THE ECUMENICAL COUNCILS Preface and Introduction

Edited from a variety of translations (mentioned in the preface) by H. R. Percival

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Page 25

The last of Justinian's labours in the field of jurisprudence (if indeed they were not collected after his death) are his "Novels," a series of imperial constitutions issued between 535 and 559 (Nearai Diataxeis). There are one hundred and sixty-eight of these Novels, but the ancient glosses only know ninety-seven, and the rest have been added since, as they have been found.

Such is the origin of the Corpus Juris Civilis, and its history needed to be set forth in this place on account of its close connection with the Corpus Juris Canonici. In the foregoing I have followed M. Schoell in his admirable Histoire de la Littérature Grecque Profane, to which I am also chiefly indebted for the following notes upon the jurists of the sixth and ensuing centuries.

A work which is often looked upon as the origin of the Canon Law was composed by a lawyer of Antioch, somewhere near the middle of the sixth century. This jurist was John of Antioch, surnamed Scholasticus. He was representative or apocrisiarius of the Church of Antioch at Constantinople, and afterward was made Patriarch of that see, over which he ruled from 564 until his death in 578. While still a simple priest at Antioch he made his Collection of the Canons of the Councils.

"He was not the first who conceived the idea of such a work. Some writers, resting upon a passage in Socrates, have been of opinion that this honour belonged to Sabinus, bishop of Heraclea, in Thrace, at the beginning of the fifth century; but Socrates is not speaking of a collection of canons at all, but of the synodal acts, of the letters written by or addressed to the synods. If, however, Sabinus did not make a collection of canons, it is certain nevertheless that before John of Antioch there existed one, for he himself cites it many times, although he does not name the authors." [27]

"In gathering together thus the canons of the councils John of Antioch did not form a complete body of ecclesiastical law. By his Novel CXLI., Justinian had indeed given to the canons of the Church the force of law, but he himself published a great number of constitutions upon Church matters. Now it was necessary to harmonize these constitutions and canons, and to accomplish this feat was the object of a second work undertaken by John of Antioch, to which he gave the title of Nomocanon (Nomokanon ), [28] a word which from that time has served to designate any collection of this sort." [29]

[27] Schoell, Hist. Litt. Grec., Tome vii., Lib. vi., chap. xcvij., p. 226.

[28] The two collections of John are published with a translation in the Bibliotheca Juris Canonici Veteris of Voellus and Justellus, Vol. II.

[29] Ibid ut supra, p. 227.

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