CANON V.

CONCERNING those, whether of the clergy or of the laity, who have 

been excommunicated in the several provinces, let the provision of the 

canon be observed by the bishops which provides that persons cast out 

by some be not readmitted by others. Nevertheless, inquiry should be 

made whether they have been excommunicated through captiousness, 

or contentiousness, or any such like ungracious disposition in the 

bishop. And, that this matter may have due investigation, it is decreed 

that in every province synods shall be held twice a year, in order that 

when all the bishops of the province are assembled together, such 

questions may by them be thoroughly examined, that so those who 

have confessedly offended against their bishop, may be seen by all to 

be for just cause excommunicated, until it shall seem fit to a general 

meeting of the bishops to pronounce a milder sentence upon them. 

And let these synods be held, the one before Lent, (that the pure Gift 

may be offered to God after all bitterness has been put away), and let 

the second be held about autumn.

NOTES.

ANCIENT EPITOME OF CANON V.

Such as have been excommunicated by certain bishops shall not be 

restored by others, unless the excommunication was the result of 

pusillanimity, or strife, or some other similar cause. And that this may 

be duly attended to, there shall be in each year two synods in every 

province--the one before Lent, the other toward autumn.

There has always been found the greatest difficulty in securing the 

regular meetings of provincial and diocesan synods, and despite the 

very explicit canonical legislation upon the subject, and the severe 

penalties attached to those not answering the summons, in large parts 

of the Church for centuries these councils have been of the rarest 

occurrence. Zonaras complains that in his time "these synods were 

everywhere treated with great contempt," and that they had actually 

ceased to be held.

Possibly the opinion of St. Gregory Nazianzen had grown common, for 

it will be remembered that in refusing to go to the latter sessions of the 

Second Ecumenical he wrote, "I am resolved to avoid every meeting of 

bishops, for I have never seen any synod end well, nor assuage rather 

than aggravate disorders."()

HEFELE.

Gelasius has given in his history of the Council of Nice, the text of the 

canons passed by the Council; and it must be noticed that there is here 

a slight difference between his text and ours. Our reading is as follows: 

"The excommunication continues to be in force until it seem good to 

the assembly of bishops ( tw    koinw  ) 

to soften it." Gelasius, on the other hand, writes: 

 mekris    an    tp   

 koinp    h    tp   

 episkopw  ,  k  .  t  . 

 l  ., that is to say, "until it seem good to the assembly 

of bishops, or to the bishop (who has passed the sentence)," etc.

Dionysius the Less has also followed this vacation, as his translation of 

the canon shows. It does not change the essential meaning of the 

passage; for it may be well understood that the bishop who has passed 

the sentence of excommunication has also the right to mitigate it. But 

the variation adopted by the Prisca alters, on the contrary, the whole 

sense of the canon: the Prisca has not  ew   

 koinp  , but only  episkopw  : it is in 

this erroneous form that the canon has passed into the Corpus jurisc 

an.

This canon is found in the Corpus Juris Canonici, Gratian's Decretum, 

Pars II., Causa XI, Quaest. III., Canon lxxiij., and the latter part in Pars 

I., Distinc. XVIII., c. iij.

EXCURSUS ON THE WORD  Prosferein  .

(Dr. Adolph Harnack: Hist. of Dogma [Eng. Tr.] Vol. I. p. .)

The idea of the whole transaction of the Supper as a sacrifice, is 

plainly found in the dache, (c. ), in Ignatius, and above all, in Justin 

(I. 65f.) But even Clement of Rome presupposes it, when (in cc. -

) he draws a parallel between bishops and deacons and the Priests and Levites of the Old Testament, describing as the chief 

function of the former (.)  prosferein  . This is not 

the place to enquire whether the first celebration had, in the mind of 

its founder, the character of a sacrificial meal; but, certainly, the idea, 

as it was already developed at the time of Justin, had been created by 

the churches. Various reasons tended towards seeing in the Supper a 

sacrifice. In the first place, Malachi i. , demanded a solemn 

Christian sacrifice: see my notes on Didache, .. In the second 

place, all prayers were regarded as a sacrifice, and therefore the 

solemn prayers at the Supper must be specially considered as such. In 

the third place, the words of institution  touto   

 poieite  , contained a command with regard to a 

definite religious action. Such an action, however, could only be 

represented as a sacrifice, and this the more, that the Gentile 

Christians might suppose that they had to understand 

 poiein   in the sense of  quein  . In the 

fourth place, payments in kind were necessary for the "agapae" 

connected with the Supper, out of which were taken the bread and 

wine for the Holy celebration; in what other aspect could these 

offerings in the worship be regarded than as  prosforai   

for the purpose of a sacrifice? Yet the spiritual idea so prevailed that 

only the prayers were regarded as the  qusia   proper, 

even in the case of Justin (Dial. ). The elements are only 

 dpra  ,  prosforai  , which obtain their 

value from the prayers, in which thanks are given for the gifts of 

creation and redemption, as well as for the holy meal, and entreaty is 

made for the introduction of the community into the Kingdom of God 

(see Didache, . ). Therefore, even the sacred meal itself is called 

 eukaristia   (Justin, Apol. I. :  h   

 trofh    auth    kaleitai   

 par    hmin   

 eukaristia  . Didache, . : Ignat.), because it is 

 trafh    eukaristhqeisa  . It is a mistake 

to suppose that Justin already understood the body of Christ to be the 

object of  poiein  ,() and therefore thought of a 

sacrifice of this body (I. ). The real sacrificial act in the Supper 

consists rather, according to Justin, only in the 

 eukaristian    poiein  whereby 

the koinos    artos   becomes the 

 artos    ths   

 eukaristias  .() The sacrifice of the Supper in its 

essence, apart from the offering of alms, which in the practice of the 

Church was closely united with it, is nothing but a sacrifice of prayer: 

the sacrificial act of the Christian here also is nothing else than an act 

of prayer (See Apol. I. , -; Dial. , , , , -).

Harnack (lib. cit. Vol. II. chapter III. p. ) says that "Cyprian was 

the first to associate the specific offering, i.e. the Lord's Supper with 

the specific priesthood. Secondly, he was the first to designate the 

passio Domini, nay, the sanguis Christi and the dominica hostia as the 

object of the eucharistic offering." In a foot-note (on the same page) he 

explains that "Sacrificare, Sacrificium celebrare in all passages where 

they are unaccompanied by any qualifying words, mean to celebrate 

the Lord's Supper." But Harnack is confronted by the very evident 

objection that if this was an invention of St. Cyprian's, it is most 

extraordinary that it raised no protest, and he very frankly confesses 

(note , on same page) that "the transference of the sacrificial idea to 

the consecrated elements which in all probability Cyprian already 

found in existence, etc." Harnack further on (in the same note on p. 

) notes that he has pointed out in his notes on the Didache that in 

the "Apostolic Church Order" occurs the expression 

 h    prosqora    tou   

 swmatos    kai    tou   

 aimatos  .