Pearls from the Pedalion: Introduction
- The Orthodox Ethos Team
- 10 hours ago
- 26 min read
From the Editor:
The Pearls from the Pedalion [Rudder] Series will contain periodic posts highlighting commentaries and explanations by St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite on important contemporary topics for Orthodox clergy and laity. The Pedalion is the most comprehensive and authoritative collection of Church canons and contains an extensive patristic commentary from one of the greatest saints of the Church, St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite. The Pedalion was endorsed as true and reliable by multiple saints including St. Makarios Bishop of Corinth and St. Athanasios Parios. The Pedalion was endorsed by the Patriarch for distribution to the whole Orthodox world and was recognized as universally authoritative; as attested to in the early 20th century, for example, by St. Raphael of Brooklyn, a great hierarch from the Patriarchate of Antioch, who also served in the Patriarchates of Moscow and Constantinople as well as in America. For more information see St. Raphael's explanation, published by Uncut Mountain Press, here.
Patriarch Neophytos VII of Constantinople (reigned from 1789–1794) and his synod endorsed the text and commentary of the Pedalion and insisted that it be printed in the vernacular to be read by all Orthodox Christians, saying that “Since the truth itself is Christ and whoever resists the truth is consequently resisting Christ, we are duty bound to attest the truth of all that is said in this Book, by way of reassuring the readers of it.”
Despite the fact that canons of the Church were inspired by the Holy Spirit (Canon 2 of Trullo and Canon 1 of the 7th Ecumenical Council) and the veracity of the commentary by St. Nikodemos was endorsed by many saints and hierarchs, for many years the Pedalion has unfortunately been left unpublished and neglected in the English language, and the laity have often been discouraged from reading it under the guise that only bishops should concern themselves with the canons. The Church is not only the bishops. She includes all of the laity and clergy. While only bishops can ordain and discipline clergy, many canons are penitential in nature and are to be applied by a spiritual father, with discernment, to help repair the spiritual damage caused by sin so that communion with Christ can be restored unto salvation and theosis. Even if the spiritual father applies penances with leniency, or if violations of the ecclesiastical canons go unchecked for a period of time, all Orthodox Christians should understand the God-inspired standards that Orthodox clergy and laity are called to follow in both personal conduct and ecclesiastical life. It is for the edification and strengthening of the whole Church that these Pearls from the Pedalion are here offered.
To begin this series, we offer some of the Introductory material from St. Nikodemos, himself, in and about the Pedalion. It is in two parts. Part I, his introduction, explains the need for the Church to have the Canons and details how the book was compiled. Part II, his prolegomena, explains the place of the canons, generally, in the life of the Church and how we understand something being “canonical” or not.
PART I: INTRODUCTION OF ST. NIKODEMOS
TO ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS EVERYWHERE ON EARTH
INTO WHOEVER’S HANDS THIS BOOK MAY REST, WE OFFER A REVEREND SALUTATION
AND A BROTHERLY EMBRACE
IN CHRIST
“I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise.” (Romans 1:14).
These are words which were uttered in faith and truth by St. Paul, the great “teacher of nations,” while speaking in Christ. By means thereof he purposed to teach all those men who love the common benefit of their neighbor, not to speak or to write only in the Greek ecclesiastical language, in order by means of it to benefit only the educated and learned, but also to speak and to write in simple language as well, in order by means of it likewise to benefit also their unlearned and simple brethren.
St. Nikodemos Identifies the Problem: The canons were in disarray.
