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WE have decreed that those who have once been enrolled among
the clergy, or have been made monks, shall accept neither a military charge nor
any secular dignity; and if they shall presume to do so and not repent in such
wise as to turn again to that which they had first chosen for the love of God,
they shall be anathematized.
NOTES.
ANCIENT EPITOME OF CANON VII.
If any cleric or monk arrogantly affects
the military or any other dignity, let him be cursed.
HEFELE.
Something similar was ordered by
the lxxxiii. (lxxxii.) Apostolic Canon, only that it threatens the cleric who
takes military service merely with deposition from his clerical office, while
our canon subjects him to excommunication.The Greek commentators, Balsamon and
Zonaras, think that our canon selects a more severe punishment, that of
excommunication, because it has in view those clerics who have not merely taken
military service, etc., but at the same time have laid aside their clerical
dress and put on secular clothing.
BRIGHT.
By strateian [which I have
translated (or, as Canon Bright thinks, mistranslated) "military
charge"], "militiam," is here meant, not military employment as
such, but the public service in general. This use of the term is a relic and
token of the military basis of the Roman monarchy. The court of the Imperator
was called his camp, stratopedon (Cod. Theod., tom. ii.,, p. 22), as in
Constantine's letter's to John Archaph and the Council of Tyre (Athan., Apol.
c. Ari., lxx. 86), and in the VIIth canon of Sardica, so Athanasius speaks of
the "camp" of Constans (Apol. ad Constant, iv. ), and of that of
Constantius at Milan (Hist. Ari., xxxvij.); so Hosius uses the same phrase in
his letter to Constantius (ib. xliv.); so the Semi-Arian bishops, when
addressing Jovian
273
(Soz., vi. 4); so Chrysostom in the
reign of Theodosius I. (Hom. ad Pop. Antioch, vi. 2). Similarly, there were
officers of the palace called Castrensians (Tertull. De Cor., 12), as being
"milites alius generis--de imperatoria familia" (Gothofred, Cod.
Theod., tom. ii., p. 526). So strateusqai is used for holding a place at court,
as in Soc., iv. 9; Soz., vi. 9, on Marcian's case, and a very clear passage in
Soc., v. 25, where the verb is applied to an imperial secretary. It occurs in
combination with strateia in a petition of an Alexandrian deacon named
Theodore, which was read in the third session of Chalcedon: he says,
"'Es<S235]rateusamen for about twenty-two years in the Schola of the
magistrians" (under the Magister officionum, or chief magistrate of the
palace), "but I disregarded strateias tosutsn kronau in order to enter the
ministry" (Mansi, vi. 1008). See also Theodoret, Relig. Hist., xij., on
the emperor's letter-carriers. In the same sense Honorius, by a law of 408,
forbids non-Catholics "intra palatium militare" (Cod Theod., xvi., 5,
42); and the Vandal king Hunneric speaks of "domusnostrae militiae"
(Vic (4) r Vitens, iv. 2).
This canon is found in the Corpus
Juris Canonici, Gratian's Decretum, Pars IL, Causa xx., Quaest. iii., Can. iij.
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