Preface

By God’s help it has now at last been possible to fulfill the promise made last year concerning the imminent publication, as well, of Volume II of this work. With the present volume there have now been issued in the Serbian language, with the relevant commentaries, all the canons of the Orthodox Church: the fundamental and the supplementary canons (921 in all).

What was said in the preface to Volume I concerning the author’s task in this work of his holds equally true for this Volume II.

A difference may catch the eye between the commentary on the patristic canons and the commentary on the conciliar canons, especially the canons of the ecumenical councils. This difference depends on the difference between the canons themselves, as was pointed out on pages 26 and 27 of Volume I. The canons of the holy fathers, taken all together, either show the application of what was established at the councils, or deal with particular questions of ecclesiastical life settled at the councils, or else give confessors directions as to what penances they are to impose for various sins, and as such they are for the most part penitential canons (canones poenitentiales). Such being the character of the patristic canons, they do not of themselves require the kind of commentary that the canons of the ecumenical, or of certain local, councils require. For this reason, with many of the canons of the holy fathers this work has limited itself simply to adducing the parallel canons; and from a comparison of the patristic canon in question with the canons parallel to it, the meaning of that canon can readily be grasped, should the canon itself happen not to be clear of itself. More attention was devoted, and the relevant commentary supplied, only to those patristic canons that concern some more important subject of canon law or of theology, or that supplement and clarify one or another conciliar canon.

In keeping with the practical aim of this work, there has been added at the end of this Volume II as well an alphabetical survey of the subjects and persons dealt with in the book. And in order that a general picture of everything spoken of in all the canons and in their commentaries might be had before the eyes, it was found expedient to include in the “survey” of this book also everything that the first volume contains. With such a survey this edition has drawn near in its contents, though in a different form, to the Alphabetical Syntagma of Blastares, whose significance for the science of canon law is well known.

While this work was being brought to completion, a book appeared in Leipzig: Die Kanones der wichtigsten altkirchl. Concilien nebst den Apostol. Kanones von Fr. Lauchert. This book is mentioned here as a supplement to what was said in Volume I of this work (pp. 1–26) about the canons of the Orthodox Church

The publication of Volume I of this work has been appraised in various ways: objectively, and subjectively as well. Such is always the case, in general, whenever any new book comes out. Objective appraisals, however sharp they may have been, must always be met with gratitude; subjective ones, on the other hand, are the work of personal sympathy or antipathy toward the author of the book, and are therefore worth exactly as much as feeling is worth in scholarship.

Among the reviewers of volume I one Russian said that this edition ought to be “a desk book for every Serbian priest”. And this makes perfect sense!

In Zadar, July 1896.

E. N.