Council of Trent
The Council of Trent, held between 1545 and 1563 in Trent, was the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation, it has been described as the embodiment of the Counter-Reformation; the Council issued condemnations of what it defined to be heresies committed by proponents of Protestantism, issued key statements and clarifications of the Church's doctrine and teachings, including scripture, the Biblical canon, sacred tradition, original sin, salvation, the sacraments, the Mass, the veneration of saints. The Council met for twenty-five sessions between 13 December 1545 and 4 December 1563. Pope Paul III, who convoked the Council, oversaw the first eight sessions, while the twelfth to sixteenth sessions were overseen by Pope Julius III and the seventeenth to twenty-fifth sessions by Pope Pius IV; the consequences of the Council were significant in regards to the Church's liturgy and practices. During its deliberations, the Council made the Vulgate the official example of the Biblical canon and commissioned the creation of a standard version, although this was not achieved until the 1590s.
In 1565, a year after the Council finished its work, Pius IV issued the Tridentine Creed and his successor Pius V issued the Roman Catechism and revisions of the Breviary and Missal in 1566, 1568 and 1570. These, in turn, led to the codification of the Tridentine Mass, which remained the Church's primary form of the Mass for the next four hundred years. More than three hundred years passed until the next ecumenical council, the First Vatican Council, was convened in 1869. On 15 March 1517, the Fifth Council of the Lateran closed its activities with a number of reform proposals but not on the major problems that confronted the Church in Germany and other parts of Europe. A few months on 31 October 1517, Martin Luther issued his 95 Theses in Wittenberg. Luther's position on ecumenical councils shifted over time, but in 1520 he appealed to the German princes to oppose the papal Church, if necessary with a council in Germany and free of the Papacy. After the Pope condemned in Exsurge Domine fifty-two of Luther's theses as heresy, German opinion considered a council the best method to reconcile existing differences.
German Catholics, diminished in number, hoped for a council to clarify matters. It took a generation for the council to materialise because of papal reluctance, given that a Lutheran demand was the exclusion of the papacy from the Council, because of ongoing political rivalries between France and Germany and the Turkish dangers in the Mediterranean. Under Pope Clement VII, troops of the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sacked Papal Rome in 1527, "raping, burning, the like had not been seen since the Vandals". Saint Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel were used for horses. This, together with the Pontiff's ambivalence between Germany, led to his hesitation. Charles V favoured a council, but needed the support of King Francis I of France, who attacked him militarily. Francis I opposed a general council due to partial support of the Protestant cause within France. In 1532 he agreed to the Nuremberg Religious Peace granting religious liberty to the Protestants, in 1533 he further complicated matters when suggesting a general council to include both Catholic and Protestant rulers of Europe that would devise a compromise between the two theological systems.
This proposal met the opposition of the Pope for it gave recognition to Protestants and elevated the secular Princes of Europe above the clergy on church matters. Faced with a Turkish attack, Charles held the support of the Protestant German rulers, all of whom delayed the opening of the Council of Trent. In reply to the Papal bull Exsurge Domine of Pope Leo X, Martin Luther burned the document and appealed for a general council. In 1522 German diets joined in the appeal, with Charles V seconding and pressing for a council as a means of reunifying the Church and settling the Reformation controversies. Pope Clement VII was vehemently against the idea of a council, agreeing with Francis I of France, after Pope Pius II, in his bull Execrabilis and his reply to the University of Cologne, set aside the theory of the supremacy of general councils laid down by the Council of Constance. Pope Paul III, seeing that the Protestant Reformation was no longer confined to a few preachers, but had won over various princes in Germany, to its ideas, desired a council.
Yet when he proposed the idea to his cardinals, it was unanimously opposed. Nonetheless, he sent nuncios throughout Europe to propose the idea. Paul III issued a decree for a general council to be held in Mantua, Italy, to begin on 23 May 1537. Martin Luther wrote the Smalcald Articles in preparation for the general council; the Smalcald Articles were designed to define where the Lutherans could and could not compromise. The council was ordered by the Emperor and Pope Paul III to convene in Mantua on 23 May 1537, it failed to convene after another war broke out between France and Charles V, resulting in a non-attendance of French prelates. Protestants refused to attend as well. Financial difficulties in Mantua led the Pope in the autumn of 1537 to move the council to Vicenza, where participation was poor; the Council was postponed indefinitely on 21 May 1539. Pope Paul III initiated several internal Church reforms while Emperor Charles V convened with Protestants at an imperial diet in Regensburg, to reconcile differences.