For, tell me, what benefit can a simple person get from reading a book only in ecclesiastical Greek? Will not the one who wrote the book appear to him a barbarian, and, conversely, will he not appear to its author a barbarian? Will not the two of them together be talking past each other? For (as St. Paul himself says in censuring the Corinthians because they were boasting that they had received the gracious gift of speaking with tongues, but had not begged to receive in connection therewith also the gracious gift of interpreting them to others and contributing to the edification of the Church). “Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me.” (I Corinthians 14:11)
Thus, though a Greek and one learned in Greek may be benefited, a simple and unlearned brother is not edified. For this reason we too, following the example of this Apostolic teaching, have desired by means of the present book to benefit both the erudite and learned and the simple and unlearned as well. The former with the Greek text of the divine and Holy Canons, Apostolic, synodal, and individual. On the other hand, the latter, with a simpler interpretation and explanation[1] of the same Canons. And again, conversely, we have desired to benefit the literate and learned with the interpretation, by adducing for them solutions of perplexities found in the Canons by the learned of olden days and not understood by all of them offhand; and, on the other hand, to benefit ordinary persons with the Greek text, by making them have due respect for them and preventing them from deeming them offspring of our own womb: thus enriching both the former and the latter with a book which, though difficult to procure because of there being but few copies printed, is still more difficult for the common man to obtain because of its costliness. This was the chief and general reason that persuaded us, brethren, to take in hand the present work.
There was still another reason, though, which was the following. We could not endure, beloved, seeing these divine and holy canons emasculated, with added writings, chopped up, with false titles, and scattered here and there, in many paltry manuscripts purporting to be in the nature of nomocanons in the hands of many spiritual fathers, and the interpretations of exegetes being mistaken for the canons proper; and, what is worse, the fact that even these interpretations they contain are corrupt, misconceived, and fraught with incongruous and false teachings. What were they producing? Death-dealing fruit, you may be sure, and the effect of contributing to the perdition of souls, both in the spiritual fathers improperly correcting sinners and in the sinners improperly corrected by them. It was just as if, in accordance with the common proverb, a warped rule warps everything it is applied to.
St. Nikodemos’ solution: constructing the Rudder
Hence, in order to stop these death-dealing currents, through which our brethren were being given “the thick lees of wine” as the prophet says (Habakkuk 2:15), we were led to make it our business to go back to the original sources and to draw from there the fresh, pure, and life-bearing waters. In fact, I do not hesitate to state outright that we made it our business to find the books of the holy canons, and from there not only to transcribe the entire and integral Greek text of the divine canons word for word, but also to expound in everyday Greek language the true interpretations of the genuine exegetes of the divine and holy canons which the Church had approved. First, and for the most part, and nearly everywhere, we adopted that of marvelous and illustrious John Zonaras, who holds the first rank;[2] and next that of Theodore Balsamon;[3] only rarely that of Alexios Aristenos;[4] but many times that of “Anonymous,”[5] and of others.[6]
Besides the interpretation, we made it our business at the side of every Canon set forth for explanation to note in Greek numerals also the number of all those Canons that are more or less in agreement with the one being explained. Afterwards, not contenting ourselves with this, we went to great trouble to add underneath the interpretation of the main Canon the substance of each of those very Canons that were found to be parallel and concordant. If the reader failed to find any of them in its proper place by reference to the number alone, and he understands nothing in regard to what is said, he would have to open the book frequently and search in order to discover where the canons noted were to be found. Who will not acknowledge that such a proceeding would be laborious and a cause of much discomfiture?
For this reason we were willing to take this special trouble. Though this comprehensive correlation is in a manner superfluous on account of the repetition of what has already been said, amounting to tautology, yet in another manner it is necessary for the convenience of the readers, for it is incomparably easier for a reader to find all the concordant Canons when they are gathered together in brief in one place, so that he can see at a glance wherein they agree and wherein they differ, without having to turn so many pages in order to find the sixth, say, or the eighth or the tenth Canon, as the case may be, and while trying to find the one forgetting the other, and subsequently laboring in vain in an effort to trace what is hard to gather up.
So that, if there are many nomocanons that reduce the Holy Canons to principles, because of being concise and easy to remember (as are that of Matthew Blastaris, that of Photios, and those of others), this Canonicon can make the same boast also. For nearly every Canon that has a concord is a different case. Always or for the most part any concord with Canons first in order develops in the later ones, while, the later ones, relate to the first ones. But in a few instances the first Canons are revoked in later ones.
