Page:EB1911 - Volume 02.djvu/211

 Dogmengeschichte (3rd ed.), i. 153 ff.; E. Haupt, Zum Verständnis d. Apostolats in NT. (Halle, 1896); and especially H. Monnier, La Notion de l’apostolat, des origines à Irénée (Paris, 1903). The later legends and their sources are examined by T. Schermann, Propheten- und Apostellegenden (Leipzig, 1907).

APOSTLE SPOONS, a set of spoons, usually of silver or silver gilt, with the handles terminating in figures of the apostles, each bearing their distinctive emblem. They were common baptismal gifts during the 15th and 16th centuries, but were dying out by 1666. Often single spoons were given, bearing the figure of the patron or name saint of the child. Sets of the twelve apostles are not common, and complete sets of thirteen, with the figure of our Lord on a larger spoon, are still rarer. The Goldsmiths’ Company in London has one such set, all by the same maker and bearing the hall-mark of 1626, and a set of thirteen was sold at Christie’s in 1904 for £4900.

APOSTOLICAL CONSTITUTIONS ( or  ), a collection of ecclesiastical regulations in eight books, the last of which concludes with the eighty-five Canons of the Holy Apostles. By their title the Constitutions profess to have been drawn up by the apostles, and to have been transmitted to the Church by Clement of Rome; sometimes the alleged authors are represented as speaking jointly, sometimes singly. From the first they have been very variously estimated; the Canons, as a rule, more highly than the rest of the work. For example, the Trullan Council of Constantinople (quini-sextum), 692, accepts the Canons as genuine by its second canon, but rejects the Constitutions on the ground that spurious matter had been introduced into them by heretics; and whilst the former were henceforward used freely in the East, only a few portions of the latter found their way into the Greek and oriental law-books. Again, Dionysius Exiguus (c. 500) translated fifty of the Canons into Latin, although under the title Canones qui dicuntur Apostolorum, and thus they passed into other Western collections; whilst the Constitutions as a whole remained unknown in the West until they were published in 1563 by the Jesuit Turrianus. At first received with enthusiasm, their authenticity soon came to be impugned; and their true significance was largely lost sight of as it began to be realized that they were not what they claimed to be. Vain attempts were still made to rehabilitate them, and they were, in general, more highly estimated in England than elsewhere. The most extravagant estimate of all was that of Whiston, who calls them “the most sacred standard of Christianity, equal in authority to the Gospels themselves, and superior in authority to the epistles of single apostles, some parts of them being our Saviour’s own original laws delivered to the apostles, and the other parts the public acts of the apostles” (Historical preface to Primitive Christianity Revived, pp. 85-86). Others, however, realized their composite character from the first, and by degrees some of the component documents became known. Bishop Pearson was able to say that “the eight books of the Apostolic Constitutions have been after Epiphanius’s time compiled and patched together out of the didascaliae or doctrines which went under the names of the holy apostles and their disciples or successors” (Vind. Ign. i. cap. 5); whilst a greater scholar still, Archbishop Usher, had already gone much further, and concluded, forestalling the results of modern critical methods, that their compiler was none other than the compiler of the spurious Ignatian epistles (Epp. Polyc. et Ign. p. lxiii. f., Oxon. 1644). The Apostolical Constitutions, then, are spurious, and they are one of a long series of documents of like character. But we have not really gauged their significance by saying that they are spurious. They are the last stage and climax of a gradual process of compilation and crystallization, so to speak, of unwritten church custom; and a short account of this process will show their real importance and value.

These documents are the outcome of a tendency which is found in every society, religious or secular, at some point in its history. The society begins by living in accordance with its fundamental principles. By degrees these translate themselves into appropriate action. Difficulties are faced and solved as they arise; and when similar circumstances recur they will tend to be met in the same way. Thus there grows up by degrees a body of what may be called customary law. Plainly, there is no particular point of time at which this customary law can be said to have begun. To all appearance it is there from the first in solution and gradually crystallizes out; and yet it is being continually modified as time goes on. Moreover, the time comes when the attempt is made, either by private individuals or by the society itself, to put this “customary law” into writing. Now when this is done, two tendencies will at once show themselves. (a) This “customary law” will at once become more definite: the very fact of putting it into writing will involve an effort after logical completeness. There will be a tendency on the part of the writer to fill up gaps; to state local customs as if they obtained universally; to introduce his personal equation, and to add to that which is the custom that which, in his opinion, ought to be. (b) There will be a strong tendency to fortify that which has been written with great names, especially in days when there is no very clear notion of literary property. This is done, not always with any deliberate consciousness of fraud (although it must be clearly recognized that truth is not one of the “natural virtues,” and that the sense of the obligations of truthfulness was far from strong), but rather to emphasize the importance of what was written, and the fact that it was no new invention of the writer’s. In a non-literary age fame gathers about great names; and that which, ex hypothesi, has gone on since the beginning of things is naturally attributed to the founders of the society. Then come interpolations to make this ascription more probable, and the prefixing of a title, then or subsequently, which states it as a fact. This is precisely the way in which the Apostolical Constitutions and other kindred documents have come into being. They are attempts, made in various places and at different times, to put into writing the order and discipline and character of the Church; in part for private instruction and edification, but in part also with a view to actual use; frequently even with an actual reference to particular circumstances. In this lies their importance, to a degree which is only just being adequately realized. They contain evidence of the utmost value as to the order of the Church in early days; evidence, however, which needs to be sifted with the greatest care, since the personal preferences of the writer and the customs of the local church to which he belongs are continually mixed up with things which have a wider prevalence. It is only by careful investigation, by the method of comparisons, that these elements can be disentangled; but as the number of documents of this class known to us is continually increasing, their value increases even more than proportionately. And whilst their local and fugitive character must be fully recognized and allowed for, is it unjustifiable to set them aside or leave them out of account as heretical, and therefore negligible.

It will be sufficient here to mention shortly the chief collections of this kind which came into existence during the first four centuries; generally as the work of private individuals, and having, at any rate, no more than a local authority of some kind, (a) The earliest known to us is the Didachē or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, itself compiled from earlier materials, and dating from about 120 (see ). (b) The Apostolic Church Order (apostolische Kirchenordnung of German writers); Ecclesiastical Canons of the Holy Apostles of one MS.; Sententiae Apostolorum of Pitra: of about 300, and emanating probably from Asia Minor. Its earlier part, cc. 1-14, depends upon the Didachē, and the rest of it is a book of discipline in which Harnack has attempted to distinguish two older fragments of church law (Texte u. Unters. ii. 5). (c) The so-called Canones Hippolyti, probably Alexandrian or Roman, and of the first half of the 3rd century. It will be observed that these