Pearls from the Pedalion: On the Penances Prescribed by St. John the Faster

Read the two-part introduction to the "Pearls from the Pedalion" series here.

From The Orthodox Ethos: The Canons of St. John the Faster, Patriarch of Constantinople (+595), were adopted by the Ecumenical Council of Trullo (the Fifth-Sixth or Quinisext Council) and included in the Pedalion. St. John’s canons were criticized by some in his day for shortening the length of abstention from Holy Communion for various sins, compared to what had been prescribed by the Councils and Fathers before him. However, while the earlier canons of Fathers only specified abstention from Holy Communion for various lengths of time depending on the severity of the sin, St. John prescribed strict fasting and a certain number of prostrations to accompany the shortened period of abstention from Communion to lead a person to repentance. In Footnotes 10 and 11 of the Canons of St. John the Faster, St. Nikodemos explains that penances need to be applied with discernment, that in the earlier days abstention from Holy Communion was sufficient for leading the faithful to repentance, and how St. John’s prescriptions were not a complete innovation from the previous Canons and Fathers.

From St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite:

10. THE MAIN PURPOSE OF ST. JOHN THE FASTER’S CANONS

This same plea which the Faster makes in behalf of himself is made also by Nicephoros Chartophylax (in the book called Juris Graeco-Romani, page 343) for the Faster, in the following word: “We have been recipients of a custom of adjusting penalties in proportion to the power of each individual.” Nevertheless, we are constrained to say also this, that as for those things that the Faster appears to have failed to say with reference to the strictness of the canons, any prudent person who stops to consider, will find everything to be in accordance with the intellect and purpose of the Fathers. For, since St. Basil the Great in his Canon 74 orders that permission be given to every steward of souls to increase or to decrease the penances in accordance with the dispositions and persons concerned, and the affairs of the ones confessing their sins, and to adjust the benefit of souls with discretion, it is not to be thought strange if the Faster, in obedience to this Canon, innovated in some respect, in accordance with the spiritual gift with which he was endowed, by adjusting matters for the sinner, of course, with a view to his benefit.

11. FORMERLY DEPRIVATION OF COMMUNION WAS MOST SEVERE PENALTY

If perchance anyone should wonder why the Fathers of old failed to give any fixed satisfaction to penitents for so many fastings, or so many prostrations (for they left the satisfaction to each sinner to do unprescribed, by tears and fastings, and other beneficial works), but the only penalty they did fix was abstinence from Communion—if, I say, anyone wonders about this, we reply that the Christians of that time entertained such a fervent love for continual participation in the divine Mysteries that if anyone prohibited them the communion of the Mysteries, this appeared to them in reality to be an unbearable enormity and a canon and very severe expiation. Hence those divine Fathers, being well aware of this, could find no other more severe expiation in order to deter them from the wickedness than that of excluding them from the communion of the Mysteries. As to the fact that what was called penances and what was considered penances in regard to sinners was fastings and prayers and contrition of the body, and all the works of penitence, and the fruits which the Faster sets forth determinately in these canons, see Canon 12 of the 1st Ecumenical Council, and Canon 2 of Ancyra, and Canons 1 and 3 of Peter, and Canon 3 of Basil the Great. See exceptionally the Ascetics of the same Basil in the discussion of penalties, where not only excommunication, but also the obligation of Monks who had sinned to remain without food, and to stand at prayer.

As to the fact that this divine Faster observes in these canons both those same duties of the spiritual steward which Basil the Great mentions in his Canon 3, and the 6th Ecumenical Council in its Canon 102—strictness, that is to say, and extremeness and form and custom, in regard to those who will not condescend to strictness, see the footnote to Canon 12 of the 1st Ecumenical Council, to save us the trouble of repeating the same remarks here. And I omit saying that in many places in the canons stations or positions of penitence and of penitents are designated as the stations of weepers, of hearers, of kneelers, and of co-standers, which were assigned as penalties in that period. I say “in that period” because today no penitent has any such station assigned to him nor are any penitents put in such positions. For Zonaras says in regard to Canon 19 of Laodicea: “But nowadays the incidents involved in repentance do not occur, though I know not how it is that they have fallen into desuetude.” Symeon of Thessalonica, adding the reason, says: “But nowadays on account of the persecutions and continual adversities, seeing that the Fathers reasoned thus that it was well for catechumens indeed as well as deniers and murderers to be excluded, but for the rest who had only obtained baptism to be allowed, especially when their repentance was being superintended by the spiritual fathers.” Nevertheless, would that even now these four classes of penitents were superintended in church; for then sin would be more easily exscinded as a result of persons being ashamed of themselves.

Source:

Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite and Monk Agapios, translated by Denver Cummings, edited by Ralph Masterjohn. The Rudder, (Chicago, IL: The Orthodox Christian Educational Society, 1957), pp. 1700-1701.