CANON XV.

ON account of the great disturbance and discords that occur, it is 

decreed that the custom prevailing in certain places contrary to the 

Canon, must wholly be done away; so that neither bishop, presbyter, 

nor deacon shall pass from city to city. And if any one, after this 

decree of the holy and great Synod, shall attempt any such thing, or 

continue in any such course, his proceedings shall be utterly void, and 

he shall be restored to the Church for which he was ordained bishop or 

presbyter.

NOTES.

ANCIENT EPITOME OF CANON XV.

Neither bishop, presbyter, nor deacon shall pass from city to city. But 

they shall be sent back, should they attempt to do so, to the Churches 

in which they were ordained.

HEFELE.

The translation of a bishop, priest, or deacon from one church to 

another, had already been forbidden in the primitive Church. 

Nevertheless, several translations had taken place, and even at the 

Council of Nice several eminent men were present who had left their 

first bishoprics to take others: thus Eusebius, Bishop of Nicomedia, 

had been before Bishop of Berytus; Eustathius, Bishop of Antioch, had 

been before Bishop of Berrhoea in Syria. The Council of Nice thought 

it necessary to

forbid in future these translations, and to declare them invalid. The 

chief reason of this prohibition was found in the irregularities and 

disputes occasioned by such change of sees; but even if such practical 

difficulties had not arisen, the whole doctrinal idea, so to speak, of the 

relationship between a cleric and the church to which he had been 

ordained, namely, the contracting of a mystical marriage between 

them, would be opposed to any translation or change. In  the 

Synod of Antioch renewed, in its twenty-first canon, the prohibition 

passed by the Council of Nice; but the interest of the Church often 

rendered it necessary to make exceptions, as happened in the case of 

St. Chrysostom. These exceptional cases increased almost 

immediately after the holding of the Council of Nice, so that in , 

St. Gregory of Nazianzum considered this law among those which had 

long been abrogated by custom. It was more strictly observed in the 

Latin Church; and even Gregory's contemporary, Pope Damasus, 

declared himself decidedly in favour of the rule of Nice.

This canon is found in the Corpus Juris Canonici. Decretum, Pars II. 

Causa VII, Q. , c. xix.