The Holy Synod can only inflict temporary suspension, or imprisonment for fifteen days, unless with the sanction of the King’s ministry. Deprivation, or imprisonment for more than two months, requires the approval of the king (ib.). The king or the ministry do not, however, rehear the cause by way of appeal, but merely restrain severity of sentence (ib.).
The Church of Cyprus has been autocephalous since at any rate the oecumenical synod of Ephesus in 431. The episcopate now consists of an archbishop and three suffragans (Hackett, Orthodox Church in Cyprus, 1901, ch. v. et passim). The final court is the island synod, which consists of the archbishop, his suffragans and four dignified priests. It has original and exclusive cognizance of causes of deposition of bishops (op. cit. pp. 260, 262).
Each bishop is assisted by at least two officers with judicial or quasi-judicial powers, the “archimandrite” who adjudicates upon causes of revenue and the archdeacon who adjudicates on questions between deacons (op. cit. pp. 272-273). The “exarch” of the archbishop, who is a dignitary but not a bishop, has a seat in the provincial synod.
In the Balkan States, the system—inherited from Byzantine and Turkish times—of ecclesiastical jurisdictions prevails, except that they are now autocephalous, and independent of the patriarch of Constantinople. Matrimonial causes in Servia are of ecclesiastical cognizance (Lehr, op. cit. sect. 901).
Authorities.—St Augustine, Epistles; Codex Theodosianus, edited by Th. Mommsen and P.M. Meyer (1905); Code and Novells of Emperor Justinian, ed. J. Gothofredus (1665); T. Balsamon, “In Conc. Ancyr.” in the Corpus juris canonici (1879-1881); “Hostiensis” Super Decretum; W. Lyndwood, Provinciale (Oxford, 1679); Sir A. Fitzherbert, Natura brevium (1534); Sir T. Ridley, View of the Civile and Ecclesiastical Law (1607); J. Ayliffe, Parergon juris ecclesiastici (1726); J. Godolphin, Abridgement of the Laws Ecclesiastical (London, 1687); E. Gibson, Codex juris ecclesiastici (Oxford, 1761); D. Covarruvias, Opera omnia (Antwerp, 1638); Jean Hardouin, Concilia (1715); J.D. Mansi, Concilia (1759-1798); E. Stillingfleet, Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction (1704); L.S. le Nain de Tillemont, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire ecclésiastique (1701-1712); P.T. Durand de Maillane, Dictionnaire du droit canonique (1761); Dictionnaire ecclésiastique et canonique, par une société de religieux (Paris, 1765); Z.B. van Espen, Jus ecclesiasticum universum (Louvain, 1720), De recursu ad Principem, observationes in Concilium Lateranense iv.; L. Thomassin, Vetus et nova disciplina ecc. (1705-1706); W. Beveridge, Synodicon (Oxford, 1672); J.A.S. da Carnota, Life of Pombal (1843); J.P. Migne, Dictionnaire de droit canon. (Paris, 1844); R. Keith, History of the Scottish Bishops (Edinburgh, 1824); P.N. Vives y Cebriá, Usages y demas derechos de Cataluña (1832); C.A. Cornelius, Svenska Kyrkaus Historia (Upsala, 1875); Mouravieff, History of the Russian Church (trans. Blackmore, 1842); Ffoulkes, Manual of Ecclesiastical History (1851); E.H. Landon, Manual of Councils of the Church (1893); W.H. Hale, Precedents in Criminal Cases (London, 1847); E.B. Pusey, Councils of the Church (Oxford, 1857); C.J. von Hefele, Conciliengeschichte (Freiburg, 1855-1890); M. Gaudry, Traité de la législation des cultes (Paris, 1854); W. Stubbs, Select Charters (Oxford, 1895); A.W. Haddan and W. Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents (Oxford, 1869); A.J. Stephens, Ecclesiastical Statutes (1845); H.C. Rothery, Return of Cases before Delegates (1864); J.W. Joyce, The Sword and the Keys (2nd ed., 1881); Report of Ecclesiastical Courts Commission (1888); P. Fournier, Les Officialités au moyen âge (1880); S.B. Smith, Elements of Ecclesiastical Law (New York, 1889-1890); S. Sanguineti, Juris ecc. inst. (Rome, 1890); J.F. Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England (London, 1883); Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law before Edward I. (1898); F.W. Maitland, Roman Canon Law in the Church of England (1898); R. Owen, Canon Law (1884); Sir R.J. Phillimore, Ecclesiastical Law (2nd ed., 1895); J.W. Brodie-Innes, Comparative Principles of the Laws of England and Scotland (1903); R.B. Merriman, Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell (1902); S. Aichner, Compendium juris ecclesiast. (8th ed., Brixen, 1905, especially in regard to Austro-Hungarian Empire); J. Hackett, History of the Orthodox Church in Cyprus (1901); Tauber, Manuale juris canonici (1906); E.L. Taunton, Law of the Church (London, 1906); Report of Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline (1906).
