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 28

These commentaries were first brought to light by John Quintin, a professor of canon law at Paris, who published a Latin translation of the scholia upon the Apostolic Canons. This was in 1558. In 1618 Antonius Salmatia edited his commentaries on the canons of the Councils done into Latin. To this Latin version the Paris press added the Greek text from the ms. codex in the Royal Library and printed it in 1618. In 1622 the same press issued his commentaries upon the Epistles of the Holy Fathers, together with those of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, Macarius of Egypt, and Basil. But Beveridge collected them in his Oxford Edition for the first time into one work; preparing a somewhat critical text by collation with some manuscripts he found at home.

The second of these great Greek scholiasts is Alexis Aristenus. As Beveridge points out, he must have flourished before or at the same time as Balsamon, for this latter speaks of him in high terms of commendation in his scholion on the Sixth of the Apostolic Canons, describing him as ton hupertimon. Aristenus was Nomophylax, Orphanotrophe and Protecdekas, or chief of the Syndics of the Communes, called Ecdics (Ekdikoi). He wrote the excellent series of notes upon the Epitomes of the Canons which are given the reader in Beveridge's Pradects. Schoell says that it is an error to attribute to him the "Extract of the Ancient Ecclesiastical Laws," "which is none of his." [36] Aristenus was Grand Economus of the Church of Constantinople and a man of great distinction; and his opinion was sought after and his decision followed even when in opposition to one of the Patriarchs, viz.: Nicephorus of Jerusalem.

Beveridge was the first to print Aristenus's Scholia, and he did so from four mss., in England, for a description of which I refer the reader to the bishop's prolegomena. [37]

Theodore Balsamon is the last of the three great Greek scholiasts. He flourished in the time of the Emperor Isaac Angelus and bore the title of Patriarch of Antioch, although at that time the city was in the hands of the Latins and had been so since 1100. He was looked upon as the greatest jurist of his times both in ecclesiastical and civil matters. Somewhere about the year 1150, he wrote by the order of Manuel Comnenus a series of "Scholia upon the Nomocanon of Photius," and another set styled "Scholia upon the Canons of the Apostles, of the Councils and of the Fathers of the Church;" he also prepared a "Collection of [imperial] Constitutions upon ecclesiastical matters," [38] in three books, which has been published (by Loewenklaw) at Frankfort, 1595, under the title "Paratitles." There remains also a great number of his opinions on cases presented to him, notably his "answers to sixty-four canonical questions by Mark, Patriarch of Alexandria."

These most learned writings were unknown and forgotten, at least in the West, until they were set forth in a Latin translation during the time the Council of Trent was sitting, in 1561, and not till 1620 did the Greek text appear in the Paris edition of that date. But this text was imperfect and corrupt, and Beveridge produced a pure text from an Oxford ms., with which he compared several others. Moreover in his Pandects he amended the Latin text as well in numberless particulars. For further, particulars of the bibliography of the matter see Beveridge. [39]

[36] Schoell, Hist. Lib. Grec., Tom. VII., p. 241.

[37] Beveridge, Pandectæ. Prol. § XXX.

[38] Ton ekklesiastikon diataxeon Sulloge.

[39] Beveridge, Pandects, Prol. § XIX.-XXII.

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