In order to have the concord complete, we garnered also the Canons of the rest of the fathers, who were not confirmed by an Ecumenical Synod: this means those of St. Nicephoros,[7] of Nicholas the patriarch of Constantinople,[8] of John of Kitros,[9] of Nicetas,[10] and of Peter, deacon and chancellor of the Great Church;[11] in addition we included in the concord the Canons of the Faster (which we printed in Greek and have placed by themselves at the end of the Canons for the reason there stated). For we accorded this preferment only to the Canons confirmed by the Sixth Ecumenical Synod and consequently possessing ecumenical (or worldwide) validity, and accepted and interpreted by the hermeneutist and the Church as catholic Canons.
Not only did we include these, but also having combed the decrees and laws of the emperors, especially those of Justinian, comprising the Digesta,[12] the Codices,[13] the Institutes,[14] and the Novels,[15] and, in a word, the civil laws, we selected from this whatever was more or less in agreement with the Holy Canons or supplementary thereto.
Whatever was contrary thereto, on the other hand, we regarded it as void, just as this same treatment again is decreed by the same civil laws.[16]
Lastly we made it our business to enrich the book also with various philological footnotes contributing either to greater clarity of the interpretation or to reconcilement of apparently contrary Canons, or in some other way useful, in order to make the Book with all these advantages desirable and lovable to all. The result is that the spiritual table we have set before our brethren is not a frugal one confined to a single kind of food, which would induce nausea and satiety in its guests, but, on the contrary, is one that is different and in all respects beneficial, in order to give at the same time both pleasure and benefit. A Greek and one who is not curious will read only the Greek text and be thankful. A man who is simple and not curious will read the interpretation alone and be satisfied. A man who is curious will read also the concord and will feel relieved. A man who is curious and sufficiently studious will read even the footnotes and be delighted.
At the end of the Holy Canons we have added also the teachings concerning matrimonial unions on the ground that such teachings are necessary.[17]
The High Value of the Canons: Bringing Order and Providing Nourishment.
These things having been stated, and the explanation of the Holy Canons being most necessary for the common salvation of all Christians, it is the right time for me to give voice to that prophetic avouchment of Baruch, saying: “This is the book of the commandments of God, and the law which endures forever.” (Baruch 4:1)
This Book, in effect, is next after the Holy Scriptures a holy scripture, and next after the Old and New Covenants. Next after the first and God-inspired assertions, second and God-inspired assertions make up its contents. This book, it may be said, is replete with the everlasting bounds set by our fathers, and the laws which endure forever and which are above all the external and imperial laws of the Digests, of the Institutes, of the Codes, and of the Novels. For mere emperors issued the latter, whereas the former were laid down by Synods, ecumenical and regional, through the Holy Spirit, and emperors ratified them. This book is truly, as we have entitled it, the Rudder of the Catholic Church, which when thereby steered, conveys the sailors and passengers in it, those in Holy Orders, I mean, as well as laymen, safely to the unruffled haven of the kingdom above. This book is the fruit and result and object for which so many emperors spent money and toil, so many Patriarchs sweated, so many God-bearing and Spirit-bearing bishops from the ends of the inhabited earth journeyed (often when they were both old and ill) and held ecumenical and regional synods and labored for so many years.
Accordingly, by way of exemplifying everything, I may say that just as the all-efficient Holy Trinity, after creating this first and material world, with various natural canons (usually called natural laws in English) of the elements it fitted it together, out of which resulted the order, and as a result of the order the coherence of the universe is preserved, and all creation becomes, as Orpheus said, a musical symphony composed of various canons, precisely as if struck up in certain diverse and multifarious tones, so and in like manner the same Trinity, having constructed this second and super-sensible world of the Catholic Church, with these holy and divine Canons, has bound it together and has consolidated it, out of which has resulted the orderliness of the Patriarchs, the harmony of the bishops, the decency of the priests, the decorum of the deacons, the respectability of clergymen, the regularity of monks, the knowledge of spiritual fathers requisite for correction, the honor of kings due from all persons, and in short, the conduct and condition of all Christians such as befits Christians. Universally speaking, as a result of these Holy Canons the lower ecclesiastical hierarchy becomes an imitation and expression of the heavenly hierarchy. Accordingly, the two hierarchies are unified, and become a single melody, struck on all chords and in perfect harmony.