(W. G. F. P.)
ECCLESIASTICAL LAW, in its broadest sense, the sum of the authoritative rules governing the Christian Church, whether in its internal polity or in its relations with the secular power. Since there are various churches, widely differing alike in their principles and practice, it follows that a like difference exists in their ecclesiastical law, which is the outcome of their corporate consciousness as modified by their several relations to the secular authority. At the outset a distinction must be made between churches which are “established” and those that are “free.” The ecclesiastical laws of the latter are, like the rules of a private society or club, the concern of the members of the church only, and come under the purview of the state only in so far as they come in conflict with the secular law (e.g. polygamy among the Mormons, or violation of the trust-deeds under which the property of a church is held). In the case of “established” Churches, on the other hand, whatever the varying principle on which the system is based, or the difference in its practical application, the essential conditions are that the ecclesiastical law is also the law of the land, the decisions of the church courts being enforced by the civil power. This holds good both of the Roman Catholic Church, wherever this is recognized as the “state religion,” of the Oriental Churches, whether closely identified with the state itself (as in Russia), or endowed with powers over particular nationalities within the state (as in the Ottoman empire), and of the various Protestant Churches established in Great Britain and on the continent of Europe.
Writers on the theory of ecclesiastical law, moreover, draw a fundamental distinction between that of the Church of Rome and that of the Protestant national or territorial Churches. This distinction is due to the claim of the Roman Catholic Church to be the only Church, her laws being thus of universal obligation; whereas the laws of the various established Protestant Churches are valid—at least so far as legal obligation is concerned—only within the limits of the countries in which they are established. The practical effects of this distinction have been, and still are, of enormous importance. The Roman Catholic Church, even when recognized as the state religion, is nowhere “established” in the sense of being identified with the state, but is rather an imperium in imperio which negotiates on equal terms with the state, the results being embodied in concordats (q.v.) between the state and the pope as head of the Church. The concordats are of the nature of truces in the perennial conflict between the spiritual and secular powers, and imply in principle no surrender of the claims of the one to those of the other. Where the Roman Catholic Church is not recognized as a state religion, as in the United States or in the British Islands, she is in the position of a “free Church,” her jurisdiction is only in foro conscientiae, and her ecclesiastical laws have no validity from the point of view of the state. On the other hand, the root principle of the ecclesiastical law of the established Protestant Churches is the rejection of alien jurisdiction and the assertion of the supremacy of the state. The theory underlying this may vary. The sovereign may be regarded, as in the case of the Russian emperor or of the English kings from the Reformation to the Revolution, as the vicar of God in all causes spiritual as well as temporal within his realm. As the first fervent belief in the divine right of kings faded, however, a new basis had to be discovered for a relation between the spiritual and temporal powers against which Rome had never ceased to protest. This was found in the so-called “collegial” theory of Church government (Kollegialsystem), which assumed a sort of tacit concordat between the state and the religious community, by which the latter vests in the former the right to exercise a certain part of the jus in sacra properly inherent in the Church (see [Pufendorf, Samuel]). This had great and lasting effects on the development of the theory of Protestant ecclesiastical law on the continent of Europe. In England, on the other hand, owing to the peculiar character of the Reformation there and of the Church that was its outcome, no theory of the ecclesiastical law is conceivable that would be satisfactory at once to lawyers and to all schools of opinion within the Church. This has been abundantly proved by the attitude of increasing opposition assumed by the clergy, under the influence of the Tractarian movement, towards the civil power in matters ecclesiastical, an attitude impossible to justify on any accepted theory of the Establishment (see below).
Protestant ecclesiastical law, then, is distinguished from that of the Roman Catholic Church (1) by being more limited in its scope, (2) by having for its authoritative source, not the Church only or even mainly, but the Church in more or less complete union with or subordination to the State, the latter being considered, equally with the Church, as an organ of the will of God. The ecclesiastical law of the Church of Rome, on the other hand, whatever its origin, is now valid only in so far as it has the sanction of the authority of the Holy See. And here it must be noted that the “canon law” is not identical with the “ecclesiastical law” of the Roman Catholic Church. By the canon law is meant, substantially, the contents of the Corpus juris canonici, which have been largely superseded or added to by, e.g. the canons of the council of Trent and the Vatican decrees. The long projected codification of the whole of the ecclesiastical law of the Church of Rome, a work of gigantic labour, was not taken in hand until the pontificate of Pius X. (See also [Canon Law] and [Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction].)