The Byzantine canonical tradition is an overwhelmingly Greek phenomenon. The Byzantine canons are not only found in Greek in the extant manuscripts,149 but most were originally composed in Greek, and in the east.
A few important observations must be made about the "Greekness" of the canons.
It witnesses first to the relative impermeability of the eastern canonical tradition. In the entire history of the tradition, even until the end of the empire, only three sources from outside the Greek east are ever able to penetrate into the corpus itself.150 All are from the west: Carthage, the "canon" of Cyprian, and Serdica.151 Only the first is
148 Which is never clearly replaced or abrogated in the Byzantine east, and always constitutes a kind of
symbolic touchstone for the whole tradition; see especially Fögen 1993,67-68; Haldon 1990,258-264; Kunkel 1964,181; Lokin 1994,71-72; Pieler 1978,449-450; Stolte 2008,691-693. see also Prinzing 1986, and for the older discussion on the later validity of Justinian's law, Wenger 1953,720-723.
149 Although a few Latin marginal notations to Carthage seem to have made their way into Moscow 432
(Sin 86, 92).
150 A few other Latin items may occasionally be found in the appendices, for example (fairly frequently)
the letter of Leo I to Flavius on Eutyches (see Athos Panach.6-7, Cambridge Ee.4.29, Oxford Laud. 39, Vienna hist gr 7). But this text is doctrinal in orientation. The Donation of Constantine will also later appear in the tradition, most notably in Balsamon (RP 1.145-148); it will later be found as a regular item in the appendices to the secular 14th C Hexabiblos (Burgmann 2002,262).
151 On the status quaestionis of the peculiar origin and transmission of the canons of Serdica, see Sources
Serdica. The recent renewal in Hess 2002 of the Ballerini's theory of a double-edition of the canons, taken down by Latin and Greek scribes, has not received universal acceptance (contra: Delineatio 122), but seems likely. Whatever the case, the Serdican canons read in Greek as Latin translation material, are in the typically western "parliamentary" form, and are generally treated as western in the Byzantine tradition (for example in the scholion to the Coll14 Ἰστέον RP 1.12; see also scholia 217a, 228 in Sbornik Prilozh. 28-30).
significant in terms of size, and all will exist for some time as "soft spots" in the manuscript tradition, omitted, abbreviated, and in slightly subordinate or uncertain positions.152
The admission of these western conciliar sources highlights one striking absence: papal decretals. This is a point that needs emphasis because of the
overwhelming tendency of modern textbooks of canon law to speak as if canon law naturally has "two sources", even quite early: conciliar enactments and papal decretals. This double-source theory undoubtedly holds true in the west, but in the perspective of the history of Christian canon law a whole, it is unquestionably a local Latin
phenomenon. Even in the west this theory arguably reaches its apogee only in the high middle ages, when papal legislation finally becomes a central vehicle of western canon law (certainly of its development).153 In our period the papal material sits in the western collections, formally at least, in a markedly appendix-like position, i.e. paralle to the patristic canons in the east, after all of the conciliar canons, even very local ones and often among the most variable parts of the collections.
l ,
patristi
n
reek tual phenomenon, Christian canon law is at core a Greek imperia
k
154 Canonical collections,
Greek, Latin and Syrian, are always primarily Apostolic and conciliar in content and form – and then, in the Latin west, papal or, in the Syrian and Greek east,
c/patriarchal.
Greek corpus impermeability highlights another important dynamic in first millennium canon law: the movement of canonical material is overwhelmingly from the Greek east outward. In this, Greek canon law is in a sense the "central" tradition of the first millennium. As we have seen, the core corpus of all Christian churches – at least in the empire – emerges from the east, and is largely updated from the east. This positio as an active center of canonical production gradually fades but its legacy is clear: all major first millennium Christian collections, at least within the (old) imperial cultural sphere, contain as their clear core Greek Apostolic material and the sine qua non G Nicene corpus. As a tex
l phenomenon.
This "Greekness" of canon law in the first millennium should not, perhaps, surprise. In this, the textual reality of canon law is following a well-worn path of Gree
152 See further section C.5.
153 "Le règne des Décrétales" according to Gaudemet 1994,375-407; significantly this material now
becomes the "new law" of the church, in the phrase of Bernard of Pavia (d. 1213; Somerville and Brasington 1998,219) See generally Brundage 1995,53-56,160; Fransen 1972,11-14.
154 See Fournier 1931,30 (and n. 2); Fransen 1972,17; Jasper and Fuhrman 2001,22-87; Zechiel-Eckes
to Latin/Syrian/etc. transmission, which Scripture, much theology, monastic writings, and numerous other types of Christian (and before them, pagan) cultural expressi long followed.
on had
ultural preeminence and vitality of the eastern empire a man d th C, f y
quity seem to be mostly a Latin phenomenon, is was not true in the ecclesial realm.
t all of
155 It reflects above all the Greek origins of most early Christian
literature and the continued political and c throughout the first millennium.
Nevertheless, the Greek character of canon law, even in the east, does surprise little, and should perhaps not be taken for granted. The one aspect of Greco-Ro civilization that seems to be specially the domain of Latin is precisely law an administration, and indeed, as F. Millar has recently strongly reiterated, the
administration of the Greek east, at least at its higher levels and in formal expression, was still resolutely Latin throughout most of the 4th and 5th C – the time of the formation of the core "first wave" material.156 Legal judgments still had to be formally issued in Latin until 397, many Latin notarial formulae remained in use throughout the 5th C, and eastern imperial legislation starts to drift into Greek only slowly throughout the 5 not truly supplanting Latin until the 530s.157 In this context, it is perhaps a little surprising that, even in the east, the chief (internal) texts of order and administration o the 4th and 5th C imperial church are not in Latin.This is true even of the texts of the highest order, the ecumenical councils – precisely where, ironically, as Millar points out, it becomes evident how meager the eastern episcopate's knowledge of Latin reall was.158 Church order, therefore, unlike civil order, was a distinctly Greek affair. In terms of the core content of the canonical collections, this was even true in the Latin west. If secular law and order in late anti
th