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WE have decreed that the poor and those needing assistance
shall travel, after examination, with letters merely pacifical from the church,
and not with letters commendatory, inasmuch as letters commendatory ought to be
given only to persons who are open to suspicion·
NOTES.
ANCIENT EPITOME OF CANON XI.
Let the poor who stand in need of
help make their journey with letters pacificatory and not commendatory : For
letters commendatory should only be given to those who are open to suspicion.
ARISTENUS.
. . . The poor who need help should
journey with letters pacificatory from the bishop, so that those who have the
ability to help them may be moved with pity. These need no letters
commendatory, such letters should be shown, however, by presbyters and deacons,
and by the rest of the clergy.
See notes on canons vii., viii.,
and xj. of Antioch; and on canon xlij. of Laodicea.
HEFELE.
The mediaeval commentators,
Balsamon, Zonaras, and Aristenus, understand this canon to mean that letters of
commendation, sustatikai, commendatitioe litteroe were given to those laymen
and clerics who were previously subject to ecclesiastical censure, and
therefore were suspected by other bishops, and for this reason needed a special
recommendation, in order to be received in another church into the number of
the faithful. The letters of peace (eirhnikai) on the contrary, were given to
those who were in undisturbed communion with their bishop, and had not the
least evil reputation abroad.
Our canon was understood quite
differently by the old Latin writers, Dionysius Exiguus and Isidore, who
translate the words en upolhyeiby personoe honoratiores and clariores, and the
learned Bishop Gabriel Aubespine of Orleans has endeavored to prove, in his
notes to our canon, that the litteroe pacificoe were given to ordinary
believers, and the commendatitioe (sutatikai) on the contrary, only to clerics
and to distinguished laymen; and in favour of this view is the xiii. canon of
Chalcedon.
With regard to this much-vexed
point, authorities are so divided that no absolute judgment can be arrived at.
The interpretation I have followed is that of the Greeks and of Hervetus, which
seems to be supported by Apostolic Canon XIII., and was that adopted by Johnson
and Hammond. On the other hand are the Prisca, Dionysius, Isidore, Tillemont,
Routh, and to these Bright seems to unite himself by sating that this
"sense is the more natural."
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