CANON (Greek, a rule, measure or stand ard). 1. In the arts.— When art has succeeded in producing beautiful forms the question arises, with what proportions beauty of form is united. Artists of genius first started this question, and imitators, inferior to them in talents, scrupu lously followed their results, and naturally ex alted some existing work into a model for every performance. Among the Greeks the celebrated statuary Polycletus (452-412 a.c.) first insti tuted such inquiries; and as he generally repre sented youthful, pleasing figures, it is probable that he fixed the standard of beauty in the youthful form. The canon (the model statue) of Polycletus was accordingly a statue which was made principally for the purpose of show ing the beautiful proportions of the human form in a.youth just ripening into manhood. No copy of it is known to exist; the artist probably gave his model of proportion a quiet, simple attitude, without any strong distinguishing marks. His successors imitated it without de viation. Polycletus was not the only Greek artist who pursued such investigations respect ing the proportions of form. Among the moderns, DIfirer and Leonardo da Vinci have devoted themselves to similar inquiries.
2. In Scriptural literature, a term employed to designate the collection of books con taining the rule or standard of primitive Christianity; that is, the canonical books of the Holy Scriptures. The canon of the books of the OM Testatrnent, as contained in the Hebrew Bible, receives in this form equal respect among all Christians, because Christ and the apostles have expressly appealed to them, and in this way pronounced them writings inspired by God. There are certain books, however, belonging in subject to the Old Testament, but whose canoni cal character the Jews did not acknowledge, and which Protestants class together under the head of Apocrypha, and reject from the canon. For these there is only a Greek, and not a Hebrew, text. The Western Church accepted them as canonical in the African council, about the end of the 4th century; but the opinions of the clergy respecting them remained for a long time divided. Saint Jerome denied their canonicity,
and many theologians coincided with him. The Roman Catholic Church finally declared them canonical in the Council of Trent. (See APOC RYPHA). Respecting the number of books be longing to the canon of the New Testament, the opinions of Christians were much divided till the 6th century. As early as the 2d century the separation was made into the Evangelicon (the four Evangelists) and the Apostolion (the Acts and Epistles of the Apostles). The five his torical books, the Epistles of Paul, the First Epistle of Peter, and the First Epistle of John were universally acknowledged to be genuine in the 3d century; hence Eusebius, in his 'Ec clesiastical History,' written about 325 A.D., calls them Homologomena (universally re ceived). The other five Catholic epistles (Second of Peter, Second and Third of John, Jude and James) he calls Antilegomena (doubt ful, not universally received). At that time the Epistle to the Hebrews was considered genuine by most persons, and the Apocalypse by many. These books were received in the second half of the 4th century in the Egyptian Church (where Athanasius first used the term canoni cal), and in the Western Church. In the East ern Church, properly so called (the dioceses of the patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch and Jerusalem), only the Catholic epistles were of canonical authority at that time; the Apocalypse not till the 6th century. The canon of the New Testament has since remained unaltered, and the Protestant churches hold it in common with the Greek and Catholic churches. The results of critical examinations of the genuineness and canonical character of the single books of the Bible, even when they were unfavorable to the books, have produced no alteration in the estab lished canon. The reasons of the ancient fathers of the Church for or against the canoni cal character of the biblical books were merely historical and traditional, and built on philologi cal criticism; they are still the most tenable and rational; the philosophical grounds are more subject to be affected by extraneous influences. For bibliography see Bums.