03018 - Synods of Constantinople

§18. The Synods of Constantinople, A.D. 1672 and 1691.

Three months previous to the Synod of Jerusalem a Synod was held at Constantinople (January, 1672), which adopted a doctrinal statement signed by Dionysius , Patriarch of Constantinople, and forty-three dignitaries belonging to his patriarchate. [SeeNote #142] It is less complete than the Confession of Dositheus, but agrees with it on all points, as the authority and infallibility of the Church, the extent of the canon, the seven mysteries (sacraments), the real sacrifice of the altar, and the miraculous transformation [SeeNote #143] of the elements.

Another Synod was held in Constantinople nineteen years afterwards, in 1691, under Patriarch Callinicus , for the purpose of giving renewed sanction to the orthodox doctrine of the Eucharist, in opposition to Logothet John Caryophylus, who had rejected the Romish theory of transubstantiation, and defended the Calvinistic view of Cyril Lucar. The Synod condemned him, and declared that the Eastern Church had always taught a change (metabolē) of the elements in the sense of a transubstantiation (metousiôsis), or an actual transformation of their essence into the body and blood of Christ. [SeeNote #144]

Note #142

It is called Dionysii , Patr. Const., super Calvinistarum erroribus ac reali imprimis præsentia responsio, and is published in some editions of the Confession of the Synod of Jerusalem; in Harduini Acta Conciliorum, Tom. XI. pp. 274-282; and in the second volume of Kimmel’s Monumenta, pp. 214-227.

Note #143 On this the document teaches (Kimmel, P. II. p. 218) that when the priest prays, ’Make (poiçson) this bread the precious blood of thy Christ,’ then, by the mysterious and ineffable operation of the Holy Ghost, ho men artos metapoieitai(transmutatur ) eis auto ekeino to idion sôma tou sôtçros Christou pragmatikôs kai alçthôs kai kuriôs(realiter, vere, ac proprie ), ho de oinos eis to zôopoion haima autou.

Note #144

I have not been able to procure the proceedings of this Synod; they are omitted both by Hardouin and Kimmel. They were first printed at Jassy, 1698; then in Greek and Latin by Eusebius Renaudot, together with some other Greek writings on the Eucharist, Paris, 1709; in German by Heineccius, in his Abbildung der alten und neuen Griechischen Kirche, 2 Parts, Leipz. 1711. Appendix. p. . etc.So says Rud. Hofmann (in hisSymbolik,Leipz. 1857, p. 135), who has paid careful attention to the Greek Church.