The Quinisext Ecumenical Council - A.D. 692

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

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This canon defines what canons are to be understood as having received the sanction of ecumenical authority, and since these canons of the Council in Trullo were received at the Seventh Ecumenical Council in its first canon as the canons of the Sixth Ecumenical (of which the Quinisext claimed to be a legitimate continuation) there can be no doubt that all these canons enumerated in this canon are set forth for the guidance of the Church.

With regard to what councils are intended: there is difficulty only in two particulars, viz., the "Council of Constantinople under Nectarius and Theophilus," [344] and the "Council under Cyprian;" the former must be the Council of 394, and the latter is usually considered to be the III. Synod of Carthage, a.d. 257.

Fleury.

(H. E. Liv. xl., chap. xlix.)

The Council of Constantinople under Nectarius and Theophilus of Alexandria must be that held in 394, at the dedication of Ruffinus's Church; but we have not its canons...."The canon published by St. Cyprian for the African Church alone." It is difficult to understand what canon is referred to unless it is the preface to the council of St. Cyprian where he says that no one should pretend to be bishop of bishops, or to oblige his colleagues to obey him by tyrannical fear.

It will be noticed that while the canon is most careful to mention the exact number of Apostolic canons it received, thus deciding in favour of the larger code, it is equally careful not to assign them an Apostolic origin, but merely to say that they had come down to them "in the name of" the Apostles. In the face of this it is strange to find Balsamon saying, "Through this canon their mouth is stopped who say that 85 canons were not set forth by the holy Apostles;" what the council did settle, so far as its authority went, was the number not the authorship of the canons. This, I think, is all that Balsamon intended to assert, but his words might easily be quoted as having a different meaning.

This canon is found, in part, in the Corpus Juris Canonici, Gratian's Decretum, Pars I., Dist. XVI, c. VII.

[344] The Ultramontane Roisselet de Sauclières, in his Histoire chronologique et dogmatique des Conciles de la Chrétieté, Tome III., p. 131, curiously divides this into two councils. This blunder is also made by Ivo, cf. Gratian's Dec., P. I., Dist. xvi., c. vii., note by correctors.

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