The Conciliar Canons

The Ecumenical Councils issued not only dogmatic definitions but canons — binding rules for the Church’s discipline, worship, and order. Because the Fifth and Sixth Councils produced doctrine but few canons, a further council “in Trullo” — the Quinisext (692) — was convened to supply them; the Orthodox Church receives its 102 canons with ecumenical authority, though the West did not. These canons, gathered in collections like the Rudder, form the working body of Orthodox canon law.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Definition and Canon

An Ecumenical Council did two distinct kinds of work. Its dogmatic work — the Creed, the horos or definition of faith — is irreformable and belongs to the deposit of faith. Its canonical work — the numbered canons ordering the Church’s life — belongs to a different register: it is authoritative and binding, but pastoral and adaptable in application, concerned with discipline rather than dogma (Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, 1979, on the distinction; The Rudder [Pedalion], trans. Cummings, 1957, introduction). The councils produced canons unevenly. Nicaea I gave twenty; Constantinople I, four (or seven); Chalcedon, twenty-seven or twenty-eight; Ephesus, a handful. But the Fifth (553) and Sixth (680–681) Ecumenical Councils, absorbed in the Christological definitions of the Three Chapters and Monothelitism, issued no disciplinary canons at all (see Constantinople II and the Three Chapters; Constantinople III and Monothelitism). This gap is the reason for the Quinisext Council.

The Quinisext (Trullo) Council of 692

To remedy the canonical silence of the Fifth and Sixth Councils, the Emperor Justinian II convened a council at Constantinople in 692, in the same domed hall (troullos) where the Sixth had met (hence “in Trullo”). Because it was understood to complete the canonical work of the Fifth and Sixth Councils (quinta-sexta, “Fifth-Sixth”), it is called the Quinisext Council, or Penthekte (Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, 1979; Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils, 1990). It issued 102 canons covering a vast field of church order and practice. In the Orthodox understanding, the Fifth, Sixth, and Quinisext together form a single canonical-doctrinal unit: the Quinisext supplies the canons the two preceding councils lacked, and its canons are received with the authority of an ecumenical council — the Orthodox Church treating them as belonging to the Sixth Council’s authority (a reason it is sometimes loosely called part of the Sixth) (Percival, NPNF, Second Series, vol. 14, on the status of the Quinisext; The Rudder, trans. Cummings, 1957).

Its canons are foundational for Orthodox practice. Among the most consequential:

  • Canon 2 ratified the received corpus of canon law: the Apostolic Canons, the canons of the ecumenical and named local councils, and the canonical epistles of a list of Fathers — in effect a comprehensive index defining which canons carry authority in the Church. This canon is the charter of the Orthodox canonical collection (Quinisext, canon 2; Percival, NPNF, Second Series, vol. 14).
  • Canon 13 rejected the Western rule of clerical celibacy, requiring that married men ordained deacon or priest continue in their marriages; this established the normative Orthodox discipline of a married diaconate and presbyterate (with a celibate — that is, monastic — episcopate), and it directly opposed the discipline of Rome (Quinisext, canon 13).
  • Canon 36 renewed the ranking of the sees, confirming Constantinople’s place after Rome and listing the order: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem — the “pentarchy” (Quinisext, canon 36).
  • Canon 82 ordered that Christ be depicted in his human form and no longer symbolically as a lamb — a canon of great importance for the theology of the icon, insisting that the reality of the Incarnation be shown directly (Quinisext, canon 82; cf. The Defense of the Icons).
  • Canon 11 (against certain associations with Jews), canon 55 (forbidding the Saturday fast in Lent, again against Roman practice), and canon 73 (forbidding the cross to be depicted on floors where it would be trodden) illustrate the range, and several of them pointedly legislate against Latin customs.

The Western Non-Reception

The Quinisext Council is the sharpest instance of a council received as ecumenical in the East but not in the West. Pope Sergius I refused to sign its canons, objecting to those that legislated against Roman usages (clerical celibacy, the Saturday fast) and to its assertion of Constantinopolitan standing; later popes accepted some canons selectively while never receiving the whole as ecumenical (Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, 1979; Louth, Greek East and Latin West, 2007). This divergence is itself a case study in the reception principle (see Ecumenicity and Reception): the Orthodox Church, receiving the Quinisext as the canonical voice of the Fifth and Sixth Councils, holds its canons as ecumenical; the West, never receiving it as such, does not — and the different reception of the same council mirrors the wider parting of East and West. The Orthodox position is not that the West “left” an already-ecumenical Quinisext, but that the East received and the West did not, so that its universal authority holds within the Church that received it.

The Canons in Orthodox Life: The Rudder

The canons of the seven councils and the Quinisext, together with the Apostolic Canons, the canons of the recognized local councils, and the canonical epistles of the Fathers (Basil the Great’s three canonical letters are especially weighty), make up the working body of Orthodox canon law. In the Greek tradition this corpus was gathered, with the commentary of St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite, into the Pedalion or Rudder (1800), the standard canonical handbook; the Slavic tradition uses the Kniga Pravil (“Book of Rules”) (The Rudder [Pedalion], trans. Cummings, 1957; Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, 1979). A methodological caution belongs here: the Rudder prints the canons together with Nikodemos’s interpretive commentary, and the commentary — however respected — is not itself the canon; the canon is the conciliar text, and the commentary is one authoritative reading of it (a distinction the repository methodology insists on; cf. Orthodoxy: Holy Tradition). The canons are applied in the Orthodox Church not as a rigid code but through the principle of oikonomia (“economy”) — the bishop’s discretion to relax the strict letter (akribeia) for the sake of salvation in particular cases — so that the canonical tradition is a living pastoral instrument, not a frozen statute book (Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, 1979, on akribeia and oikonomia). Through the canons the dogmatic authority of the councils reaches into the daily order of the Church — her clergy, her fasts, her penitential discipline, her sacramental life.

See Also

References

  • Quinisext Council “in Trullo” (692). Canons 1–102 (esp. 2, 13, 36, 55, 73, 82). In Percival, ed., The Seven Ecumenical Councils, NPNF, Second Series, vol. 14.
  • The Rudder (Pedalion). Trans. D. Cummings. Chicago: Orthodox Christian Educational Society, 1957.
  • Meyendorff, John. Byzantine Theology. New York: Fordham University Press, 1979.
  • Louth, Andrew. Greek East and Latin West: The Church, AD 681–1071. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2007.
  • Davis, Leo Donald. The First Seven Ecumenical Councils. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990.