§ 44. The Slavonic Canonical Collections

The Orthodox Slavs, enlightened in Christianity by preachers of the Greek Church, received from that same Church, just as they received the liturgical books necessary for divine service and translated them into their own Slavonic language for use in worship, so likewise they received from her, and translated into their own language, the corresponding canonical collections, for use in church administration.

1) The first Greek canonical collection translated into the Slavonic language is the Nomocanon in 50 Titles, also called the Nomocanon of Scholasticus.[1] It is held to have been translated, by Methodius the Slav—hence in the ninth century—and it was in use in all the Slavonic lands down to the thirteenth century.[2] At the same time the Nomocanon in 14 Titles, in its first redaction, was in use in the Russian Church, and was translated, in the opinion of Russian canonists, in Russia in the time of Yaroslav, son of Prince Vladimir—hence in the eleventh century.[3] Both these canonical collections later fell out of use among the Orthodox Slavs and were replaced by the Krmčija.

2) By the name “Krmčija” (Kormčaja Kniga) is meant the Slavonic canonical collection, so called when its first printed edition appeared, in the same sense in which today’s Greek canonical collection is called the “Pedalion.” Perhaps the editors of the Pedalion followed the example of the editors of the Krmčija in this. For a long time the question of the origin of our Krmčija remained unclarified, and only in more recent times has it been sufficiently elucidated.[4] The Krmčija, in the form in which it is found in the Old Serbian manuscripts from which today’s printed edition was prepared, owes its origin to the labors of St Sava of Serbia, most likely in the monastery of Hilandar at the beginning of the thirteenth century. From Serbian lands this Krmčija was carried to Bulgaria, and the Bulgarian despot Jacob Svetislav, at the corresponding request, sent it in 1262 to Russia to Metropolitan Cyril II. This metropolitan, at a council at Vladimir in 1274, proclaimed this collection generally binding for the Russian Church. When the printing of church books began in Russia, it was decided to print the Krmčija as well, and this from a single manuscript of that same Krmčija which Cyril had received from Svetislav.[5] It was in 1650 that it was first printed. This first edition proved faulty, so that in 1653 a new edition was prepared, and from this edition the Krmčija was reprinted down to our own century. This printed Krmčija is divided into four parts. In the first, introductory part there is: 1) an article on the division of the churches, Eastern and Western; 2) on the baptism of the Rus; 3) on the establishment of the Moscow patriarchate; 4) from Blastares’s Syntagma, on the significance of the canons; 5) and 6) accounts of all the ecumenical and local councils that the Orthodox Church receives; 7) both prefaces of the Nomocanon in Fourteen Titles; 8) this Nomocanon itself, but only its canonical part;[6] 9) a survey of the contents of what will follow in the next part; and 10) a note on this printed edition. The second part has forty-one chapters, which (except chapters 25 and 41) are a word-for-word translation of that canonical synopsis on which Aristenus wrote his commentaries.[7] The third part has twenty-nine chapters, composed from various sources, the most important of which are these: chapter 42 (by the continuous numbering of the second part, or chapter 1 of this third part) contains the collection of John Scholasticus in eighty-seven chapters;[8] chapter 43 contains three novels of the emperor Alexius Comnenus;[9] chapter 44 contains the church-civil part of the Nomocanon in Fourteen Titles;[10] chapter 46, excerpts from the Ecloga of the emperor Leo the Isaurian;[11] chapter 48, the Procheiron of the emperor Basil the Macedonian;[12] chapter 49, the Ecloga of Leo the Isaurian;[13] chapter 50 contains: a) an article on the sacrament of marriage, b) on the degrees of kinship, and c) on betrothal;[14] chapter 51, Sisinnius’s synodal decree on unlawful marriages;[15] chapter 52, the tomus of union;[16] chapter 53, the canonical answers of Patriarch Nicholas;[17] chapter 54, the canonical answers of Nicetas;[18] chapter 57, the canons of Nicephorus the Confessor;[19] and chapter 58, the canonical answers of John of Kitros.[20] The concluding part has: 1) a note on the name of the Krmčija; 2) the donation charter of the emperor Constantine to Pope Sylvester;[21] and 3) an article on the separation of the Western Church.[22]

In the course of time the printed Krmčija came into use among all the Orthodox Slavs, who began obtaining it from Russia, and it is regarded as the official canonical collection.

3) In the period after the fall of the Serbian state, and while printed church books, including the printed Krmčija, were not yet being obtained from Russia, there was in use in the Serbian church, alongside the Krmčija of St Sava, another canonical collection, namely Matthew Blastares’s alphabetical Syntagma, in an Old Serbian translation. The Greek original of this Syntagma dates, as we know, from 1335, and from that same century an Old Serbian translation of the Syntagma survives in several manuscript copies,[23] from which it must be concluded that this collection was used in the church practice of the Serbs. Many further manuscript copies of the same collection from later centuries show that it continued to be used afterward as well,[24] which is also confirmed by the fact that an abridged collection was made from this same collection in the Serbian church, and that several manuscript copies of that abridged collection have likewise survived.[25] Just as in the Serbian church, this Syntagma of Blastares in Slavonic translation was used, alongside other canonical collections, in the Bulgarian and the Russian church as well.[26]

