A Survey of the Conciliar Canon Corpus

A working survey of the canons received by the Orthodox Church as universally binding: what the canons of each Ecumenical Council actually govern, the Apostolic Canons, the key local councils, and the canonical fathers. The aim is orientation — showing the shape and subject-matter of the corpus — rather than exhaustive enumeration. The corpus is best understood not as a code to be applied article by article but as a tradition to be interpreted (Rodopoulos; Wagschal).

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

How to Read This Survey

The Orthodox canonical corpus is not a single legislative text but a layered accumulation: the Apostolic Canons, the canons of the seven Ecumenical Councils, the canons of certain local councils, and the canonical writings of the Fathers — all fixed as a closed list by Canon 2 of the Quinisext Council (Trullo, 692), which enumerates exactly which prior councils and Fathers are received, and reconfirmed by Canon 1 of Nicaea II (787) (NPNF II/14, Trullo Canon 2; Nicaea II Canon 1). For the collections that transmit these texts — the Greek Pedalion (The Rudder) and the Russian Kniga Pravil — and the canonical Fathers in detail, see Sources of Canons.

Canon numbering is itself a hazard: editions disagree, and the same ruling can carry different numbers in the Greek and Latin traditions. The numbers below follow The Rudder (Cummings) and NPNF II/14; where those editions diverge, the divergence is flagged.

The Apostolic Canons (85)

The 85 Apostolic Canons form the most ancient stratum of the corpus, compiled in their present form around 380 and traditionally associated with the Apostolic Constitutions (Book VIII). They govern chiefly the ordination, discipline, and deposition of clergy, the boundaries of the sacraments, and the order of the local church. Apostolic Canon 1 requires a bishop to be ordained by two or three bishops; Canon 34 articulates the foundational rule of conciliar governance with a primate (see Church Governance); Canon 46 deposes clergy who accept heretical baptism; Canon 50 requires baptism by triple immersion; Canon 85 lists the received books of Scripture (NPNF II/14, Apostolic Canons). The Western Church historically received only the first 50 (the number Dionysius Exiguus translated into Latin, c. 500), while the Orthodox receive all 85 — a numbering divergence that is itself the most basic East–West canonical difference (NPNF II/14, introduction to the Apostolic Canons).

The Canons of the Seven Ecumenical Councils

These carry the highest legislative authority. Note that the Fifth (Constantinople II, 553) and Sixth (Constantinople III, 680–681) Ecumenical Councils issued dogmatic definitions but no disciplinary canons — which is precisely why the Quinisext Council was convened, to supply canons for them (hence its name Penthekte, “Fifth-Sixth”).

Nicaea I (325): 20 Canons

The twenty canons of the First Council govern clergy discipline, provincial jurisdiction, and the date of Pascha. Canon 4 regulates episcopal consecration (all the province’s bishops, or at least three with the metropolitan’s written consent); Canon 5 orders provincial synods twice a year and forbids one bishop from receiving those another has excommunicated; Canon 6 confirms the ancient prerogatives of Alexandria, Rome, and Antioch; Canon 7 grants the bishop of Aelia (Jerusalem) a precedence of honor; Canon 13 guarantees the dying their communion (the “last and most necessary viaticum”); Canon 19 requires the rebaptism of Paulianists; Canon 20 forbids kneeling on Sundays and through Pentecost (NPNF II/14, canons of Nicaea I). The council also fixed the principle for computing Pascha, preserved in its synodal letter rather than as a numbered canon.

Constantinople I (381): 7 Canons

The Second Council’s seven canons are dominated by two of lasting consequence. Canon 3 assigns the bishop of Constantinople “the primacy of honor after the bishop of Rome, because Constantinople is New Rome” — the seed of the later contest over Constantinople’s rank. Canon 7 prescribes the modes of receiving converts from various heresies: Arians, Macedonians, and Novatians by chrismation, but Eunomians, Montanists, and Sabellians “as heathens,” that is, by baptism. Canon 7 carries a known textual history: scholars hold it is not original to 381 but a later addition, drawn from a fifth-century letter of the Church of Constantinople to Martyrius of Antioch and attached to the conciliar acts in transmission (NPNF II/14, canons of Constantinople I with notes; discussed at Pastoral Economy and Reception of Converts). Canon 2 forbids bishops to intrude beyond their own dioceses.

