Introduction to This Volume
How this book is arranged
This is the hundred and first volume of a series that gathers the writings of the early Church. The first volumes of the series follow the writers in order of date; this volume belongs to the later part of the series, which gathers the church orders and the decisions of the councils, which do not belong to any one author. This volume holds the last four books of the Apostolic Constitutions and the canons and decrees of the councils from Constantinople in AD 381 to the second council of Nicaea in AD 787.
Within each work the text is divided into chapters and numbered sections, so that any passage can be found again and cited. The small bold figures in the text are the section numbers.
The translations
The text is in English only. Wherever a modern English version has been prepared for SermonIndex it is used here; otherwise the book prints an older public-domain translation. In both cases the wording is the translator’s own: older translations have not been altered beyond dividing them into sections. The sources for every work are listed at the back of the book, together with the licence under which each text is released. All the works in this volume are printed in older public-domain translations. Greek words that the editors of the councils quote in their notes are given in Latin letters.
In this volume
The first part completes the Apostolic Constitutions with Books 5 to 8, and the short Ecclesiastical Canons that follow them in the old editions. Book 8 holds the prayers for the ordination of bishops, presbyters and deacons, and the liturgy that is called the Liturgy of Clement.
The rest of the volume carries the councils from the second ecumenical council at Constantinople in AD 381 to the second council of Nicaea in AD 787: Constantinople, Carthage (the code of the African church), Ephesus, Chalcedon, the later councils of Constantinople, the Quinisext Council and Nicaea. For each council the book prints what the older series prints: the canons, the creeds and definitions of faith, the letters and the extracts from the proceedings, with the notes of the editors. These are the texts in which the Church fixed its teaching on the Trinity and on the person of Christ, and its rules for the clergy.
Dates and authorship
The dates of the councils are those given in the sources. The date and the author of the Apostolic Constitutions are debated by scholars. Each work begins with a short introduction that says what is known and what is uncertain.