Canon XXVIII.
It
is not permitted to hold love
feasts, as they are called, in the Lord’s Houses, or Churches,
nor to eat and to spread couches in the house of God.
Notes.
Ancient Epitome of Canon
XXVII.
Beds shall not be set up in churches, nor shall love
feasts be held there.
Hefele.
Eusebius (
H. E.
, Lib. IX., Cap. X.) employs the
expression
κυριακά
in the same
sense as does this canon as identical with churches. The
prohibition itself, however, here given, as well as the preceding
canon, proves that as early as the time of the Synod of Laodicea, many
irregularities had crept into the
agape
. For the rest,
this Synod was not in a position permanently to banish the usage from
the Church; for which reason the Trullan Synod in its seventy-fourth
canon repeated this rule word for word.
This canon is found in the
Corpus Juris Canonici
,
Gratian’s
Decretum
, Pars I., Disk XLII., c.
iv.