During the first three centuries, the Church was administered according to the Scriptures only and the rules laid down by the Apostles and bishops, as occasion required. Thus Clement, the disciple and successor of Peter, mentions the rule given by the Apostles concerning the succession of bishops, and Ignatius the Martyr, in his epistles, exhorts his followers diligently and tenaciously to observe the traditions of the Apostles. Thus, too, in the controversy con cerning the celebration of Easter, the contest ants on each side alleged the apostolic tradition. But councils were held at Ancyra and Neo Cesarsea in 314, at Nicasa in 325, at Antioch in 322, at Sardica in 347, at Gangra from 362 to 370, at Laodicsea between 337 and 381, at Con stantinople in 381, at Ephesus in 431, and in the council of Chalcedon in 451 a collection of canons made up from these previous councils was read and partly authorized for the entire Church. With the exception of those of Sar dica, which are in Latin, the canons of all these early councils were formulated in Greek. The name of the compiler of this first collection is unknown and few of these early canons have reached our times, only their tenor being known through subsequent use in the Western Church, especially in Spain. After the emperors as sumed the Christian religion, ecclesiastical legis lation became important, and the laws of the Church were therefore in the year 438 inserted in his collection by the Emperor Theodosius II. Valentinian III afterward adopted this collec tion for the West. About this time — the latter half of the 5th century — a compilation was made of the so-called apostolic canons and con stitutions together with decrees of some of the councils. Originally there were 50 canons called apostolic, but their number was afterward increased to 85, some of which are certainly spurious. In the East these were received as having the stamp of authority, but not so in the West, where their origin was doubted. How ever Dionysius adopted the smaller collection of 50, considering them useful for discipline, and thereby without determining their origin procured for them in Rome the stamp of au thority. John Scholasticus made a collection of canons for the Greek Church in 564, to which he added 68 canons taken from Saint Basil. He divided the work into 50 titles. To this he later added the laws of the empire which had relation to the laws of the Church, and the new compila tion became known as Nomo-canon. The Em peror Justinian II in 692 assembled a council in his palace at Constantinople, called the Trul lan council from the room in which it was held, and 102 canons were enacted. When the acts and canons of this council were submitted to Pope Sergius at Rome for approval he re fused even though the Emperor ordered his armor-bearer to bring the Pope to Constanti nople. The Trullan compilation consisted of the so-called canons of the Apostles, those of the 10 councils previously mentioned, the canons of the synod of Carthage, the decrees of a synod in 394 at Constantinople under Nectarius, the canonical decisions of the 12 eastern patriarchs and of some bishops from the 3d to the 5th centuries, the canon of a council held at Carthage under Cyprian in 256, to all of which were added the 102 canons drawn up by the Trullan council itself. Afterward 22 canons of the second council of Nicza held in 787 were added. On this foundation the Church law of the East was based up to the middle of the 9th century. By the Trullan synod, priests were allowed to marry, which up to that time was against the canon law of both the Eastern and the Western Church. The Trullan synod also sanctioned the canons of the Apostles, one of which teaches the doctrine of the re-baptisers, which had been previously repudiated by Pope Gelasius. Herein is noticed the first real di vergence between Eastern and Western canon law. Photius, who was intruded into the see of Constantinople, called a council against the patriarch Ignatius in 861, and 17 canons made by this council were added to the codex of the Greek Church. He also formulated a new col lection, in which the second part, called the Nomo-canon, remained unchanged. The Em peror Leo the Philosopher, who deposed Photius, rescinded his collection of laws, but nevertheless the seeds of the separation of the Greek Church from that of Rome had been im planted by the work, although a complete schism took place only later in 1054 under Michael Cerularius. From time to time new ecclesiastical constitutions issued from the em perors, as from Leo Philosophus in 911, from Constantine Porphyrogenitus in 961, from Alexius Commenus in 1118, from Isaac Alexius in 1185-90. The resolutions of synods sum moned by the patriarchs of Constantinople, epistles of renowned bishops and their de cisions, formed another addition to the canon law of the Eastern Church. The first com mentary on the Greek codex was undertaken by Theodore Prodromos in the 8th century. The second, containing the text with a commentary, is the Nomo-canon of Doropater. The monk John Zonares composed a comprehensive verbal interpretation in using the collection of Photius as a basis. Fifty years later, Theodore Balsamon made a commentary with a view to practical questions, comparing the canons with the civil law and insisting that Justinian's maxims only applied when conformable to the Basilica. He added many matters not found in the collection of Photius. Epitomes of canon law were composed at a comparatively early period, the author of the first of which appears to have been Stephen of Ephesus in the 5th cen tury. There is a synopsis by Aristenus aug mented by Alexius Aristenus in 1160, and another by Arsenius, a monk of Mount Athos, in 1255. Constantine Harmenopoulos in 1350 composed an epitome of the spiritual law in six parts, using, with some omissions, the col lection of Photius as altered by Zonares. In order to reduce canon law to a more practical form than it appeared in the collection of Photius and at the same time present a more comprehensive work than these epitomes, Mat thxus Blastares drew up his syntagma in 1335, divided into chapters of different lengths and arranged according to the principal word of these rubrics, the numbers of the chapters com mencing anew under each letter. Each chapter begins with the ecclesiastical law, followed by the civil law applicable to it, without, however, mentioning the source of the latter. This work came into very general use among the clergy. The collection of Photius and the syntagma of Blastares continued still in use under the Turk ish rule and were alike termed Nomo-canon and, metaphorically, the The col lection and interpretation of Zonares also ob tained canonical authority. From these ma terials many extracts were translated into modern Greek up to the 18th century, and sev eral textbooks composed for the use of the clergy, some of which were printed in Venice. Lastly a comprehensive collection was pub lished in 1800 at the instance of the patriarch and synod. It contains the old Greek text of all the authentic canons of councils since Photius and Zonares. to which are added interpretations of the authentic commentators in modern Greek, especially those of Zonares and Balsamon. In the interpretation, the canons of those fathers are taken into account which had not been con firmed by any general synod, but had obtained a canonical authority. Nothing was inserted from the municipal law works which did not agree with the canons. Several appendices were added, including formulas for ecclesiasti cal business, and upon these and similar collec tions is founded the present law of the Greek separate church. The Russian followed the Greek Church in adopting compilations of Church law up to the end of the 15th century.