Unity failed betw
Indulgentiarum Doctrina
Indulgentiarum Doctrina is an apostolic constitution about indulgences issued by Pope Paul VI on 1 January 1967. It responds to suggestions made at the Second Vatican Council, it revised the practical application of the traditional doctrine relating to indulgences; the title is taken from the opening words of the original Latin text. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "The forgiveness of sin and restoration of communion with God entail the remission of the eternal punishment of sin, but temporal punishment of sin remains."Paul VI explained that sin brings punishments inflicted by God's sanctity and justice, which must be expiated either here on earth or else in the life to come. "These punishments are imposed by the just and merciful judgment of God for the purification of souls, the defense of the sanctity of the moral order and the restoration of the glory of God to its full majesty." Such expiation takes the form of penance, traditionally described as prayers and alms, but includes works of mercy and charity.
"That punishment or the vestiges of sin may remain to be expiated or cleansed and that they in fact do after the remission of guilt is demonstrated by the doctrine on purgatory. In purgatory, in fact, the souls of those'who died in the charity of God and repentant, but before satisfying with worthy fruits of penance for sins committed and for omissions' are cleansed after death with purgatorial punishments"; the document stressed that the Church's aim was not to help the faithful make due satisfaction for their sins, but chiefly to bring them to greater fervour of charity. For this purpose, Paul VI decreed that partial indulgences granted as the equivalent of a certain number of days, quarantines, or years of canonical penance supplement, to the same degree, the remission that those performing the indulgenced action gain by the charity and contrition with which they do it. "For all men who walk this earth daily commit at least venial sins. "Indulgences cannot be gained without a sincere conversion of outlook and unity with God".
An indulgence is the remission before God of the temporal punishment due sins forgiven as far as their guilt is concerned. "The aim pursued by ecclesiastical authority in granting indulgences is not only that of helping the faithful to expiate the punishment due to sin but that of urging them to perform works of piety and charity—particularly those which lead to growth in faith and which favor the common good."An indulgence is partial or plenary accordingly, as it removes either part or all of the temporal punishment due sin. Indulgences can always be applied to the dead by way of suffrage; the apostolic constitution ordered a revision of the official list of indulgenced prayers and good works, called the Raccolta, "with a view to attaching indulgences only to the most important prayers and works of piety and penance". This removed from the list of indulgenced prayers and good works, now called the Enchiridion Indulgentiarum, many prayers for which various religious institutes and similar groups had succeeded in the course of centuries in obtaining grants of indulgences, but which could not be classified as among "the most important".
Religious institutes and the like, to which grants of plenary indulgences, for instance for visiting a particular church or shrine, had been made, were given a year from the date of promulgation of Indulgentiarum Doctrina to have them confirmed, any that were not confirmed within two years became null and void. The Enchiridion Indulgentiarum reached its fourth edition in Latin in 1999, is available on the Holy See's website. An English translation of the second edition is available online; the Enchiridion Indulgentiarum differs from the Raccolta in that it lists "only the most important prayers and works of piety and penance". On the other hand, it includes new general grants of partial indulgences that apply to a wide range of prayerful actions, it indicates that the prayers that it does list as deserving veneration on account of divine inspiration or antiquity or as being in widespread use are only examples of those to which the first these general grants applies: "Raising the mind to God with humble trust while performing one's duties and bearing life's difficulties, adding, at least mentally, some pious invocation".