4) In the Krmčija the canons are set out, as we have said, synoptically, and the translation, too, is not everywhere exact, so that it was often necessary to turn to the Greek text of the synopsis, and likewise to the full text of the canons, to clarify some basic canonical idea. To ease this labor, in the first half of the nineteenth century, alongside the Krmčija,[27] a new canonical collection was issued in Russia with the blessing of the Holy Synod, under the title: Kniga Pravil Sviatykh Apostol, Sviatykh Soborov Vselenskikh i Pomestnykh, i Sviatykh Otets (Book of the Canons of the Holy Apostles, the Holy Ecumenical and Local Councils, and the Holy Fathers).[28] In this book the canons are set out in their full text in Church-Russian translation, and alongside them the Greek original from which they were translated is given as well.[29] There are no commentaries; rather, at individual canons there are, here and there, brief notes intended to clarify some obscure passages in the canons. The Kniga Pravil contains first the doctrinal definitions of the five ecumenical councils, then in order the canons: of the Apostles, of the ecumenical councils, of the ten local councils, and of the thirteen Fathers—that is, exactly as much as is contained in the fundamental canonical collection of 883. An alphabetical index, which comes after the canons of the Fathers, concludes the whole content of this book.

5) Among the Orthodox Serbs the printed Krmčija is regarded as the official canonical collection.[30] As a private edition there exists my own “Zbornik pravila svetih apostola, vasionskih i pomjesnih sabora i svetih otaca, koja su primljena pravoslavnom crkvom” (Collection of the canons of the holy Apostles, of the ecumenical and local councils, and of the holy Fathers, as received by the Orthodox Church), which was translated from the Greek according to the Athenian Syntagma.[31] In the second edition of this collection there is, after the introduction, the Nomocanon in Fourteen Titles (its canonical part), then in order the canons: of the Apostles, of the ecumenical councils, of the ten local councils, and of the thirteen Fathers, and at the end an alphabetical and analytical survey of everything the collection contains.

Footnotes

[4] For a detailed account of the origin of the Kormchaia, see in the Collection, introduction, pp. LXXIV—C (or On the canon collections pp. 31—57), and cf.: Rosenkampf, Review of the Kormchaia Book—Wiener Jahrbücher der Literatur 1823. XXIII, 220—274. 1826. XXXIII, 288—290. — Pavlov, The Original Slavonic-Russian Nomocanon — Kalachev, On the Significance of the Kormchaia — Lashkarev, Church Law, pp. 215—217. — Suvorov, A Course of Church Law pp. 306—308. — Nevolin, Complete Collection of Works Vol. VI, pp. 419—426 — Metropolitan Macarius, History of the Russian Church. Vol. I (2nd ed.) 151 ff. V, 1 ff. — Metropolitan Eugene, A Description of the Kiev Sophia Cathedral. Kiev, 1825, Appendix N. 42 pp. 235 ff — Biener, De collect. can. p. 58—72. — Heimbach, Gr.-röm. Recht. Ed cit 87, 59—60. — Popovicii Fôntânele. p. 76. sq. — Tsch. Mitrovits, Kormtschaja kniga Wien, 1898.

[14] In recent times much has been written in Russia on this important chapter of the Kormchaia (a chapter absent from the Serbian Kormchaia), and every possible hypothesis has been put forward concerning its origin. The most recent work on the subject is Prof. Pavlov’s, entitled “The 50th Chapter of the Kormchaia”, a work unquestionably the best of all that we have read on the marriage law of the Eastern Church. The results of Prof. Pavlov’s work are these: the source of the first part of this chapter is the Rituale romanum issued by Pope Paul V; the metropolitan of Kiev, Peter Mogila, translated this part from that Rituale, adapting it to the teaching of the Orthodox Church, and entered it in his “Trebnik”, and from that trebnik it was reprinted in the Kormchaia. The source of the second, or rather of the second and third, part of this same chapter is formed by the article on kinship of the chartophylax of the patriarchate of Constantinople Manuel Xanthinus; this article, too, Mogila translated and entered in his trebnik, and from the trebnik it passed into the Kormchaia. And since there is nothing in this chapter of the Kormchaia itself that, in the matter of marriage, would be contrary to the teaching of the Orthodox Church, and since this chapter of the Kormchaia, together with the rest, was received and approved by the highest authority of the Russian Church in the 17th century, the prescriptions of this chapter of the Kormchaia are binding, without regard to the source from which the first part of the same chapter derives (the aforementioned book, p. 219 ff.). Cf. the work on this same chapter of the Kormchaia by Prof. Gorchakov, On the Mystery of Marriage, St. Petersburg 1880.—This chapter of the printed Kormchaia is not, as we have said, in the Serbian Kormchaia; the source of the second part of this chapter, however, is present in a Serbian translation of the 17th century. Cf. Zhishman, Eherecht. S. 50 75—76; Šafarik, Geschichte der serb Literatur. II Abtheil. S. 220 n. 160

§ 44. The Slavonic Canonical Collections

§ 44. Словенски канонички зборници