Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume XIV/The Fourth Ecumenical Council/Canons/Canon V

Canon V.

bishops or clergymen who go about from city to city, it is decreed that the canons enacted by the Holy Fathers shall still retain their force.

Notes.

Those who go from city to city shall be subject to the canon law on the subject.

Clerical adventurers and brief pastorates are not the peculiar characteristics of any one century.

It is supposed by Hefele that the bishops were thinking of the case of Bassian, who, in the eleventh session (Oct. 29), pleaded that he had been violently ejected from the see of Ephesus.&#160; Stephen the actual bishop, answered that Bassian had not been &#8220;ordained&#8221; for that see, but had invaded it and been justly expelled.&#160; Bassian rejoined that his original consecration for the see of Evasa had been forcible even to brutality; that he had never even visited Evasa, that therefore his appointment to Ephesus was not a translation.&#160; Ultimately, the Council cut the knot by ordering that a new bishop should be elected, Basalan and Stephen retaining the episcopal title and receiving allowances from the revenues of the see (Mansi, vii. 273 et seqq.)

This canon is found in the Corpus Juris Canonici, Gratian&#8217;s Decretum, Pars II., Causa VII., Qu&#230;st. I., can. xxij.