In this way, the Enchiridion Indulgentiarum, in spite of its smaller size, classifies as indulgenced an immensely greater number of prayers than were treated as such in the Raccolta. There are four general grants of indulgence, which are meant to encourage the faithful to infuse a Christian spirit into the actions of their daily lives and to strive for perfection of charity; these indulgences are partial, their worth therefore depends on the fervour with which the person performs the recommended actions: Raising the mind to God with humble trust while performing one's duties and bearing life's difficulties, adding, at least mentally, some pious invocation. Devoting oneself or one's goods compassionately in a spirit of faith to the service of one's brothers and sisters in need. Abstaining in a spirit of penance from something licit and pleasant. Giving open witness to one's faith before others in particular circumstances of everyday life. Among the particula
Second Vatican Council
The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican known as the Second Vatican Council or Vatican II, addressed relations between the Catholic Church and the modern world. The council, through the Holy See, was formally opened under the pontificate of Pope John XXIII on 11 October 1962 and was closed under Pope Paul VI on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on 8 December 1965. Several changes resulted from the council, including the renewal of consecrated life with a revised charism, ecumenical efforts towards dialogue with other religions, the universal call to holiness, which according to Pope Paul VI was "the most characteristic and ultimate purpose of the teachings of the Council". According to Pope Benedict XVI, the most important and essential message of the council is "the Paschal Mystery as the center of what it is to be Christian and therefore of the Christian life, the Christian year, the Christian seasons". Other changes which followed the council included the widespread use of vernacular languages in the Mass instead of Latin, the subtle disuse of ornate clerical regalia, the revision of Eucharistic prayers, the abbreviation of the liturgical calendar, the ability to celebrate the Mass versus populum, as well as ad orientem, modern aesthetic changes encompassing contemporary Catholic liturgical music and artwork.
Many of these changes remain divisive among the Catholic faithful. Of those who took part in the council's opening session, four have become popes: Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini, who on succeeding John XXIII took the name Pope Paul VI. In the 1950s, theological and biblical studies in the Catholic Church had begun to sway away from the Neo-Scholasticism and biblical literalism which a reaction to Catholic modernism had enforced since the First Vatican Council; this shift could be seen in theologians such as Karl Rahner, Michael Herbert, John Courtney Murray who looked to integrate modern human experience with church principles based on Jesus Christ, as well as others such as Yves Congar, Joseph Ratzinger and Henri de Lubac, who looked to an accurate understanding of scripture and the early Church Fathers as a source of renewal. At the same time, the world's bishops faced challenges driven by political, social and technological change; some of these bishops sought new ways of addressing those challenges.
The First Vatican Council had been held nearly a century before but had been cut short in 1870 when the Italian Army entered the city of Rome at the end of Italian unification. As a result, only deliberations on the role of the papacy and the congruent relationship of faith and reason were completed, with examination of pastoral issues concerning the direction of the Church left unaddressed. Pope John XXIII, gave notice of his intention to convene the Council on 25 January 1959, less than three months after his election in October 1958; this sudden announcement, which caught the Curia by surprise, caused little initial official comment from Church insiders. Reaction to the announcement was widespread and positive from both religious and secular leaders outside the Catholic Church, the council was formally summoned by the apostolic constitution Humanae Salutis on 25 December 1961. In various discussions before the Council convened, John XXIII said that it was time to "open the windows and let in some fresh air".
He invited other Christians outside the Catholic Church to send observers to the Council. Acceptances came from both the Eastern Orthodox Church and Protestant denominations as internal observers, but these observers did not cast votes in the approbation of the conciliar documents. Pope John XXIII's announcement on 25 January 1959 of his intention to call a general council came as a surprise to the cardinals present; the Pontiff pre-announced the council under a full moon when the faithful with their candlelights gathered in St. Peter's square and jokingly noted about the brightness of the moon, he had tested the idea only ten days before with one of them, his Cardinal Secretary of State Domenico Tardini, who gave enthusiastic support to the idea. Although the Pope said the idea came to him in a flash in his conversation with Tardini, two cardinals had earlier attempted to interest him in the idea, they were two of the most conservative, Ernesto Ruffini and Alfredo Ottaviani, who had in 1948 proposed the idea to Pope Pius XII and who put it before John XXIII on 27 October 1958.
Actual preparations for the Council took more than two years, included work from 10 specialised commissions, people for mass media and Christian Unity, a Central Commission for overall coordination. These groups, composed of members of the Roman Curia, produced 987 proposed constituting sessions, making it the largest gathering in any council in church history. Attendance varied in sessions from 2,100 to over 2,300. In addition, a varying number of periti were available for theological consultation—a group that turned out to have a major influence as the council went forward. Seventeen Orthodox Churches and Protestant denominations sent observers. More than three dozen representatives of other Christian communities were present at the opening session, the number grew to nearly 100 by the end of the 4th Council Sessions. Pope John XXIII opened the Council on 11 October 1962 in a public session and read the declaration Gaudet Mater Ecclesia before the Council Fathers. What is needed at the present t
Collectio canonum quadripartita
The Collectio canonum quadripartita is an early medieval canon law collection, written around the year 850 in the ecclesiastical province of Reims. It consists of four books; the Quadripartita is an episcopal manual of penitential law. It was a popular source for knowledge of penitential and canon law in France and Italy in the ninth and tenth centuries, notably influencing Regino's enormously important Libri duo de synodalibus causis. Well into the thirteenth century the Quadripartita was being copied by scribes and quoted by canonists who were compiling their own collections of canon law; this work should not be confused with the early twelfth-century Latin translation of Old English law known as the Quadripartitus. The complementary acts of confession and penance highly ritualized acts undertaken only once in a lifetime and in public fora, developed in the early Middle Ages into a disciplinary system known as private penance, in which the faithful were encouraged to confess their sins and in secret to a priest or confessor, who enjoined an appropriate period of punishment.
