Canon 35 of the Synod of Laodicaea (mid-4th century) reads as follows:
Christians must not forsake the Church
of God, and go away and invoke angels and gather assemblies, which things are
forbidden. If, therefore, any one shall be found engaged in this covert
idolatry, let him be anathema; for he has forsaken our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Son of God, and has gone over to idolatry (NPNF2 14:150)
Schaff
provides the following notes to this canon:
Ancient Epitome of Canon XXXV.
Whoso calls
assemblies in opposition to those of the Church and names angels, is near to
idolatry and let him be anathema.
Van Espen.
Whatever the
worship of angels condemned by this canon may have been, one thing is manifest,
that it was a species of idolatry, and detracted from the worship due to
Christ.
Theodoret
makes mention of this superstitious cult in his exposition of the Text of St.
Paul,
In the
Capitular of Charlemagne, a.d.
789 (cap. xvi.), it is said, "In that same council (Laodicea) it was
ordered that angels should not be given unknown names, and that such should not
be affixed to them, but that only they should be named by the names which we
have by authority. These are Michael, Gabriel, Raphael." And then is
subjoined the present canon. The canon forbids "to name" (ὀνομάζειν) angels,
and this was understood as meaning to give them names instead of to call upon
them by name.
Perchance the
authors of the Capitular had in mind the Roman Council under Pope Zachary, a.d. 745, against
Aldebert, who was found to invoke by name eight angels in his prayers.
It should be
noted that some Latin versions of great authority and antiquity read angulos
for angelos. This would refer to doing these idolatrous rites in
corners, hiddenly, secretly, occulte as in the Latin. But this reading,
though so respectable in the Latin, has no Greek authority for it.
This canon has often been used in controversy as condemning the
cultus which the Catholic Church has always given to the angels, but those who
would make such a use of this canon should explain how these interpretations
can be consistent with the cultus of the Martyrs so evidently approved by the
same council; and how this canon came to be accepted by the Fathers of the
Second Council of Nice, if it condemned the then universal practice of the
Church, East and West. Cf. Forbes, Considerationes Modestae.
(NPNF2 14:150-51)
In his commentary on Col 3:17, Theodoret made a similar argument to the Synod of Laodicea:
Offer thanksgiving to God and the
Father through Him [Christ], not through angels. The Laodicean synod, following
this law and desiring to find a cure for that old disease, enacted a law that
they should not pray to angels, nor forsake our Lord Jesus Christ. (Original translation
by Seth Kasten, PG 82 :620, in Seth Kasten, Against the Invocation of Saints:
An Apology for the Protestant Doctrine of Prayer Over and Against the Doctrine
of the Eastern Orthodox Church [Royal Oak, Mich.: Scholastic Lutherans,
2023], 73)
Charles Joseph Hefele (1809-1893), a leading Roman Catholic historian, wrote the following about the canon in his work on the Councils of the Church:
Can. 35. “Christians shall not forsake the Church of God and turn to the worship of angels, thus introducing a cultus of the angels. This is forbidden. Whoever, therefore, shows an inclination to this hidden idolatry, let him be anathema, because he has forsaken our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and gone over to idolatry.”
The Apostle Paul had before found it needful in his Epistle to the Colossians (2:18), which was probably addressed also to the Laodiceans, to warn the Christians of Phrygia against a worship of angels, which was contrary to the faith. Notwithstanding which, however, this superstitious worship of angels still continued in those countries, the very native home of this Synod, for in the fifth century Theodoret of Cyrus bears witness to it in his commentary on the passage of S. Paul just quoted, observing that the Synod of Laodicæa had forbidden “praying to the angels” (τὸ τοῖς ἀγγέλοις προσεύχεσθαι), but that, in those regions of Phrygia and Pisidia “Michael-Churches” were to be met with as late as his own time. The basis of this worship of angels was the idea that God was too high to be immediately approached, but that His good will must be gained through the angels.
It hardly needs to be observed that this canon does not exclude a regulated worship of angels, such as is usual in the Church, although on the Protestant side it has often been so interpreted. Augustine and Eusebius have long ago given the true view of this. If the ancient Church allowed the worship of martyrs, why should she have entirely forbidden the worship of angels? This canon expresses the idea of the worship of angels by ὀνομάζειν ἀγγέλους, which gave occasion for the statement in a capitulary of Charlemagne of the year 789, that “the Synod of Laodicea had forbidden the giving of other names to the angels than those authorized: Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael.” Perhaps, however, the capitulary in question had in view a Roman Synod under Pope Zacharias in 745, which, in contradistinction to the eight angels invoked by the heretic Adelbert (at the time of S. Boniface, the apostle of the Germans), only allowed the names of the angels above mentioned.
Lastly, it must be observed that, after the example of several codices of the translation by Dionysius in Merlin’s edition of the Councils, instead of angelos was written angulos, which of course was originally a mere clerical error. (Charles Joseph Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church, 5 vols. [trans. Henry Nutcombe Oxenham; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1876], 2:317-18)