Deprive material creation of the canons of the elements, and its orderliness is at once abolished; and with the abolishment of order, the whole universe vanishes. Deprive the Church of these Holy Canons, and disorder at once intrudes; and as a result of the disorder all its holy adornment disappears.
“Turn back, therefore, O Jacob, and take hold of it” (Baruch 4:2). Come back, you Patriarchs, bishops, priests, clergymen, monks, and all other spiritual fathers and brethren in Christ, and take hold of this book with your two hands.[18] Go to the brightness before her light, in order to be illumined with enlightenment of ever-lasting knowledge. “Rejoice at her words more than those who have found abundant spoils” (Psalm 118: 162). “For her words are pure, silver tried in fire, proved to the earth, purified seven times over” (Psalm 11:7). Whether tried and purified through examination by Seven Ecumenical Synods, or many times over through Regional Synods and individual Fathers, the seven mentioned in the Bible being taken to mean many times. Once you have taken hold of it, do not become only readers and hearers of these divine laws, but also doers. “For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified” (Romans 2:13). Lest these Canons which mean life when observed are found to mean death if they are disregarded.
I will also add the following words from Baruch: “O Israel, we are blissful; because the things that are pleasing to God are known to us” (Baruch 4:4). Christian brethren, you are blissful; because through this book you have been allowed to become cognizant of the Synodal precepts and of those the Fathers of the Church have set forth.
Divine David said that after many flashes of lightning and disturbances the sources of the waters appeared and the foundations of the inhabited earth were uncovered: “He multiplied flashes of lightning, and shocked them; and the sources of the waters appeared and were seen, and the foundations of the inhabited world were discovered” (Psalm 17:14-15). Accordingly, in our case one may understand the words allegorically. For, after the Lord multiplied the Holy synods like so many flashes of lightning, and through them shocked and expelled “them,” i.e., the wrong-minded heretics, then it was that these sources of the spiritual and life-carrying waters appeared and were seen, and these super-sensible foundations of the inhabited world, namely, of the Orthodox Catholic Church, were discovered.
Because, though the Divine Synods were assembled for the purpose of overthrowing impious heresies, after being assembled they also decreed the precepts that conduce to Christian living; whether one wants to call them heavenly potions as if the whole person of the Church were being given to drink thereof or spiritual foundations, upon which every Christian edifice rests. But they appeared and were seen and were discovered once then when they came into existence. Yet they have appeared and have been seen even now and have been discovered, or uncovered, by being explained, as we have said, in simpler language, and even more so by being published in print.
But who are the men that have given this great good, this most necessary and highly beneficial Book, to be issued in printed form? The most devout fathers in the Holy Mountain of Athos, those living a monastic life in the holy monasteries, in sketes and cells, together with the holy bishops found in the Mountain and certain other friends of Christ. These blessed persons, besides doing other good deeds by hospitably entertaining strangers and in many different ways showing mercy to poor brethren, having heard about this Book, that it is necessary and of great benefit to the whole race of Orthodox Christians; cheerfully responded and each of them according to his ability and willingness contributed his share to furnish the money spent in having the book printed, in order to benefit and nourish spiritually the brethren thereby, just as they feed them bodily.
If, as Gregory the Theologian (also called Gregory of Nazianzus) says, “the word of God is the bread of angels, with which souls are nourished when they are hungry for God”, through this benefit they will fulfill the commandment of the queen of all virtues, love: since, according to the same theologian, “love is a pure feeling and one really worthy of God; its function is the impartation of something. Accordingly, it may be said that through the two together they perform the function of clouds.” For just as clouds take up the tenuous vapors from the element water, and again turn and pour these out to it in a copious rain, in some such manner they too, taking bodily mercy from Christians, again turn and impart it to them through this spiritual mercy — I am referring to the printing of the present most soul-benefiting book, as much higher and superior as the soul is superior to and higher than the body.
Their zeal is really to be praised and it is but right for it to be proclaimed and made known for age after age! Their cheerful response is really brother loving! The impartation is really God-pleasing, and all the more so because of the fact that it was done not by giving out of their abundance but out of the life’s necessities of most of them.[19] It was for this reason the widow who had cast into the treasury as gifts to God out of her privation deserved to be told by the Lord: “Of a truth I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all: For all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had” (Luke 21:3-4).