Through the Middle Ages the private penitential system became an elaborate and ritualized institution. In its earliest form, however―that is, as it was practiced from around the sixth to eighth centuries―this system was dependent upon the transmission of basic lists of sins and their corresponding punishments; these short lists of sins made up a genre of texts known as the'penitential handbook'. Penitentials were first employed as disciplinary tools by Irish and British monks living in cloistered ascetical religious communities, but soon spread to England and France, where they developed into varied and grander forms. By the eighth century, penitentials had adopted a focus on lay sins, their popularity was rivalled only by their variety. This gave rise during the early ninth century to a backlash against the diversity of penitentials and the diversity of disciplinary and theological'errors' which they propagated. A number of Frankish councils demanded that the laws of the older penitentials be brought into line with the accepted canonical norms of the church, as reflected in the more conservative collectiones canonum being compiled at the time.
As a result of such efforts towards standardization, the older penitentials fell out of use and were replaced by the large collections of penitential and canon law which dominated in France and Italy in the tenth and eleventh centuries. During the Carolingian period there evolved two different yet overlapping contexts in which the penitentials were used; the first of these was the pastoral context of confession between parishioner. The second was an administrative and/or academic context, in which books of penitential law served bishops in their roles as administrators of local dioceses, adjudicators at judicial synods and students of moral philosophy and canon law; the penitential required by a bishop was much different than that required by the confessor-priest, it is within this episcopal context that the penitentials evolved from mere manuals into vast collections of penitential and administrative law. By the ninth century, chapters from penitential manuals had entered many of the influential canon law collections being copied and compiled on the Continent.
Since at least the fifth and sixth centuries, canon law collections could boast of being repositories of the ancient and authoritative conciliar and papal judgements of the Christian church. As such, these collections had at first stood in stark contrast to the early penitentials, whose lists of sins and corresponding penances was neither ancient nor authoritative. In time, the genres of collectio and penitential blended together; as canon law collections succumbed to revision and abandoned their claims to antique authority by including newer and less authoritative laws, it became more common for them to include penitential canons. The collections began to look more like penitentials as penitentials everywhere were beginning to take on characteristics of the more'formal' collectiones. Problems of textual stability and genre were further exacerbated by the fact that no one code or collection of canon law claimed status as the recognized standard, it was in this context of fluctuating generic and textual boundaries in France that the Quadripartita developed.
The first book treats the life, preaching and duty of priests. Books 3 and 4 are longer than books 1 and 2. Scholars have divided the Quadripartita into a number of component parts, including a dedicatory letter, a brief list of authorities used, a list or register of titles for each book, a general preface, prefaces for books 2–4, the text or canons of the four books and an Epilogue
Collectio canonum Wigorniensis
The Collectio canonum Wigorniensis is a medieval canon law collection originating in southern England around the year 1005. It exists in multiple recensions, the earliest of which — "Recension A" — consists of just over 100 canons drawn from a variety of sources, most predominantly the ninth-century Frankish collection of penitential and canon law known as the Collectio canonum quadripartita; the author of Recension A is unknown. Other recensions exist later in date than the first; these recensions are extensions and augmentations of Recension A, are known collectively as "Recension B". These recensions all bear the unmistakable mark of having been created by Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester and archbishop of York sometime around the year 1008, though some of them may have been compiled as late as 1023, the year of Wulfstan's death; the collection treats a range of ecclesiastical and lay subjects, such as clerical discipline, church administration and clerical penance and private penance, as well as a variety of spiritual and catechistic matters.
