Note on Parallel Conciliar Legislation
As noted above, the Council of
Nicaea laid down some ground rules for the system of episcopal authority.
Bishoprics should be grouped together in provinces under ‘metropolitans’ – over-bishops,
so to speak, whose approval of the election of a bishop was required; the initial
election should be by the bishops of the province. The mid fourth-century Synod
of Serdica, or rather the western contingent at Serdica, also legislated on
authority structures. Its troubled history has recently been examined closely
by Christopher W. B. Stephens, Canon Law and Episcopal Authority: The Canons
of Antioch and Serdica (Oxford, 2015). The death of Constantine ushered in
a period of division among Christian bishops but Stephens directs emphasis away
from theological controversy about the Trinity to canon law (p. 238) and to
‘divergent ideas about the nature and location of power and the authority for
decision-making in the Church’ (p. 7); the ‘crisis was one focused on the
nature of episcopal and conciliar power’ (p. 8; cf. p. 10). The canons of
Antioch are redated by Stephens to after the death of Constantine (p. 6). They
required that the metropolitan be present at synods: he ‘could not act alone,
but the synod and the bishops under his care could not act without his
consent’; the Serdican canons reacted against the canons of Antioch (p. 236)
and placed the bishop of Rome at the head of the hierarchy (p. 224). ‘The
Serdican legislation attempted to overstep the Eastern model of ecclesiastical
government and develop in the bishop of Rome an oversight role amongst the
bishops with real power to make decisions that would influence activities
across the whole Church’ (p. 232; cf. p. 33). The ‘see of Peter claimed a new
appellate jurisdiction over all bishops . . . Something so bold could only have
been attempted at a time when the Church had been torn apart by its divided
leadership, mourning the loss of unified imperial guidance, but ripe for
change’ (p. 234). That was not acceptable to Eastern bishops. With two emperors
who didn’t agree, consensus could not be achieved (p. 230). ‘We can understand
what was going on at Serdica more fully when we understand the canon law of
this period as being written in the context of a vacuum of leadership and of
power in the Church left by the death of Constantine in 337’: the idea of
universal ecclesiastical legislation had taken hold but there was now no
Constantine to enforce it (p. 229).
The canons of Serdica had an
embarrassing after-history for the papacy. It appears that ‘[i]n the Roman
chancery the canons of Serdica were transcribed in a codex following the canons
of Nicaea’, so that they came to be regarded as Nicaean. This became a serious
problem at a time of tension between Rome and the African Church, under the
successors of Innocent I. With studied politeness, it was suggested to a papal
representative at a council at Carthage in 419 that the Nicaean authenticity of
the canons in question needed checking against the text in Constantinople.
Conciliar legislation relating to
the hierarchy of authority found an important channel of diffusion in the first
part of the canon law collection of Dionysius Exiguus. The material has been
conveniently summarized in an article by Gennadios Limouris. There are
relevant sections on the role of metropolitan bishops, on dioceses and the
spatial limitation of episcopal authority, on bishops, and on monks. (D. L. d’Avray,
Papal Jurisprudence, c. 400: Sources of the Canon Law Tradition [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2019], 130-32, emphasis in bold added)
