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

Canon I.

it is needful that they who were detained from the holy Synod and remained in their own district or city, for any reason, ecclesiastical or personal, should not be ignorant of the matters which were thereby decreed; we, therefore, notify your holiness and charity that if any Metropolitan of a Province, forsaking the holy and Ecumenical Synod, has joined the assembly of the apostates, or shall join the same hereafter; or, if he has adopted, or shall hereafter adopt, the doctrines of Celestius, he has no power in any way to do anything in opposition to the bishops of the province, since he is already cast forth from all ecclesiastical communion and made incapable of exercising his ministry; but he shall himself be subject in all things to those very bishops of the province and to the neighbouring orthodox metropolitans, and shall be degraded from his episcopal rank.

Notes.

If a metropolitan, having deserted his synod, adheres or shall adhere to Celestine, let him be cast out.

Scholion concerning Celestine and Celestius.&#160; Whose finds at the end of the fourth canon of the Holy Synod of Ephesus [and the same is true of this first canon.&#160; Ed.] &#8220;Clerics who shall have consented to Celestine or Nestorius, should be deposed,&#8221; let him not read &#8220;Celestine&#8221; with an &#8220;n,&#8221; but &#8220;Celestius&#8221; without the &#8220;n.&#8221;&#160; For Celestine was the holy and orthodox Pope of Rome, Celestius was the heretic.

It is perfectly certain that this was no accident on the part of Aristenus, for in his commentary on Canon V., he expressly says that &#8220;Celestine was Bishop of Rome&#8221; and goes on to affirm that, &#8220;The Holy Synod decreed that they who embraced the opinions of Nestorius and Celestine,&#8221; etc.&#160; What perhaps is equally astonishing is that Nicholas Hydruntinus, while correcting the name, still is of opinion that Celestius was a pope of Rome and begins his scholion with the title, &#960;&#949;&#961;&#953; &#922;&#949;&#955;&#949;&#963;&#964;&#8055;&#957;&#959;&#965; &#954;&#945;&#8054; &#922;&#949;&#955;&#949;&#963;&#964;&#8055;&#959;&#965; &#928;&#945;&#960;&#8182;&#957; &#929;&#8061;&#956;&#951;&#962;.&#160; Beveridge well points out that this confusion is all the more remarkable as in the Kalendar of the Saints observed at that very time by the Greeks, on the eighth day of April was kept the memory of &#8220;Celestine, Pope of Rome, as a Saint and Champion against the Nestorian heretics.&#8221;&#160; (Bev., Annot, in C. v.).

Simeon the Logothete adds to this epitome the words, &#954;&#945;&#8054; &#964;&#8056; &#7952;&#958;&#8134;&#962; &#7936;&#948;&#953;&#959;&#8055;&#954;&#951;&#964;&#959;&#962; which are necessary to make the sense complete.