Several "canons" in the collection verge on the character of sermons or expository texts rather than church canons in the traditional sense. Cross and Hamer's edition, Wulfstan's canon law collection Thorpe's edition in vol. 2 of his Ancient laws and institutes Johnson's English translation in his A collection of all the ecclesiastical laws Spelman's editio princeps in his Concilia, leges, constitutiones Discussion on the Anglo-Saxon canon law Web site A comprehensive edition of the canonical material in Cambridge, Corpus 265 A comprehensive edition of the canonical material in the Oxford manuscript A comprehensive edition of the canonical material in the London manuscript A comprehensive edition of the canonical material in Cambridge, Corpus 190 P. Wormald, The making of English law: King Alfred to the twelfth century. Vol. I: legislation and its limits. Wulfstan’s canon law collection, eds J. E. Cross and A. Hamer, Anglo-Saxon texts 1. A Wulfstan manuscript, containing institutes and homilies, ed. H.
R. Loyn, Early English manuscripts in facsimile 17
Decretales Gregorii IX
The Decretals of Gregory IX collectively called the Liber extra, are an important source of medieval Canon Law. In 1230, Pope Gregory IX ordered his chaplain and confessor, St. Raymond of Penyafort, a Dominican, to form a new canonical collection destined to replace all former collections, it has been said that the pope by this measure wished to emphasize his power over the Universal Church. The papacy had arrived at the zenith of its power. Moreover, a pope less favourably circumstanced would not have thought of so important a measure; the utility of a new collection was so evident that there may be no other motives than those the pope gives in the Bull "Rex pacificus" of 5 September 1234, viz. the inconvenience of recurring to several collections containing decisions most diverse and sometimes contradictory, exhibiting in some cases gaps and in others tedious length. The Quinque compilationes antiquæ was a series of five of these collections of pontifical legislation from the Decretum of Gratian to the pontificate of Honorius III.
Raymond executed the work in about four years, followed in it the method of the Quinque compilationes antiquæ. He borrowed from them the order of the subject-matter, the division into five books, of the books into titles and of the titles into chapters. Of the 1971 chapters the Decretals of Gregory IX contain, 1771 are from the Quinque compilationes antiquæ, 191 are from Gregory IX himself, seven from decretals of Innocent III not inserted in the former collections, two are of unknown origin, they are arranged according to the order of the ancient collections, i.e. each title opens with the chapters of the first collection, followed by those of the second, so on in regular order. Next come those of Innocent III, those of Gregory IX. All the rubrics, or headings of the titles, have been borrowed from these collections, but several have been modified as regards detail; this method lightened St. Raymond's task. However, he did more than compile the documents of former collections, he left out 383 decisions, modified several others, omitted parts when he considered it prudent to do so, filled up the gaps, to render his collection complete and concordant, cleared up doubtful points of the ancient ecclesiastical law by adding some new decretals.
He indicated by infra the passages excised by him in the former collections. They are called partes decisae; the new compilation bore no special title, but was called "Decretales Gregorii IX" or sometimes "Compilatio sexta", i. e. the sixth collection with reference to the "Quinque compilationes antiquæ". It was called "Collectio seu liber extra", i. e. the collection of the laws not contained in the "Decretum" of Gratian. Hence the custom of denoting this collection by the letter X. Quotations from this collection are made by indicating the number of the chapter, the name the work goes by, the number of the book, that of the title; the heading of the title and sometimes the first words of the chapter are quoted. 3, X, III, 23", or "c. Odoardus, X, De solutionibus, HI, 23", refers to the third chapter, commencing with the word Odoardus, in the Decretals of Gregory IX, book III, title 23, entitled "De solutionibus". If the number of the chapter or of the title is not indicated it will be learned on consulting the alphabetical indexes of the rubrics and of the introductory words of the chapters, which are to be found in all editions of the "Corpus Juris Canonici".
Gregory IX sent this new collection to the Universities of Bologna and Paris, declared, by the Bull "Rex pacificus" of 5 September 1234, that this compilation was the official code of the canon law. All its decisions had the force of canon law whether they were authentic or not, whatever the juridical value of the texts considered in themselves, whatsoever the original text, it is a unique collection. In this peculiar case it is not possible to overcome the difficulty by recourse to the principle that a law of date abrogates that of an earlier period, it is an exclusive collection, i.e. it abrogates all the collections the official ones, of a date than the "Decretum" of Gratian. Some authors maintain that Gregory IX abrogated those laws prior to Gratian's time that the latter had not included in his "Decretum", but others contest this opinion; the Decretals of Gregory IX differ from modern codes. Instead of containing in one concise statement a legislative decision, they start with an account of a controversy, the allegations of the parties in dispute, a demand or the solution of the question.
