§ 43.2. The Institution of Œcumenical Synods.—The σύνοδοι οἰκουμενικαί, Concilia universalia s. generalia, owe their origin to Constantine the Great (§ [50, 1]). The calling of councils was an unquestioned right of the crown. A prelate chosen by the emperor or the council presided; the presence of the imperial commissioner, who opened the Synod by reading the imperial edict, was a guarantee for the preservation of the rights of the state. The treasury bore the expense of board and travelling. The decisions generally were called ὅροι, Definitiones; if they were resolutions regarding matters of faith, δόγματα; if in the form of a confession, σύμβολα; if they bore upon the constitution, worship and discipline, κανόνες. On doctrinal questions there had to be unanimity; on constitutional questions a majority sufficed. Only the bishops had the right of voting, but they allowed themselves to be influenced by the views of the subordinate clergy. As a sort of substitute for the œcumenical councils which could not be suddenly or easily convened we have the σύνοδοι ἐνδημοῦσα at Constantinople, which were composed of all the bishops who might at the time be present in the district. At Alexandria, too, these endemic Synods were held.The Provincial Synods were convened twice a year under the presidency of the metropolitan; as courts of higher instances we have the Patriarchal or Diocesan Synods (comp. § [46, 1]).[118]

§ 43.3. Canonical Ordinances.—As canonical decrees acknowledged throughout the whole of the Catholic national church or at least throughout the more important ecclesiastical districts the following may be named.

  1. The Canons of the Œcumenical Councils.
  2. The Decrees of several important Particular Synods.
  3. The Epistolæ canonicæ of distinguished bishops, especially those of the Sedes apostolicæ, § [34], preeminently of Rome and Alexandria, pertaining to questions which have had a determining influence on church practice, which were at a later time called at Rome Epistt. decretales.
  4. The canonical laws of the emperors, νόμοι (Codex Theodosianus in A.D. 440, Codex Justinianæus in A.D. 534, Novellæ Justiniani).

The first systematically arranged collection of the Greek church known to us was made by Johannes Scholasticus, then presbyter at Antioch, afterwards Patriarch at Constantinople († 578). A second collection, also ascribed to him, to which were added the canonical νόμοι of Justinian, received the name of the Nomocanon. In the West all earlier collections were put out of sight by the Codex canonum of the Roman abbot Dionysius the Little (§ [47, 23]), to which were also added the extant Decretal Epistles about A.D. 520.

