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FORASMUCH as we have heard that in certain churches the
bishops managed the church-business without stewards, it has seemed good that
every church having a bishop shall have also a steward from among its own
clergy, who shall manage the church business under the sanction of his own
bishop; that so the administration of the church may not be without a witness;
and that thus the goods of the church may not be squandered, nor reproach be
brought upon the priesthood; and if he [i.e., the Bishop] will not do this, he
shall be subjected to the divine canons.
NOTES.
ANCIENT EPITOME OF CANON XXVI.
The (Economus in all churches must
be chosen from the clergy. And the bishop who neglects to do this is not
without blame.
BRIGHT.
As the stream of offerings became
fuller, the work of dispensing them became more complex, until the archdeacons
could no
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longer find time for it, and it was
committed to a special officer called "oeconomus" or steward
(Bingham, iii, 12, 1; Transl. of Fleury, iii., 120). So the Council of Gangra,
in the middle of the fourth century, forbids the church offerings to be
disposed of without consent of the bishop or of the person appointed, eis
oikonomian eupoiias (canon viij.); and St Basil mentions the oeconomi of his
own church (Epist., xxiij. 1), and the "tamiai of the sacred goods"
of his brother's at Nyssa (ib., 225). And although Gregory Nazianzen took
credit to himself for declining to appoint a "stranger" to make an
estimate of the property which of right belonged to the church of
Constantinople, and in fact, with a strange confusion between personal and
official obligations, gave the go-by to the whole question (Carm. de Vita sua,
1479 ff.), his successor, Nectarius, being a man of business, took care to
appoint a "church-steward"; and Chrysostom, on coming to the see,
examined his accounts, and found much superfluous expenditure (Palladius, Dial,
p. 19). Theophilus of Alexandria compelled two of the Tall Brothers to
undertake the oikonomia of the Alexandrian church (Soc., vi. 7); and in one of
his extant directions observes that the clergy of Lyco wish for another
"oeconomus," and that the bishop has consented, in order that the
church-funds may be properly spent (Mansi, iii., 1257). At Hippo St. Augustine
had a "praepositus domus" who acted as Church-steward (Possidius, Vit.
August., xxiv.). Isidore of Pelusium denounces Martinianus as a fraudulent
"oeconomus," and requests Cyril to appoint an upright one (Epist.
ii., 127), and in another letter urges him to put a stop to the dishonest greed
of those who acted as stewards of the same church (ib., v. 79). The records of
the Council of Ephesus mention the "oeconomus" of Constantinople, the
"oeconomus" of Ephesus (Mansi, iv., 1228-1398), and, the
"oeconomus" of Philadelphia. According to an extant letter of Cyril,
the "oeconomi" of Perrha in Syria were mistrusted by the clergy, who
wished to get rid of them "and appoint others by their own authority"
(ib., vii., 321). Ibas of Edessa had been complained of for his administration
of church property; he was accused, e.g., of secreting a jewelled chalice, and
bestowing the church revenues, and gold and silver crosses, on his brother and
cousins; he ultimately undertook to appoint "oeconomi" after the
model of Antioch (Mansi, vii., 201). Proterius, afterwards patriarch of
Alexandria and a martyr for Chalcedonian orthodoxy, was "oeconomus"
under Dioscorus (ib., iv., 1017), as was John Talaia, a man accused of bribery,
under his successor (Evag., iii., 12). There may have been many cases in which
there was no "oeconomus," or in which the management was in the hands
of private agents of the bishop, in whom the Church could put no confidence;
and the Council, having alluded to the office of "oeconomus" in
canons ij. and xxv., now observes that some bishops had been managing their
church property without "oeconomi," and thereupon resolves "that
every church which has a bishop shall also have an oeconomus" from among
its own clergy, to administer the property of the church under the direction of
its own bishop; so that the administration of the church property may not be
unattested, and thereby waste ensue, and the episcopate incur reproach."
Any bishop who should neglect to appoint such an officer should be punishable
under "the divine" (or sacred) "canons."
Nearly three years after the
Council, Leo saw reason for requesting Marcian not to allow civil judges,
"novo exemplo," to audit the accounts of "the oeconomi of the
church of Constantinople," which ought, "secundum traditum
morem," to be examined by the bishop alone (Epist. cxxxvij. 2). In after
days the "great steward" of St. Sophia was always a deacon; he was a
conspicuous figure at the Patriarch's celebrations, standing on the right of
the altar, vested in alb and stole, and holding the sacred fan (ripidion); his
duty was to enter all incomings and outgoings of the church's revenue in a
charterlary, and exhibit it quarterly, or half yearly, to the patriarchs; and
he governed the church during a vacancy of the see (Eucholog., pp. 268, 275).
In the West, Isidore of Seville describes the duties of the "oeconomus";
he has to see to the repair and building of churches, the care of church lands,
the cultivation of vineyards, the payment of clerical stipends, of doles to the
widows and the poor, and of food and clothing to church servants, and even the
carrying on of church law suits,--all "cure jussu et arbitrio sui
episcopi" (Ep. to Leudefred, Op. ii., 520); and before Isidore's death the
IVth Council of Toledo refers to this canon, and orders the bishops to appoint
"from their own clergy those whom the Greeks call oeconomi, hoc est, qui
vici episcoporum res ecclesiasticas tractant (canon xlviij., Mansi, x, 631).
There was an officer named "oeconomus" in the old Irish monasteries;
see Reeves' edition of Adamnan, p. 47.
This Canon is found twice in the
Corpus Juris Canonici, Gratian's Decretum, Pars II., Causa XVI., Q. VII, Canon
xxi., and again in Pars I., Dist. LXXXIX., c. iv.(1)
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