Folia Theologica et Canonica 1. 23/15 (2012)
RECENSIONS
284 RECENSIONS Aschendorf. Münster. 1965; sowie Johannes Stöhr. Zur Frühgeschichte des Gnadenstreites. Aschendorf, Münster, 1980. Zoltán Rokay Hartmann, W. - Pennington, K. (edd.), The History of Byzantine and Eastern Canon Law to 1500 (History of Canon Law 4), The Catholic University of America Press Washington DC. 2012, pp. 356 “Byzantine life is now seen as marked by constant change though at the same time there was loyal adherence to certain traditions governing the outlook of both Church and Empire. (...) The Church was not a department of state. But it was closely integrated into the daily life an empire which was regarded as being ideally the mimesis or copy of the heavenly kingdom.“ This assertion is by Joan Mervyn Hussey (i.e. Hussey, J.M., The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire [Oxford History of the Christian Church], Oxford 1990, 1) and shows well how important and requisite to discover those particular emphases of the Eastern Church which gave peculiarities not only to its general and art history or theological concept, but also to the special situation concerning the ecclesiastical legislation which concluded in several canonical - or so called Nomo- canon - collections. When the momentous project of the new processing of the canon law history in English has begun under the direction of Professor Wilfried Hartmann and Professor Kenneth Pennington, the whole community of scholars of the science of canon law history has been waiting for the volumes of this modem series. The scholars have not been disappointed by the erudite exposition of the particular volumes. Now we have the eighth volume of this series which contains an extraordinary and very difficult topic or area of the canon law history, namely the Byzantine and Eastern canon law history from the beginning up to 1500. This volume itself is unique and revolutionary, because about this theme has published independent book only in Greek, but in Western languages and about the new results there have been only articles in scientific reviews and lexicons, or chapters in the general handbooks of the canon law history. However, the books of this last category were dealing basically with the Latin disciplinary tradition of the Church and the Byzantine canon law history has taken place in them as a supplementary question. The importance of this analyzed volume is clearly explained by the editors in the Prologue. The First Chapter is a very informative composition by Susan Wessel on the Patristic Age and its canonical sources which had built a conceptual and legislative basis for the first general council, i.e. the Council of Nicaea (325) [The Formation of Ecclesiastical Law in the Early Church, 1-23]. Professor Wessel teaches at The Catholic University of America, School of Theology and Reli