So please, accept this book with outspread hands, and accept this necessary scripture which comes next after the Holy Scriptures, all you churches of Christ. “Accordingly, you ignorant and infantile people who were previously sitting in the darkness of ignorance of the Holy Canons, look at this great light of full knowledge, and be enlightened” (Isaias 42:7; Matthew 4:16). “The entrance of your words give light, and it gives understanding unto the infantile” (Psalm. 118:130). And negotiating your salvation by means of it, thank and glorify God forever, who became the cause of such a good to you. Lifting suppliant hands to Him, pray in behalf of those who have labored, by word and by work, and by impartation of books, and by copying, and by superintending the printing, and by cooperating in various other ways in this Book.
Above all, and in all, and with all, pray in behalf of the most devout fathers and other pious persons who have published it in printed form, that when they have passed through the tumultuous billow of life in serenity, and love, and concord, and the rest of the long series of virtues, they may reach the haven of the kingdom above safe and sound and gain their desired salvation. Farewell![20]
Footnotes
1. CANONS TO BE IN COMMON SPEECH:
This shows how frigid, how vain, and how illogical is the argument of some men to the effect that the divine Canons ought not to be explained in everyday speech. What are you saying man, whoever you be, that are saying these things, do you mean to tell us that it is all right for the divine and Holy Canons to be translated into Arabic, into Syrian, into Ethiopian, and to be explained in Latin, Italian, Slavonic, English, and, in fact, right for nearly every nation called Christians to have these Holy Canons translated into their language; except only the nation of the Orthodox Eastern Greeks, within whose borders the Synods were held and the Fathers of the Canons produced their blossoms and the exegetes of these first made their appearance, to lack and not be allowed to have the divine Canons translated into their mother tongue? And if our own nation formerly had these Canons couched in ecclesiastical Greek because they knew this Greek, how is it that the same race ought not to have the Canons now explained in their ordinary language, since, with few exceptions, they know only the simple idiom? Be careful what you say, man.
INTERPRETERS OF THE DIVINE CANONS:
2. JOHN ZONAROS
John Zonaras flourished about the year 1118 after Christ during the reign of Alexios I Comnenos. First serving as the great commander of the guard (or “vigla”), and “protoasicretis” (or privy councilor of the emperor), he became a monk in the monastery of St. Glyceria. There at the suggestion of others, as he himself says in his preamble to the Canons, he explained the divine and Holy Canons of the holy and renowned Apostles, of the Seven Ecumenical Synods, and of all our Holy Fathers more learnedly and better than any of the later exegetes, as an anonymous writer bears witness about him in the work of Leo Alatios.
In the matter of diction he is clear and at the same time elegant. Later Balsamon followed in the footsteps, so to speak, of his interpretations in regard to so many questions that he not only mentions these in his own interpretations as respecting the meaning, but in most places he even employs the very same words and sentences of Zonaras; and he calls him “most superb” in many places, and especially in the interpretation of the letter of Athanasios the Great to Ammon (commemorated on September 1). Blastaris likewise calls him superb; and “Anonymous” in the work of Alatios refers to him as marvelous Zonaras.
Not all his interpretations, however, have been preserved. For no interpretation of Zonaras is preserved in the canonical collections regarding the Canons of St. Gregory of Nyssa, or of Timothy, or of Theophilos, or of Cyril. Besides the interpretations of the Canons, he also wrote a general history from the creation of the world down to the reign of Alexios I Comnenos, but, what is more important, he also interpreted in extenso the Resurrection canons of John Damascene in the Octeochos.
3. THEODORE BALSAMON
Theodore Balsamon lived near the end of the twelfth century during the reign of Manuel Comnenos and of Michael, patriarch of Anchialos, who was also a most preeminent as a philosopher, coming after the time of Zonaras and indeed of even Aristenos. He served as a deacon of the Great Church, and as nomophylax (looking after observance of the laws) and chartophylax (looking after archives, etc.), and was the first of the Blachernae. In the year 1203, during the reign of Isaac the Angel and of Patriarch George Xiphilinos he wrote certain canonical “questions and answers”, which are those addressed to Patriarch Mark of Alexandria. But after Constantinople fell into the hands of the Venetians, in the year 1204, he was ordained also patriarch of Antioch, and he composed epigrams to the said George Xiphilinon.
