Canon I.
Whereas
it is needful that they
who were detained from the holy Synod and remained in their own
district or city, for any reason, ecclesiastical or personal, should
not be ignorant of the matters which were thereby decreed; we,
therefore, notify your holiness and charity that if any Metropolitan of
a Province, forsaking the holy and Ecumenical Synod, has joined the
assembly of the apostates, or shall join the same hereafter; or, if he
has adopted, or shall hereafter adopt, the doctrines of Celestius, he
has no power in any way to do anything in opposition to the bishops of
the province, since he is already cast forth from all ecclesiastical
communion and made incapable of exercising his ministry; but he shall
himself be subject in all things to those very bishops of the province
and to the neighbouring orthodox metropolitans, and shall be degraded
from his episcopal rank.
Notes.
Ancient Epitome of Canon I.
If a metropolitan, having deserted his synod, adheres or
shall adhere to Celestine, let him be cast out.
Nicholas Hydruntinus.
Scholion concerning Celestine and Celestius. Whose
finds at the end of the fourth canon of the Holy Synod of Ephesus [and
the same is true of this first canon.
Ed
.] “Clerics
who shall have consented to Celestine or Nestorius, should be
deposed,” let him not read “Celestine” with an
“n,” but “Celestius” without the
“n.” For Celestine was the holy and orthodox Pope of
Rome, Celestius was the heretic.
It is perfectly certain that this was no ac
cident on the part of Aristenus, for in his
commentary on Canon V., he expressly says that “Celestine was
Bishop of Rome” and goes on to affirm that, “The Holy Synod
decreed that they who embraced the opinions of Nestorius and
Celestine,” etc. What perhaps is equally astonishing is
that Nicholas Hydruntinus, while correcting the name, still is of
opinion that Celestius was a pope of Rome and begins his scholion with
the title,
περι
Κελεστίνου
καὶ
Κελεστίου
Παπῶν
Ρώμης
. Beveridge well points out
that this confusion is all the more remarkable as in the Kalendar of
the Saints observed at that very time by the Greeks, on the eighth day
of April was kept the memory of “Celestine, Pope of Rome, as a
Saint and Champion against the Nestorian heretics.” (Bev.,
Annot
, in C. v.).
Simeon the Logothete adds to this epitome the words,
καὶ τὸ
ἐξῆς
ἀδιοίκητος
which are necessary to make the sense complete.