The enacting part of the chapter alone has the force of law. The rubrics of the titles have the force of law when their sense is complete, as for instance, Ne sede vacante aliquid innovetur, because the headings form an integral part of the official code of the laws. However, they ought always to be interpreted according to the decisions contained in the chapters; the historical indications concerning each chapter are far from being exact since they were corrected in the Roman edition of 1582. It may be regretted that St. Raymond did not ha
Collectiones canonum Dionysianae
The Collectiones canonum Dionysianae are the several collections of ancient canons prepared by the Scythian monk Dionysius'the humble'. They include the Collectio conciliorum Dionysiana I, the Collectio conciliorum Dionysiana II, the Collectio decretalium Dionysiana, they are of the utmost importance for the development of the canon law tradition in the West. Towards 500 a Scythian monk, known as Dionysius Exiguus, who had come to Rome after the death of Pope Gelasius, and, well skilled in both Latin and Greek, undertook to bring out a more exact translation of the canons of the Greek councils. In a second effort he collected papal decretals from Siricius to Anastasius II, anterior therefore, to Pope Symmachus. By order of Pope Hormisdas, Dionysius made a third collection, in which he included the original text of all the canons of the Greek councils, together with a Latin version of the same, he combined the first and second in one collection, which thus united the canons of the councils and the papal decretals.
This collection opens with a table or list of titles, each of, afterwards repeated before the respective canons. This first part of the collection is closed by a letter of Pope Boniface I, read at the same council, letters of Cyril of Alexandria and Atticus of Constantinople to the African Fathers, a letter of Pope Celestine I; the second part of the collection opens with a preface, in the shape of a letter to the priest Julian, a table of titles. The additions met with in Voel and Justel are taken from inferior manuscripts. Shortly after the year 500, during the pontificate of Pope Symmachus, Dionysius collected and translated into Latin the canons of the major eastern councils, including the so-called Canones apostolorum, the decrees of the councils of Nicaea, Neocaesarea, Antioch, Constantinople, Sardica and the so-called Codex Apiarii causae, the last being a collection of dossiers that includes the canons and acts pertaining to the council held in Carthage on 25 May, 419. Dionysius did this at the request of Stephen, bishop of Salona, a certain'dearest brother Laurence' who had been'offended by the awkwardness of the older translation'.
It is not certain, but it may have been within the context of the Symmachan-Laurentian dispute that these requests were made of Dionysius. Eckhard Wirbelauer, reviving several older arguments, has argued that Dionysius's collection was meant to stand in direct opposition to the views of Pope Symmachus, thus it was to have won neither the favour nor acceptance of that pope, nor his immediate successor and strong supporter, Pope Hormisdas. Shortly after preparing his first collection of conciliar canons, Dionysius prepared a second recension of the same name, to which he made important changes, he updated his translations, altered rubrics, most introduced a system of numbering the canons in sequence. In the Dionysiana II the Canones apostolorum were still numbered separately from 1 to 50, but now the canons of Nicaea to Constantinople were numbered in sequence from I to CLXV,'just"as is found in the Greek authority', in Dionysius’s Greek exemplar. Dionysius altered the position of Chalcedon, moving it from after the Codex Apiarii to before Sardica, removed the versio Attici of the canons of Nicaea from Codex Apiarii.
He added an important collection of African canons to his second recension. Known today as the Registri ecclesiae Carthaginensis excerpta, this'large body of conciliar legislation from the earlier Aurelian councils' was inserted by Dionysius into the middle of the Codex Apiarii ―, between the canons and the letters of the 419 Council of Carthage ― with the fabricated prefatory statement:'and in that synod were recited the various councils of the African province, celebrated in bygone days of Bishop Aurelius'. Thus, the 137'African' canons that make up Registri ecclesiae Carthaginensis excerpta in the Dionysiana II are a concoction of Dionysius's, a conflation of two earlier canonical collections of the African church; the existence of a third bilingual collection of conciliar canons, in which Dionysius removed the spurious Canones apostolorum along with the'African' canons and the problematic canons of Sardica, can be deduced from a preface now extant in Novara, Biblioteca Capitolare, XXX.
No copies of the text of this recension have survived. The fact that Pope Hormisdas, noted supporter of the previous pope Symmachus, commissioned this collection from Dionysius is sign