By order of the emperor Manuel Comnenos and at the suggestion of Michael the Patriarch, while still a deacon, as he himself says in his preamble to the nomocanon, he annotated the fourteen titles of the imperial laws summarized by Photios, which is as much as to say the nomocanon of most holy Photios; and in regard to all the divine Canons, apostolic, synodal, and of the fathers, he made most extensive and lengthy interpretations which have been preserved down to the present time. In most cases his interpretations consist of two parts, of which the first is the very same interpretation as that which was given prior thereto by Zonaras, and which he employs as respecting the sense and even as respecting the words; the second part of his interpretation comprises civil laws and patriarchal notes and Novels (i.e., statutes) of emperors. As regards this man’s explanations, whether fitting or not, though we have nothing to say out of respect for the man, yet we have corrected him in many matters wherein he fell short of the truth, and have proved him to be contradicting himself.
The learned Metropolitan of Kitros named John shall bear witness instead of us in what he writes (on page 333 of the Corpus Juris Graecoromani) to Constantine Cabbasilas, bishop of Dyrrhachium (now called Durazzo in English), concerning Balsamon, saying: “this holy man, patriarch of Antioch, was versed to precision in legal and canonical legislation; yet his writings, so far as respects those brought out to serve as canonical and legal lemmas, do not appear to be accurate in every point; but what is strange, as if they were products of forgetfulness and especially of oversight, and in places even being in disagreement with themselves. As for me, even when he was alive, I heard many men versed in law in Constantinople who took to task some of that man’s expressions of opinion, on the ground that they had not been formed reasonably, both in reference to interpretations of canons and laws and in other such writings.” Accordingly, in order to be brief, I will say that in comparison with Zonaras, Balsamon may be likened to a young boy in comparison with an adult man. In contrast with this, though, it may be noted that Patriarch Philotheos in the work of Armenopoulos (page 288 of the Corpus Juris Graecoromani), and St. Mark of Ephesus in the Volume of Love (page 583), and Gennadius II (surnamed Scholarios) in the same volume (page 264) call him most learned in the laws and Canons.
4. ALEXIOS ARISTENOS
Alexios Aristenos also lived in the days of Emperor Manuel Comnenos, subsequently to Zonaras, and a little previous to Balsamon, in the year of salvation 1166. After becoming a deacon and nomophylax of the Great Church, he made an epitome of all the Holy Canons, which indeed is also called a nomocanon.
5. ANONYMOUS
The anonymous hermeneut (or interpreter) is shown to have been someone other than Aristenos, and to have lived later than the latter, by what he himself says. For in Apostolic Canon LXXV he says concerning the epitome of Aristenos that “the one who summarized the present Canon did not understand it well”; in Canon XIX of the Synod at Ancyra, concerning the same Aristenos, he says that “whoever summarized the present Canon failed to notice that the excommunication of bigamists set forth in extenso, is to be applied to the one failing to keep a vow of virginity”.
Hence I am led to wonder how Dositheos and others came to suspect that he was Aristenos. Some say that he was Symeon the Magister and Logothete. The latter also gives an interpretation of the Holy Canons extending as far as the LXXXIV of Basil the Great, which, though briefer for the most part than that of Zonaras and of Balsamon, is in some points even fuller, but always fuller than that of Aristenos.
6. MATTHEW BLASTARIS
Besides these, we gleaned some things also from the nomocanon of Matthew Blastaris, a learned hieromonk who was at his prime in the year 1335 and followed the interpretations of Zonaras and especially those of Balsamon; some from Joseph the Egyptian, who worked as a paraphrast and interpreter of the Canons in Arabic, and was ordained a priest, reaching his prime in the year 1398; some from the nomocanons of John the Antiochian and of John Scholasticos, who had previously served as a priest of Antioch, but later was but later was legate of Anastasios the Patriarch of Antioch, according to Zonaras (see Dositheos, page 514 of his Dodecabiblus), and was made Patriarch of Constantinople by Justinian I after the patriarch Eutychius had been exiled. As a saint his feast day is given in the Menaion as February 21st.
