The Seven Ecumenical Councils: Canons and Dogmatic Decrees

"In gathering together thus the canons of the councils John of Antioch did not form a complete body of ecclesiastical law. By his Novel CXLI., Justinian had indeed given to the canons of the Church the force of law, but he himself published a great number of constitutions upon Church matters. Now it was necessary to harmonize these constitutions and canons, and to accomplish this feat was the object of a second work undertaken by John of Antioch, to which he gave the title of Nomocanon (Nomokanon ), a word which from that time has served to designate any collection of this sort."

Bury says, "In the troubles of the VII^th century the study of law, like many other things, declined, and in the practical administration of justice the prescriptions of the Code and Digest were often ignored or modified by the alien precepts of Christianity. The religion of the Empire had exerted but very slight influence--no fundamental influence, we may say--on the Justinian law. Leo III., the founder of the Syrian (vulgarly called Isaurian) dynasty, when he restored the Empire after a generation of anarchy, saw the necessity of legislation to meet the changed circumstances of the time. The settlements of foreigners--Slavs and Mardaites--in the provinces of the Empire created an agrarian question, which he dealt with in his Agrarian Code. The increase of Slavonic and Saracenic piracy demanded increased securities for maritime trade, and this was dealt with in a Navigation Code. But it was not only for special relations that Leo made laws; he legislated also, and in an entirely new way, for the general relations of life. He issued a law book (in a.d. 740 in the name of himself and his son Constantine), which changed and modified the Roman law, as it had been fixed by Justinian. The Ecloga, as it is called, may be described as a Christian law book. It is a deliberate attempt to change the legal system of the Empire by an application of Christian principles. Examples, to illustrate its tendency, will be given below. The horror in which the iconoclasts were held on account of their heresy by the image-worshippers, cast discredit upon all their works. This feeling had something to do with the great reaction, which was inaugurated by Basil I., against their legal reforms. The Christian Code of Leo prevailed in the empire for less than a century and a half; and then, under the auspices…