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Edited from a variety of translations (mentioned in the preface) by H. R. Percival
THE ECUMENICAL COUNCILS Resources Online and in Print
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78 Pages
Page 53
Excursus on the Number of the Nicene Canons.
There has come down to us a Latin letter purporting to have been written by St. Athanasius to Pope Marcus. This letter is found in the Benedictine edition of St. Athanasius's works (ed. Patav. ii. 599) but rejected as spurious by Montfaucon the learned editor. In this letter is contained the marvellous assertion that the Council of Nice at first adopted forty canons, which were in Greek, that it subsequently added twenty Latin canons, and that afterwards the council reassembled and set forth seventy altogether. A tradition that something of the kind had taken place was prevalent in parts of the East, and some collections did contain seventy canons.
In the Vatican Library is a ms. which was bought for it by the famous Asseman, from the Coptic Patriarch, John, and which contains not only seventy, but eighty canons attributed to the council of Nice. The ms. is in Arabic, and was discovered by J. B. Romanus, S. J., who first made its contents known, and translated into Latin a copy he had made of it. Another Jesuit, Pisanus, was writing a history of the Nicene Council at the time and he received the eighty newly found canons into his book; but, out of respect to the pseudo-Athanasian letter, he at first cut down the number to seventy; but in later editions he followed the ms. All this was in the latter half of the sixteenth century; and in 1578 Turrianus, who had had Father Romanus's translation revised before it was first published, now issued an entirely new translation with a Proëmium [104] containing a vast amount of information upon the whole subject, and setting up an attempted proof that the number of the Nicene Canons exceeded twenty. His argument for the time being carried the day.
Hefele says, "it is certain that the Orientals [105] believed the Council of Nice to have promulgated more than twenty canons: the learned Anglican, Beveridge, [106] has proved this, reproducing an ancient Arabic paraphrase of the canons of the first four Ecumenical Councils. According to this Arabic paraphrase, found in a ms. in the Bodleian Library, the Council of Nice must have put forth three books of canons....The Arabic paraphrase of which we are speaking gives a paraphrase of all these canons, but Beveridge took only the part referring to the second book--that is to say, the paraphrase of the twenty genuine canons; for, according to his view, which was perfectly correct, it was only these twenty canons which were really the work of the Council of Nice, and all the others were falsely attributed to it." [107]
Hefele goes on to prove that the canons he rejects must be of much later origin, some being laws of the times of Theodosius and Justinian according to the opinion of Renaudot. [108]
Before leaving this point I should notice the profound research on these Arabic canons of the Maronite, Abraham Echellensis. He gives eighty-four canons in his Latin translation of 1645, and was of opinion that they had been collected from different Oriental sources, and sects; but that originally they had all been translated from the Greek, and were collected by James, the celebrated bishop of Nisibis, who was present at Nice. But this last supposition is utterly untenable.
[104] Vide Labbe, Conc. ii. 287.
[105] Who exactly these Orientals were Hefele does not specify, but Ffoulkes well points out (Dict. Christ. Antiq. sub voce Councils of Nicaea) that it is an entire mistake to suppose that the Greek Church "ever quoted other canons [than the xx] as Nicene by mistake,' which were not Nicene, as popes Zosimus, Innocent and Leo did."
[106] Beveridge, Synod. sive Pand. i. 686.
[107] Hefele: Hist. Councils, I. 362.
[108] Renaudot: Hist. Patriarcharum Alexandrianorum Jacobitarum. Paris, 1713, p. 75.
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/ecumenical-councils/first.asp?pg=53