According to Dositheos he was a different man from John the Antiochian, whereas according to others he was the same man as the Antiochian; for he too was called the Antiochian because he became, as we have said, a priest of Antioch. As to whether we ourselves, on the other hand, have contributed any part to this interpretation, not by making a mere translation of the words, as some readers might think, but by supplying things missing in the exegetes, clarifying what was obscure, correcting what was contradictory, and pruning away what was superfluous, that is something which scholars will be able to determine by a parallel examination of both the Greek text and the interpretation thereof in everyday language.
7. ST. NICEPHOROS
Concerning who, in the volume of Synodal records, there are to be found only 17 Canons, but in other records 37. This saint lived in the year 814. But we have also printed his Canons separately at the end, translated into everyday language.
8. NICHOLAS, PATRIARCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE
Of whom, in the same volume, there are to be found only eight Canons, but in more accurate records eleven. He wrote them during the reign of Alexios I Comnenus, AD 1084, and Balsamon interpreted them, and we have printed these too apart from the rest.
9. JOHN OF KITROS
Of whom there have been preserved 31 Canons in manuscript codices in the form of an answer to the bishop of Dyrrhachium named Cabbasilas, who lived a little later than Balsamon or nearly in the same century.
10. NICETAS
Of whom 10 Canons have been preserved which were sent to a bishop named Constantine in manuscript codices.
11. PETER, DEACON AND CHARTOPHYLAX
Of this man there have been preserved 24 answers in the second volume of the collection of Synodal records, page 1001, which he gave to an equal number of questions he had been asked. He lived about the year 1100.
12. DIGESTA
Digesta is a Latin noun. It means simply an arrangement, or in the plural, as here, arrangements. In this connection it denotes the laws of Justinian I, who, after collecting them from various nations, made them into fifty books, comprising the choicest; and he called them Digesta because they arrange and order what is to be done and what is not to be done.
13. CODEX
Codex is a Greek word and means a hide or skin or any kind of leather. It is employed in a collective sense for a book made of skin, as in the present instance. The legal Dodecabiblus of Justinian is called the Codices because it is divided into three codices.
14. INSTITUTES
Institutes is a Latin word. It means an introduction. Here it denotes the rudiments of law, or the legal primer, which Justinian made for the purpose of facilitating the understanding of the science of laws.
15. CIVIL LAWS
Novels (usually in the plural) are newly issued orders or decrees of any emperor. The word denotes a civil law.
16. AGREEMENT OF CANONS AND CIVIL LAWS
Take note of the fact that three great and learned men abridged the imperial laws: most learned Photios, who recapitulated the Institutes and Digesta and Codices and Novels of Justinian under fourteen titles; the learned man named Michael, surnamed Attaliates, a proconsul and jurist, at the request of Michael Ducas put them together under 95 titles.
CORPUS JURIS GRAECOROMANI AND HEXABIBLUS
Taking these civil laws as found in the second book of the Corpus Juris Graecoromani. Constantine Armenopoulos, a learned man and jurist of Thessalonika, abridged them and embodied them in six books, which are hence called the Hexabiblus. Of these three works, the one most approved of is the synopsis of Photios, as the most accurate. Leo, however, and his son Constantine made a more succinct selection among the laws of Justinian and a more humane correction, which is contained in 73 titles and is to be found in the second book of the Corpus Juris Graecoromani (page 79).
Since we decided, as we have said, to harmonize the civil laws of the emperors with the Holy Canons, it will not be out of order to mention here briefly for the sake of the curious where these civil laws originated. In olden days the emperors had no synod of state nor had the laws any orderly arrangement, of coordination. Appius Claudius, together with ten other gentlemen, was the first to gather together whatever legal decisions were to be found among the Romans, whether written or oral, scattered here and there and uncombined.