Ephesus (431): 8 Canons

The Third Council’s eight canons arise directly from the Nestorian crisis and its aftermath. Canon 7 — transmitted as a canon from a conciliar decision recorded in the Acts — forbids composing or presenting any creed (pistis) other than the Nicene to those coming to the faith, on pain of deposition (clergy) or anathema (laity); this is a principal Orthodox ground against the Filioque interpolation. Canon 8 establishes the self-governance (autocephaly) of the Church of Cyprus against the encroachment of Antioch (NPNF II/14, canons of Ephesus; see Autocephaly and Territory).

Chalcedon (451): 30 Canons

The Fourth Council’s thirty canons are a rich body of administrative legislation. They forbid the ordination of clergy “at large” without assignment to a specific church (Canon 6), regulate monks and monasteries (Canon 4), and condemn simony (Canon 2). Three canons bear on jurisdiction and appeals: Canon 9 and Canon 17 route clergy disputes through the bishop, the provincial synod, and then “the exarch of the diocese or the throne of the imperial city of Constantinople.” The scope of this appellate clause is disputed and is kept as a structured note: Constantinople reads Canons 9 and 17 as granting a universal right to receive appeals from clergy of any church (Ecumenical Patriarchate, “The Ecumenical Throne’s Exclusive Prerogative Regarding Litigious Disputes”), while Moscow, following Zonaras’s commentary on Canon 17, holds they concern only metropolitans and clergy already subject to Constantinople (Moscow Patriarchate, “Position of the Moscow Patriarchate on the Problem of Primacy in the Universal Church,” December 26, 2013). Canon 28 grants Constantinople privileges equal to Rome’s “because it is New Rome, the imperial city,” and jurisdiction over Pontus, Asia, and Thrace; it was contested by the Roman legates at the council and has remained contentious ever since (NPNF II/14, canons of Chalcedon; see Church Governance).

Quinisext / Trullo (692): 102 Canons

The Council in Trullo — also Quinisext or Penthekte because it supplied disciplinary canons for the Fifth and Sixth Councils, which had issued none — is the single most important source of Orthodox disciplinary law. Its 102 canons range across the whole of church life: confirmation of the prior corpus (Canon 2), clerical marriage and celibacy (Canons 3, 6, 12, 13, 48; treated at Marriage and Divorce Law), liturgical and iconographic regulation (Canon 73 on the cross not depicted where it may be trodden; Canon 82 requiring Christ depicted in human form rather than as a lamb), fasting (Canon 55 reproaching the Roman Saturday fast in Lent), and pastoral economy in administering penance (Canon 102). Its character is distinctively Eastern, several canons explicitly censuring Roman and Armenian practice, and its Western reception was accordingly partial: Pope Sergius I refused to subscribe its canons, and later papal acceptance was at most selective (NPNF II/14, introductory note to Trullo). The Orthodox Church regards the Trullan canons as ecumenical, since they were promulgated in the name of the Sixth Ecumenical Council and reconfirmed by Nicaea II.

Nicaea II (787): 22 Canons

The Seventh Council’s twenty-two canons, issued after the restoration of the icons, concern episcopal qualifications and the moral reform of the clergy. Canon 1 reconfirms all previously received canons; Canon 2 requires a candidate for the episcopate to know the Psalter and be examined on the canons, the Gospels, and the Apostle; Canon 3 voids episcopal elections made by secular rulers; Canon 6 renews the requirement of annual provincial synods; Canon 13 forbids converting consecrated buildings to secular use; Canon 20 forbids double monasteries of men and women (NPNF II/14, canons of Nicaea II).

Key Local Councils

The canons of certain local (regional) councils were received as universally binding when enumerated by Trullo Canon 2. Their numbering is a frequent site of edition-to-edition disagreement.

Ancyra (314): 25 canons — chiefly on the reconciliation of those who lapsed under persecution, and on clergy.
Neocaesarea (c. 315): 15 canons — on clerical discipline and marriage order.
Gangra (c. 340): 21 canons — condemning the rigorist excesses of the Eustathians, who disparaged marriage, fasting outside the rule, and ordinary church order.
Antioch (341): 25 canons — on synodal procedure and the limits of episcopal authority.
Laodicea (c. 360): canons on liturgical order and the catalogue of Scripture [Disputed: the count is rendered differently across editions — The Rudder and the Greek tradition transmit 59 canons, while NPNF II/14 prints 60, the divergence turning on whether the Scripture list is numbered as a separate canon 60 or appended to canon 59] (NPNF II/14, canons of Laodicea; The Rudder, table of canons).
Sardica (343) [Disputed: the Greek tradition, followed by The Rudder and NPNF II/14, transmits 20 canons; the Latin tradition counts 21] — on the rights of bishops and on appeals (NPNF II/14, Sardica introduction; The Rudder, table of canons).
Carthage (419): the African Code [Disputed: collections number it differently — 138 canons in the Latin numbering printed in NPNF II/14, 141 in The Rudder] — an extensive body on clerical discipline, the Donatist schism, appeals, and the African catalogue of Scripture (NPNF II/14; The Rudder, table of canons).

