippinum regem (ibid., 279-306), a manual for kings, interesting for the knowledge of the politico-religious ideas of the time; De cultu imaginum (ibid., 307-88), a work begun under Louis and completed at the request of Charles the Bald, to whom it is dedicated: it is a confutation of Claudius of Turin (v.), in which J. advocates a middle way between Byzantine iconoclasm and Roman doctrine; it is but the echo of the ideas expressed in the Libri Carolini.
In these works, written in an accurate style not devoid of elegance, the author displays great biblical-patristic erudition, to which, however, no originality of thought corresponds. A Liber contra perfidos (probably against the iconoclasts), the Sermones, and an Hymnarius Ionae episcopi are lost.