Folia Theologica et Canonica 1. 23/15 (2012)
RECENSIONS
RECENSIONS 289 These assemblies of bishops discussed the most important questions - on doctrinal and disciplinary level - of the Church. Such a problems were false doctrines, heresies, moreover liturgical themes (e.g., date of Easter). After the great year of 313 (Edict of Milan by Constantine the Great) the councils were convoked more frequented times and the primary topic was basically some dogmatic theological questions which well crystalized the teaching of the Church during the 4'h and 5th centuries. The council’s authority depended on the number of the conciliar fathers at the beginning, not on the title “general” or “particular”. It elucidates how the Council of Ancyra (314) could be indicated together with the Council of Nicaea I (325). The early conciliar canon law collections of the 4th and 5th centuries are the written memory of these conciliar legislations in East, Africa, Gallia, Hispania and Italy. The scholarly research recognizes as a genuine Eastern canonical collection a particular composition which is the origin of every other important composition of the Eastern discipline. This is the so called Syntagma Canonum, which had been compiled between 342 and 381, and its first redaction had summarized the basic Eastern canons of the ancient councils (i.e. Rhalles, G. A. - Potles, M., Zvvzaypa zcov Oeicov kcu icpcov kccvovcűv, I-VI. Athens 1852— 1859). The original text of this genuine first Eastern collection has been lost. This is the reason why Aram Mardirossian’s publication gives an extraordinary important, unique and fundamental analysis into the hands of researchers of theology, ecclesiastical history and canon law history on the so called Canonical Collection of Antioch. Why does it call “Antioch”? Because the composition of this collection took place in the Church of Antioch and through this reason in the scholarly literature it calls “Syntagma of Antioch”, however the Latin name is Corpus canonum orientale. It was written in the above indicated period in Syria, but the original language of it was certainly Greek which has been translated to Syrian around 400. The text was reconstructed by Eduard Schwartz and edited firstly in 1936 (Die Kanonessammlungen der alten Reichskirche, in Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Kanonistische Abteilung 25 [1936] 1-114) then in 1960 (Gesammelte Schriften, IV. Berlin 1960, 159-275). The hypothetic first recension contained the canons of Ancyra (314), Neocesarea (314/319), Antioch (341?), Gangra (343), and canons of Laodicea (second half of the 4th century). Jean Gaudemet renumerated the canons within the reconstructed contents of the Syntagma in 1985 (i.e. Gaudemet, J., Les sources du droit de l’Église en Occident du IIe au VIIe siècle [Initationis au christianisme ancien], Paris 1985, 76). Mardirossian gave particular attention to Jean Gaudemet’s research in his work which is well testified by those forty- one publications which are listed in the bibliography of this volume. It has been already approved before 2010 that many further revisions of the Syntagma Canonum happened when the body of the original contents was firstly supplemented