To these the corpus adds the canons of the Constantinopolitan synods received later: the synod of 394 (a single ruling on episcopal depositions, divided into two canons in The Rudder), the “First-and-Second” Council of 861 (Protodeutera, 17 canons on monastic and clerical discipline), and the council of 879–880 that rehabilitated Patriarch Photius (3 canons; regarded by some Orthodox theologians as an Eighth Ecumenical Council, though not by pan-Orthodox consensus) (see Sources of Canons).

The Canonical Fathers

Trullo Canon 2 also receives the canonical epistles and rulings of named Fathers as authoritative. The largest body is that of St. Basil the Great (330–379): 92 canons, drawn chiefly from his three canonical letters to Amphilochius of Iconium (Epistles 188, 199, 217 = canons 1–85), with the remainder gathered from other letters and from On the Holy Spirit (canons 86–92) (Nikodim Milash, The Canons of the Orthodox Church with Commentaries, on the canons of St. Basil). Basil’s canons supply much of the Church’s working law on penance, on the reception of converts (Canon 1, distinguishing heresy, schism, and parasynagogue), and on marriage and remarriage (Canons 4, 9, 50, 80; see Marriage and Divorce Law). Alongside Basil stand the canons of Gregory of Nyssa (8), Timothy of Alexandria (18 responses), Theophilus of Alexandria (14), Cyril of Alexandria (5), and others enumerated at Sources of Canons.

How the Corpus Is Used Today

The decisive interpretive point is that this corpus functions as a tradition, not a code. Modern Orthodox canonists stress that the canons are not a self-applying statute book on the model of Western codified law but historically conditioned expressions of the Church’s phronema (mind), to be applied with discernment. Metropolitan Panteleimon Rodopoulos describes canon law as the application of the Church’s dogmatic and pastoral life to its order, governed throughout by oikonomia rather than mechanical enforcement (Rodopoulos, An Overview of Orthodox Canon Law, 2007). David Wagschal’s historical study argues that even in Byzantium the canons were never operated as a closed, gapless legal code but as an authoritative traditional inheritance, read with the commentators and adapted to circumstance (Wagschal, Law and Legality in the Greek East: The Byzantine Canonical Tradition, 381–883, 2015). The practical consequences — economy, the bishop as physician rather than judge, the priority of salvation over enforcement — are developed at Pastoral Economy.

References

The Rudder (Pedalion), compiled by St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain and Hieromonk Agapios (first published Leipzig, 1800); English trans. D. Cummings, Chicago: Orthodox Christian Educational Society, 1957
The Seven Ecumenical Councils (NPNF II/14), ed. Schaff and Wace — canons of the councils and the Apostolic Canons, with the ancient epitomes and notes
Kniga Pravil (Book of Rules), the standard Russian canonical collection
Basil the Great, Canonical Epistles (Epistles 188, 199, 217 to Amphilochius; with the further letters and On the Holy Spirit for canons 86–92), trans. NPNF II/8
Quinisext Council (Council in Trullo), 692, Canon 2 (the closing of the received list)
Nikodim (Milash), Bishop, The Canons of the Orthodox Church with Commentaries (Pravila pravoslavne crkve s tumačenjima), 2 vols., Novi Sad, 1895–96 (Russian trans. St. Petersburg, 1911–12)
Metropolitan Panteleimon Rodopoulos, An Overview of Orthodox Canon Law, trans. W. J. Lillie, Rollinsford, NH: Orthodox Research Institute, 2007
David Wagschal, Law and Legality in the Greek East: The Byzantine Canonical Tradition, 381–883, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015
Ecumenical Patriarchate, “The Ecumenical Throne’s Exclusive Prerogative Regarding Litigious Disputes” (ec-patr.org)
Moscow Patriarchate, “Position of the Moscow Patriarchate on the Problem of Primacy in the Universal Church” (December 26, 2013)