[1043] S. Matthew xviii. 18.
[1044] The power of excommunicating belonged to priests as well as to bishops, but they might not exercise it without their bishop’s sanction. Cf. Balsamon, I. 27 and 569 (Migne).
[1045] Quoted by Leo Allatius, De quor. Graec. opinat. XIII. and XIV.
[1046] The reversal of the decree of excommunication by the same person who had pronounced it was always preferred, largely as a precaution against an excommunicated person obtaining absolution too easily. Cf. Balsamon, I. 64–5 and 437 (Migne).
[1047] op. cit. cap. XV. Cf. also Christophorus Angelus, Ἐγχειρίδιον περὶ τῆς καταστάσεως τῶν σήμερον εὑρισκομένων Ἑλλήνων (Cambridge, 1619), cap. 25, where is told the story of a bishop who was excommunicated by a council of his peers, and whose body remained ‘bound, like iron, for a hundred years,’ when a second council of bishops at the same place pronounced absolution and immediately the body ‘turned to dust.’
[1048] According to Georgius Fehlavius, p. 539 (§ 422) of his edition of Christophorus Angelus, De statu hodiernorum Graecorum (Lipsiae, 1676), Emanuel Malaxus was the writer of a work entitled Historia Patriarcharum Constantinopolitanorum, which I have not been able to discover. It was apparently used by Crusius for his Turco-Grecia; for the story here told is narrated by him in two versions (I. 56 and II. 32, pp. 27 and 133 ed. Basle) and he alludes also (p. 151) to a story concerning Arsenios, Bishop of Monemvasia, which likewise according to Fehlavius (l.c.) was narrated by Malaxus.
[1050] Christophorus Angelus (op. cit. cap. 25) vouches for the early use of this word by one Cassianus, whom he describes as Ἕλλην παλαιὸς ἱστορικός. I cannot identify this author.
[1051] Du Cange, Med. et infim. Graec., s.v. τυμπανίτης.
[1052] Christophorus Angelus, l.c.