Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

2 results

  • 36 - Conciliar records and canons

  • from A - LITERARY GUIDE
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 391-396

  • Summary

    This chapter provides two ways of reaching decisions in primitive Christianity, the council and the authority of the individual apostle, both of which ground the authority for any decision in apostolicity. The production of canons really got under way in the fourth century. Canons were not only issued by councils. In the fourth century especially, and occasionally later, canons were issued by individual bishops on their own authority. Almost invariably these canons were issued in response to requests for guidance from other bishops, and imitate imperial rescripts. Canons and conciliar records survive because they were gathered into collections put together to provide a legal basis for the functioning of the Church of the Empire. In late antiquity such a legal basis fulfilled the dual function of providing practical rules and holding up an ideal, the ideal here being that of the 'apostolic' Church.