§ 43.4. Pseudepigraphic Church Ordinances.—Even so early as the 2nd and 3rd centuries there sprang up no inconsiderable number of writings upon church law, with directions about ethical, liturgical and constitutional matters for the instruction of the church members as well as the clergy, the moral precepts of which are of importance in church procedure as affording a standard for discipline. The oldest probably of these has lately been made again accessible to us in the Teaching of the XII. Apostles, the Didache (§ [30, 7]). It designates its contents, even where these are taken not from the Old Testament or the “Gospel,” but from the so-called church practice, as apostolic, with the honest conviction that by means of oral apostolic tradition it may be traced back to the immediate appointment of the Lord, without, however, pseudepigraphically claiming to have been written by the Apostles. Many treatises of the immediately following period, no longer known to us or known only by fragments, occupied the same standpoint. But even so early as the end of the 3rd century pseudepigraphic apostolic fiction makes its appearance in the so-called Apostolic Didascalia, and some sixty years later, it reached its climax in the eight bks. of the so-called Constitutiones Apostolicæ, Διαταγαὶ τῶν ἀπ. διὰ Κλήμεντος.The first six bks. correspond to the previously named Didascalia expanded and variously altered.[119] It assumes the form of a prolix epistolary discourse of the Apostle, communicated through Clement of Rome, about everything pertaining to the Christian life, the Catholic system of doctrine, liturgical practice and hierarchical constitution which may be necessary and useful for the laity as well as the clergy to know, with the exclusion, however, of everything which belonged to the department of what was then regarded as the Disciplina arcani (§ [36, 4]). Of older writings, so far as known, those principally used are the seven Ignatian Epistles (§ [30, 5]). It is post-Novatianist (§ [41, 3]) and belongs to a time pre-Constantine but free from persecution (§ [22, 6]), and may therefore be placed somewhere between A.D. 260 and A.D. 302. It was written probably in Syria.—While the first six bks. of the Apostolic Constitutions may be compared to the Syrian recension as a contemporary rendition of the Didascalia, the seventh book from an examination of the Didache seems a rendition of that little work, in which the assumption of apostolic authorship is made, and from which everything offensive to the forger and his age is cut out, the old text being otherwise literally reproduced, while into it is cleverly smuggled from his own resources whatever would contribute to the support of his own peculiar views as well as the prevailing practice of the church. The Eusebian symbol, which is given in the 41st chap., is an anti-Nicene, anti-Marcellianist, Arianizing formula, fixing the date of the forgery at the period of the Arian controversy, somewhere between A.D. 340 and A.D. 350 (§ [50, 2]).—The eighth book is in great part an unmistakeable forgery compiled from older sources belonging to the 3rd century, some of which are still to be found, and forms a handbook for the discharge of clerical, especially episcopal, duties in the conducting of worship and other clerical functions, e.g. ordination, baptism, etc., together with the relative liturgical formularies, drawn up in a thoroughly legal-like style, in which the Apostles one by one give their contribution with the formula Διατάσσομαι. The composition is probably ante-Nicene, but the date of its incorporation with the other seven books is uncertain.—In most, though not in all, MSS. the Canones Apostolorum, sometimes 50, sometimes 85, in number, are appended to the eighth book as its last chapter. Their standpoint is that common to the canons of the early councils from which they are chiefly borrowed. In respect of contents they treat mainly of the moral behaviour and official functions of the clergy. The 85th contains a Scripture canon of the Old and New Testaments, including the two Epp. of the Roman Clement (§ [30, 3]), as well as the Apost. Constitutions, but omitting the Apocalypse of John (comp. § [33, 9]). The collection of the apostolic canon cannot have been made before the beginning of the 5th century, and most likely in Syria. Dionysius the Little admitted only the first 50 as Canones qui dicuntur Apostolorum, but Johannes Scholasticus quite unhesitatingly ascribes all the 85 to Clement of Rome. The Second Trullan Council in A.D. 692 (§ [63, 2]) acknowledged the genuineness of the 85, but rejected the Apostolic Constitutions as a heretical forgery which had found no general acceptance in the West.—While hitherto it has been surmised that the 7th bk. of the Apost. Constit., as an independent and original work, should be assigned to another and a much later author than the first six bks., Harnack, founding upon his study of the Didache, has come to a clear understanding of their mutual relations. He shows that the original documents lying at the basis respectively of the Didache and the Didascalia are fundamentally distinct in respect of composition and character, but the two in the form in which they lie before us in the Apost. Constit. are undoubtedly the work of one and the same interpolator. We further obtain the equally convincing and surprising result that the author of this forgery is also identical with the author of the thirteen Pseudo-Ignatian Epistles (§ [30, 5]), and had in the one case and in the other the same object in view. Finally, he characterizes him as a Syrian cleric well versed in Scripture, especially the Old Testament, but also a shrewd worldly politician, opposed to all strict asceticism, who sought by his forgeries to win apostolic sanction and justification not only for the constitutional and liturgical institutions of the church, as well as the milder practice of his age, but also for his own semi-Arian doctrinal views.

