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The crime of conspiracy or banding together is utterly
prohibited even by the secular law, and much more ought it to be forbidden in
the Church of God. Therefore, if any, whether clergymen or monks, should be
detected in conspiring or banding together, or hatching plots against their
bishops or fellow-clergy, they shall by all means be deposed from their own
rank.
NOTES.
ANCIENT EPITOME OF CANON XVIII.
Clerics and Monks, if they shall
have dared to hold conventicles and to conspire against the bishop, shall be
cast out of their rank.
BRIGHT.
In order to appreciate this canon,
we must consider the case of Ibas bishop of Edessa. He had been attached to the
Nestorians, but after the reunion between Cyril and John of Antioch had
re-entered into communion with Cyril on the ground that Cyril had explained his
anathemas (Mansi, vii., 240), or, as he wrote to Maria (in a letter famous as
one of the "Three Chapters") that God had "softened the
Egyptian's heart" (ib., 248). Four of his priests (Samuel, Cyrus, Maras,
and Eulegius), stimulated, says Fleury (xxvij. 19) by Uranius bishop of
Himeria, accused Ibas of Nestorianism before his patriarch Domnus of Antioch,
who held a synod, but, as Samuel and Cyrus failed to appear, pronounced them
defaulters and set aside the case (Mansi, vii. 217). They went up to
Constantinople, and persuaded Theodosius and archbishop Flavian to appoint a
commission for inquiring into the matter. Two sessions, so to speak were held
by the three prelates thus appointed, one at Berytus the other at Tyre. At
Berytus, according to the extant minutes (Mansi, vii., 212 ff.), five new
accusers joined the original four, and charges were brought which affected the
moral character of Ibas as well as his orthodoxy. The charge of having used a
"blasphemous" speech implying that Christ was but a man deified, was
rebutted by a statement signed by some sixty clerics of Edessa, who according to
the accusers, had been present when Ibas uttered it. At Tyre the episcopal
judges succeeded in making peace, and accusers and accused partook of the
communion together (ib., vii., 209). The sequence of these proceedings cannot
be thoroughly ascertained, but Hefele (sect. 169) agrees with Tillemont (xv.,
474 et seqq.) in dating the trial at Berytus slightly earlier than that at
Tyre, and assigning both to the February of 448 or 449. Fleury inverts this
order, and thinks that, "notwithstanding the reconciliation" at Tyre,
the four accusers renewed their prosecution of Ibas (xxvij. 20); but he has to
suppose two applications on their part to Theodosius and Flavian, which seems
improbable. "The Council is believed," says Tillemont (xv., 698), "to
have had this case in mind when drawing up the present canon:" and one can
hardly help thinking that, on a spot within sight of Constantinople, they must
have recalled the protracted sufferings which malignant plotters had inflicted
on St. Chrysostom.
This canon is found in part in the
Corpus Juris Canonici, Gratian's Decretum, Pars II., I Causa XI., Quaest. I.,
canons xxj. and xxiij.
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