§ 81. Participants in the Ecumenical Council

The right to take part in the ecumenical councils, and the right to vote on their decisions, belongs to the bishops. This is why the former ecumenical councils are often designated simply by the number of bishops who were present at them, without any further indication.[1] There were present at the councils also other members of the clergy, such as presbyters and deacons, but only with a consultative voice; and they either assisted the bishops in the discussion of learned questions, or, at the council’s invitation, entered into disputes with adversaries and refuted their arguments. Among these presbyters and deacons, only those could have a decisive vote, equally with the bishops, who came with a mandate from their bishops and who represented absent bishops; in such a case these deputies of bishops also signed the council’s decisions alongside the other regular members of the council. Faithful laymen, theologians, philosophers, and in general all those who were versed in the questions under discussion, were also admitted to the councils, and, at the bishops’ invitation, gave the necessary explanations and helped that the truth be better disclosed. At some ecumenical councils emperors, or their representatives, were also present; but this was only for the sake of preserving order and peace, and never in order to pass judgment on the matters under discussion at the councils.[2]

The right of presiding at the ecumenical councils and of directing the deliberations belongs to that bishop whose see ranks senior among the other sees of the universal Church. This must be so according to the fundamental organization of the church hierarchy, established by the 28th canon of the IV Ecumenical Council and the 36th canon of the Trullan council. At the former ecumenical councils attention was paid to whether or not the bishops of the principal sees took part in those councils, personally or through their representatives, and to whether any of them was himself the subject of the council’s deliberation and condemnation. Besides the presidents mentioned, who conducted the business of the council and influenced its decisions, an honorary presidency was held at the councils by the emperors, when they took part in them, on account of their significance as protectors of Orthodoxy and supreme guardians of the inviolability of church rights.[3]