§ 43.5. The Apostolic Church Ordinances[120] are, according to Harnack’s careful analysis, a compilation executed in a most scholarly fashion of extracts from four old writings: the Didache, the Ep. of Barnabas, from which the moral precepts are taken, a κατάστασις τοῦ κλήρου from the beginning of the 3rd century, and a κατάστασις τῆς ἐκκλησίας from the end of the 2nd century, with many clumsy alterations and excursuses after the style of the church tradition of its own period, the beginning of the 4th century. Its introduction consists of a formula of greeting modelled upon the Ep. of Barnabas from the twelve Apostles who are designated by name. The list, which begins with the name of John, wants one of the two Jameses and the late chosen Matthias, and the number of twelve is made up by the addition of the name of Nathanael and that of Cephas in addition to that of Peter. Then the Apostles tell that Christ had commanded them to divide among them by lot the Eparchies, Episcopates, Presbyterates, Diaconates, etc., of all lands, and to send forth οἱ λόγοι into the whole οἰκουμένη; then follow these λόγοι, first the moral rules, then the constitutional enactments, both being divided among the several Apostles (Ἰωάννης εἶπεν, Ματθαίος εἶπεν, etc.). The compilation had its origin in Egypt, not, however, at Alexandria, where Athanasius was still unacquainted with it, or at least did not think it worthy of being mentioned among the church manuals (§ [59, 1]), while at a later period it was held in the highest esteem by the Copts, Ethiopians, Arabians, etc., and took the first rank among their books on ecclesiastical procedure.

II. MONASTICISM, CLERICALISM AND HIERARCHISM.

§ 44. Monasticism.[121]

Disgusted with worldly pursuits and following an impulse of the oriental character in favour of the contemplative life, many ascetics withdrew into deserts and solitudes, there as Anchorets (ἐρεμίται, μοναχοί, μονάζοντες), amid prayer and labour, privation and self-denial, wringing out of the wilderness their scanty support, they strove after holiness of life which they thought they could reach only by forsaking the accursed world. The place where this extravagant extreme of the old ascetism arose was the Thebaid in Upper Egypt (§ [39, 3]). The first, and for a long time isolated, examples of such professional abandonment of the world may be traced back to the 3rd century; but they had wider spread first in the post-Constantine Age. The example of St. Anthony was specially influential in leading a number of like-minded men to betake themselves to isolated dwellings, λαῦραι, in his neighbourhood and to place themselves under his spiritual direction. In this we have already the transition from a solitary anchoret life to a communal cœnobite life (κοινὸς βίος), and this reached maturity when Anthony’s disciple Pachomius gathered the scattered residents in his district into one common dwelling, Claustrum, Cœnobium, Monasterium, Mandra=fold, and bound them under a common system of ascetic practice in prayer and labour, especially basket making and carpet weaving. This arrangement, without, however, any tendency to displace the anchoret life properly so-called, won great favour, and this went on for some decades until first of all in the East, then also in the West about A.D. 370, the land was covered over with monasteries. The monastic life under its twofold aspect was now esteemed as βὶος ἀγγελικός (Matt. xxii. 30), φιλοσοφία ὑψηλή, melior vita. Yet even here corruption soon spread. Not merely the feeling of spiritual need, but ambition, vanity, slothfulness and especially the desire to avoid military service and villainage, taxes and imposts, induced men to enter the monasteries. The Emperor Valens therefore issued an order in A.D. 365 that such men should be dragged out by force from their retreats. Spiritual vices too were not wanting—extravagance and fanaticism, spiritual pride, etc. All the more did the most distinguished bishops, e.g. Basil the Great, feel it their duty to take the monasteries under their special supervision and care. Under such direction, besides serving their own special purpose, they became extremely important and beneficial as places of refuge for the oppressed and persecuted, and as benevolent institutions for the sick and the poor. Sometimes also by the introduction of theological studies as seminaries to prepare candidates for the higher ecclesiastical offices. Other prelates, however, preferred to use their monks as a trusty horde for the accomplishment of their own ambitious party ends. The monks were always reckoned among laymen, but were distinguished from the Seculares as Religiosi or Conversi.