Series:

Translated Texts for Historians

4 primary works

Book 68

Cover of The Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea (787)
Two volume set
The Second Council of Nicaea (787) decreed that religious images were to set up in churches and venerated. It thereby established the cult of icons as a central element in the piety of the Orthodox churches, as it has remained ever since. In the West its decrees received a new emphasis in the Counter-Reformation, in the defence of the role of art in religion. It is a text of prime importance for the iconoclast controversy of eighth-century Byzantium, one of the most explored and contested topics in Byzantine history. But it has also a more general significance - in the history of culture and the history of art. This edition offers the first translation that is based on the new critical edition of this text in the Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum series, and the first full commentary of this work that has ever been written. It will be of interest to a wide range of readers from a variety of disciplines.

Book 72

Cover of The Council of Ephesus of 431
The First Council of Ephesus (431) was the climax of the so-called Nestorian Controversy. Convoked by the emperor Theodosius II to restore peace to the Church, it immediately divided into two rival councils, both meeting at Ephesus. Attempts by the emperor’s representatives to get the bishops on both sides to meet together had no success, and after four months the council was dissolved without having ever properly met. But a number of decrees by the larger of the two rival councils, in particular the condemnation of Nestorius of Constantinople, were subsequently accepted as the valid decrees of the ‘ecumenical council of Ephesus’. The documentation, consisting of conciliar proceedings, letters and other documents, provides information not only about events in Ephesus itself, but also about lobbying and public demonstrations in Constantinople. There is no episode in late Roman history where we are so well informed about how politics were conducted in the imperial capital. This makes the Acts a document of first importance for the history of the Later Roman Empire as well for that of the Church.

Book 74

Cover of The Canons of the Quinisext Council (691/2)

These canons (or rules) for church organization and life and Christian morals issued at a council held in Constantinople in 691/2 form the foundation of Byzantine Canon Law. They show an intense concern to restore the proper discipline of clerical life after the chaos brought about by the Arab invasions. The rules for the laity show a concern to secure obedience to the Church's rules about marriage, proper respect for sacred space, and the suppression of customs of pagan origin. Particular interest attaches to the canons that express disapproval of certain customs of the Western Church and of the Armenian Church. Was this an attempt to impose Byzantine hegemony, or simply a revulsion at customs that seemed wrong? The Byzantine emperor tried repeatedly to get the Pope to give the new canons the stamp of his approval; his failure marks an important stage in the mounting divergence between the Greek and the Roman Churches. The translation is accompanied by full annotation, while the introduction sets the council in its historical context, in both the history of the early medieval world and the development of Eastern Canon Law.

Book 79

Cover of The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 869-70
The Council of Constantinople of 869-70 was highly dramatic, with its trial and condemnation of Patriarch Photius, a towering figure in the Byzantium of his day, and the tussle of wills at the council between the papal legates, the imperial representatives and the bishops. It was church politics and personalities rather than issues of doctrine, such as icon veneration, that dominated the debates. Out of all the acts of the great early councils, the acts of this council, of which this edition is the first modern translation, are the nearest to an accurate and complete record. Its protest against secular
interference in ecclesiastical elections was taken up later in the West and led to this council’s being accorded full ecumenical status, although it had been repudiated in Byzantium soon after it was held. No early council expresses so vividly the tension between Rome’s claim to supreme authority and the Byzantine reduction of this to a primacy of honour.