Canon II.
If
any Bishop should ordain for
money, and put to sale a grace which cannot be sold, and for money
ordain a bishop, or chorepiscopus, or presbyters, or deacons, or any
other of those who are counted among the clergy; or if through lust of
gain he should nominate for money a steward, or advocate, or
prosmonarius, or any one whatever who is on the roll of the Church, let
him who is convicted of this forfeit his own rank; and let him who is
ordained be nothing profited by the purchased ordination or promotion;
but let him be removed from the dignity or charge he has obtained for
money. And if any one should be found negotiating such shameful
and unlawful transactions, let him also, if he is a clergyman, be
deposed from his rank, and if he is a layman or monk, let him be
anathematized.
Notes.
Ancient Epitome of Canon
XIX.
Whoso buys or sells an ordination, down to a
Prosmonarius, shall be in danger of losing his grade. Such shall
also be the case with go-betweens, if they be clerics they shall be cut
off from their rank, if laymen or monks, they shall be
anathematized.
Bright.
A great scandal in the “Asian diocese” had
led to St. Chrysostom’s intervention. Antoninus, bishop of
Ephesus, was charged, with “making it a rule to sell ordinations
of bishops at rates proportionate to the value of their sees”
(Palladius,
Dial. de vita Chrysost
., p. 50). Chrysostom
held a synod at Ephesus, at which six bishops were deposed for having
obtained their sees in this manner. Isidore of Pelasium
repeatedly remonstrated with his bishop Eusebius on the heinousness of
“selling the gift” of ordinations (
Epist
. I., 26,
30, 37); and names Zosimus, a priest, and Maron, a deacon, as thus
ordained (
ib.
111, 119). A few years before the council, a
court of three bishops sat at Berytus to hear charges brought against
Ibas, bishop of Edessa, by clerics of his diocese. The third
charge was thus curtly worded: “Moreover he receives for
laying on hands” (Mansi, vii. 224). The xxvij
th
Trullan canon repeated this canon of Chalcedon against persons ordained
for money, doubtless in view of such a state of things as Gregory the
Great had heard of nearly a century earlier, “that in the Eastern
Churches no one comes to holy order except by the payment of
premiums” (
Epist
. xi. 46, to the bishop of Jerusalem;
compare Evagrius’s assertion that Justin II. openly sold
bishoprics, V. 1). It is easy to understand how the scruples of
ecclesiastics could be abated by the courtly fashion of calling bribes
“eulogiæ” (Fleury, XXVI, 20), just as the six prelates
above referred to had regarded their payments as an equivalent for that
“making over of property to the Curia,” which was required
by a law of 399 (Cod. Theod., xii. 1, 163, see notes in Transl. of
Fleury, i. 163, ij. 16).
The
ἔκδικος
,
“defensor,” was an official Advocate or counsel for the
Church. The legal force of the term “defensor” is
indicated by a law of Valentinian I. “Nec idem in eodem negotio
defensor sit et quæsitor” (Cod. Theod., ii. 10, 2). In
the East the office was held by ecclesiastics; thus, John, presbyter
and “advocate” was employed, at the Council of
Constantinople in 448, to summon Eutyches (Mansi, vii. 697).
About 496, Paul the “Advocate” of Constantinople saved his
archbishop from the sword of a murderer at the cost of his own life
(Theodor., Lect. ii. 11). In the list of the functionaries of St.
Sophia, given by Goar in his Euchologion (p. 270), the Protecdicos is
discribed as adjudicating, with twelve assessors, in smaller causes, on
which he afterwards reports to the
bishop. In Africa, on the other hand, from
a.d.
407 (see Cod. Theod., xvi. 2, 38), the office was held
by barristers, in accordance with a request of the African bishops
(Cod. Afric., 97; Mansi, iii., 802), who, six years earlier, had asked
for “defensores,” with special reference to the oppression
of the poor by the rich (Cod. Afric., 75; Mansi, iii. 778, 970).
The “defensores” mentioned by Gregory the Great had
primarily to take care of the poor (
Epist
., v. 29), and of the
church property (
ib
., i. 36), but also to be advocates of
injured clerics (
ib.
, ix. 64) and act as assessors (
ib.
,
x. 1), etc.
The next office is that of the Prosmonarius or,
according to a various reading adopted by many (
e.g.
Justellus,
Hervetus, Beveridge, Bingham), the Paramonarius. Opinions differ
as to the functions intended. Isidore gives simply
“paramonarius:” Dionysius (see Justellus,
Biblioth
., i., 134) omits the word; but in the
“interpretatio Dionysii,” as given in the Concilia, freedom
has been taken to insert “vel mansionarium” in a
parenthesis (vii. 373; see Beveridge,
in loc
.).
Mansionarius is a literal rendering; but what was the function of a
mansionarius? In Gregory the Great’s time he was a
sacristan who had the duty of lighting the church (
Dial.
, i. 5);
and “ostiarium” in the
Prisca
implies the same
idea. Tillemont, without deciding between the two Greek readings,
thinks that the person intended had “some charge of what
pertained to the church itself, perhaps like our present bedells”
(xv. 694). So Fleury renders, “concièrge”
(xxviij. 29); and Newman, reading “paramonarion,” takes a
like view (note in Transl. of Fleury, vol. iii., p. 392). But
Justellus (i. 91) derives “paramonarius” from
μονή
“mansio,” a halting-place, so that the sense would be a
manager of one of the church’s farms, a “villicus,”
or, as Bingham expresses it, “a bailiff” (iii. 3, 1).
Beveridge agrees with Justellus, except in giving to
μονή
the sense of
“monastery” (compare the use of
μονή
in Athan.,
Apol. c.
Arian
, 67, where Valesius understands it as “a station”
on a road, but others as “a monastery,” see Historical
Writings of St. Athanasius, Introd., p. xliv.). Bingham also
prefers this interpretation. Suicer takes it as required by
“paramonarios” which he treats as the true reading:
“prosmonarios” he thinks would have the sense of
“sacristan.”
Hefele.
According to Van Espen, however, who here supports
himself upon Du Cange, by “prosmonarios” or
“mansionarius,” in the same way as by
“oiconomos,” a steward of church property was to be
understood.
The canon is found in the
Corpus Juris Canonici
,
Gratian’s
Decretum
, Pars II., Causa I., Quæst. i.,
can. viij.