In 1550 certain regulations respecting the juris diction of bishops were introduced. Some canonical epistles and rules drawn up at coun cils are used in addition to the Greek codex, and manuals adapted to the country have been compiled therefrom. Peter the Great in 1721 changed the chief executive authority in the Church from a patriarch into the Holy Synod, by decrees of which the Church to-day is ruled. By an arrangement lately made with the Roman pontiff the bishops and priests under Roman jurisdiction are ruled by the canon law of Rome, subject to the civil laws of the Russian empire, and to prevent complications, Russia, besides a resident minister and two secretaries, has at the Vatican a representative agent for ecclesiastical affairs.
In the Western or Latin Church the canons of Nictea and Sardica were the only code pub licly received up to the end of the 5th century. About this time the Spanish translation of the Greek code was turned into barbarous Latin, and became known as the Prisca. The decre tals of the Roman pontiffs were added to the canons of the Greek code, as found in the Prisca, but it seems that Dionysius the Little, about the year 500, was the first to formulate a collection of the councils and the decretah. He had previously made a collection of the concilia for Stephen, the bishop of Dalmatia. The dea con Theodosius later made a new collection founded on the old Spanish and the Dionysian. A third collection termed the Avellanian, val uable for the historical documents it contains, appeared in the latter half of the 6th century. These, however, were superseded by a second edition of Dionysius, made probably in 731 under Pope Gregory II. In this edition some decrees overlooked previously were added, to gether with an appendix consisting of the statutes of the Roman pontiffs from Linus downwards, those up to Sericius, however, be ing given only in an historical form as no i longer actually in existence. The German con querors of Italy in 476 did not, although Arian, interfere with the laws by which the Church was governed, but when Justinian reconquered Italy he introduced his Novelle in the Julian translation in place of the codex of Theodosius II, and this order of things was later upheld by the Lombard kings in their edicts. In Africa the deacon Fulgentius Farrandus made the first collection in 547, termed Breviatio. This was an excerpt in 232 numbers of nearly all the Greek canons, including the Nictean, to which was added the African• concilia under Grams in 348-49, under Genethlius in 390, and that of Carthage in 419 with its 33 canons, together with 304 taken from synods as well as an ex tract from the canons framed at Hippo in 393. The second African work was the Concordia of Bishop Cresconius in 690, founded upon the Dionysian, but arranged in 300 titles instead of in chronological order. This work was incor porated with the Dionysian and appeared under the name Breviarium. But the Arabs now put a sudden stop to all further development of i canon law in this quarter. As early as the 5th century, as noted above, there was in Spain a translation of the Greek canons; in the 6th cen tury Martin of Braga made a collection of canons, but in the 7th century Isadore of Seville held two councils, half church, half civil, the canons of which may be said almost to have formed the basis of the constitutional law of Spain in both Church and State down to the 15th century. The collection of canons known as Collectio Isadoriana or Hispana was divided into two parts; the first containing the classified series of Greek, African, Frankist and Spanish canons, and the second the de cretals from Pope Damasus in 366 to Gregory the Great in 604. In the 5th century an exten sive but confused collection of councils and de cretals was compiled in Gaul under Gelasius. It was founded upon the old Spanish version and some peculiar version of the canons of Nicaa and the Prisca. Out of it sprung several other collections; the first in the middle of the 6th century, containing the councils of Nicza, and of Sardica, some Frankist concilia and papal decretals; the second of the same date containing Greek, African and Gallic canons, and papal decretals in a confused order; the third in the 7th century, containing 103 num bers, many decretals, Frankist, Roman and Italian concilia. A fourth and a fifth collec tion of the same century contained chiefly Frankist and Spanish conciliar decrees. After Charlemagne in 774 on his first visit to Rome had received from Pope Hadrian a copy of the Dionysian collection with some additions, he had it sanctioned in a synod at Aix-la-Chapelle as the codex canonum for the Frankist empire. In addition to these principal works many of the bishops composed capitularies for their own dioceses, as Bonif ace of Mayence, Theodulph of Orleans, Hincmar of Rheims. The