DODECABIBLUS
From Athens he fetched the laws of Draco and of Solon, and from other domains of the Greeks other laws. From among them he chose the best ones, and out of them made twelve books, which he named the Dodecabiblus. After Appius other learned men again, headed by Gaius, made other legislation. And after them various other kings and emperors wrote various laws and interpretations according as the interests of the political state seemed to them to demand.
DIGESTA
The result was that the books of these laws multiplied, as blessed Dositheos and others assert, to such an extent that by the time of Emperor Justinian the Great they numbered more than two thousand. Justinian himself, with the help of the learned men named John Patricios the Tribonian, Theophilos, and Theodore, gathered all these books together and reduced them to fifty books, named Digesta, i.e., arrangements (or orders).
HEXECONTABIBLUS
The same emperor also made three Codices, named the Gregorian, the Hermogenian, and the Theodosian Code. Combining these Codes with the laws, which he made through Thalilaeos, Anatolios, and Isidoros, he made twelve books and named them the Dodecabiblus of the Codices. He himself composed the introduction and primer to the laws, which he named the Institutes and which was a sort of elementary summary of legal principles for the use of those who were studying law. He also gathered together in a separate book the Novels, i.e., the new orders (or arrangements), of all the emperors preceding him, together with his own, which were a hundred and seventy. Justinian not only gathered together all these laws, but he also translated them out of the Latin into the Greek language and explained them with the help of the learned men aforesaid, and especially of Tribonian, who was just as dexterous in avarice as he was in mind. On this account, taking coin from men who were involved in cases at law, he would either alter the laws to suit the wishes of those who paid him, or he would leave the laws obscure and doubtful, in order to prevent those reading them from understanding them and to beguile them into discord. Later Leo the Wise (Leo VI) gathered together all the Digests and Codes and Institutes and Novels of Justinian, and, having purged them, he combined them all into sixty books, which he named the Hexecontabiblus. He divided it into six sections and large volumes, each of which comprised many books. Lastly Constantine Porphyrogenitus, or Constantine VII, son of Leo VI, purged these laws a second time. Accordingly, whatever legal decisions in the Pentecontabiblus of Justinian and the Dodecabiblus were still in force, he inserted them in the Hexecontabiblus of his father Leo, and left out whatever had fallen into abeyance. I say “in abeyance” on the score that they were not placed in the Basilica (or Greek Digest) by Porphyrogenitus, and as seemed reasonable to him, and not to all the emperors; since, as learned Dositheos says (page 443 of the Dodecabiblus), the order to which the laws were reduced by Justinian is beyond compare, nor will anyone else be found to pronounce or compose better ones.
For this reason, too, Michael Attaliates said that though Leo issued many Novels (which, according to Blastaris, amounted to one hundred and eight, or, as others say, to one hundred and twenty), not all of them prevailed, but only those which had been added to supply what was wanting in the Novels of Justinian and those which were written with regard to cases which were not covered by other laws (page 77 of the Corpus Juris Graecoromani).
According to Varinus, a law is any royal command or order designed to correct any voluntary or involuntary offense, or a dictum premising what must be done or forbidding what must not be done. Note that Civil laws are called real forms and divine Scriptures.
17. MATRIMONY
These teachings have been gleaned, indeed, from the Book of what is called in Latin the Corpus Juris Graecoromani, meaning, Greek-Roman Jurisprudence.
18. BISHOPS AND SPIRITUAL FATHERS
In fact, bishops and spiritual fathers, or all those who expect to become bishops or spiritual fathers, ought to keep this book handy at all times, in such a way, for instance, as under their pillow, as did Alexander the Iliad of Homer; and they ought to study the Canons therein so frequently as to learn them by heart, since they are, or expect to be in the future, exceptional steersmen or helmsmen of the high-masted ship of the Holy Church, and for this reason they ought to know how to handle her Rudder scientifically, meaning the Canons in this Book, in order that by judicious guidance they may free sinners from the storms of sin.
19. FINANCING THE RUDDER
Not only did the fathers in the Holy Mountain pay the expense, but also other persons from various localities, whose names you will see at the end of the book; but the Hagiorites put up the most, and they caused others to see and be moved to this good.
20. SUBSCRIBERS
The names of the subscribers to this edition of the book will be found at the end.