Council of Rome

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The Council of Rome was a synod which took place in Rome in AD 382, under the leadership of Pope Damasus I, the then-Bishop of Rome. The only surviving conciliar pronouncement may be the Decretum Gelasianum that contains a canon of Scripture, which was issued by the Council of Rome under Pope Damasus in 382, and which is identical with the list given at the Council of Trent, except for the exclusion of the Baruch. [1] Although Lamentations was listed separately from Jeremiah by the council, Catholic apologists such as Catholic Answers argue that Baruch was included in Jeremiah. [2] However, Jerome, did not translate it in his Vulgate. [3]

Contents

Occasion

The previous year, the Emperor Theodosius I had appointed the candidate Nectarius as Archbishop of Constantinople. The bishops of the West opposed the election result and asked for a common synod of East and West to settle the succession of the see of Constantinople, and so the Emperor Theodosius, soon after the close of the First Council of Constantinople in 381, summoned the Imperial bishops to a fresh synod at Constantinople; nearly all of the same bishops who had attended the earlier synod re-assembled in the early summer of 382. On arrival they received a letter from the synod of Milan, inviting them to a great general council at Rome; they indicated that they must remain where they were, because they had not made any preparations for such long a journey; however, they sent three—Syriacus, Eusebius, and Priscian—with a joint synodal letter to Pope Damasus, Ambrose, archbishop of Milan, and the other bishops assembled in the council at Rome. [4]

Decree

Jerome mentioned the synod twice, but only in passing. [5]

The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church states: [1]

A council probably held at Rome in 382 under St. Damasus gave a complete list of the canonical books of both the Old Testament and the New Testament (also known as the 'Gelasian Decree' because it was reproduced by Gelasius in 495), which is identical with the list given at Trent.

The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church also notes that "according to E. von Dobschütz, the Gelasian Decree is not a Papal work at all, but a private compilation which was composed in Italy (but not at Rome) in the early 6th cent. Other scholars, while accepting this date, think it originated in Gaul". [1]

Catholic apologist and historian William Jurgens writes: [6]

The first part of this decree has long been known as the Decree of Damasus, and concerns the Holy Spirit and the seven-fold gifts. The second part of the decree is more familiarly known as the opening part of the Gelasian Decree, in regard to the canon of Scripture: De libris recipiendis vel non recipiendis. It is now commonly held that the part of the Gelasian Decree dealing with the accepted canon of Scripture is an authentic work of the Council of Rome of 382 A.D. and that Gelasius edited it again at the end of the fifth century, adding to it the catalog of the rejected books, the apocrypha. It is now almost universally accepted that these parts one and two of the Decree of Damasus are authentic parts of the Acts of the Council of Rome of 382 A.D.

Related Research Articles

The deuterocanonical books, meaning "Of, pertaining to, or constituting a second canon," collectively known as the Deuterocanon (DC), are certain books and passages considered to be canonical books of the Old Testament by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Assyrian Church of the East, but which modern Jews and Protestants regard as apocrypha.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">First Council of Constantinople</span> 381 AD council of Christian bishops

The First Council of Constantinople was a council of Christian bishops convened in Constantinople in AD 381 by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I. This second ecumenical council, an effort to attain consensus in the church through an assembly representing all of Christendom, except for the Western Church, confirmed the Nicene Creed, expanding the doctrine thereof to produce the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, and dealt with sundry other matters. It met from May to July 381 in the Church of Hagia Irene and was affirmed as ecumenical in 451 at the Council of Chalcedon.

The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Israelites. The second division of Christian Bibles is the New Testament, written in Koine Greek.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pope Damasus I</span> Head of the Catholic Church from 366 to 384 AD

Pope Damasus I, known as Damasus of Rome, was the bishop of Rome from October 366 to his death. He presided over the Council of Rome of 382 that determined the canon or official list of sacred scripture. He spoke out against major heresies, thus solidifying the faith of the Catholic Church, and encouraged production of the Vulgate Bible with his support for Jerome. He helped reconcile the relations between the Church of Rome and the Church of Antioch, and encouraged the veneration of martyrs.

The 380s decade ran from January 1, 380, to December 31, 389.

Pope Gelasius I was the bishop of Rome from 1 March 492 to his death on 19 November 496. Gelasius was a prolific author whose style placed him on the cusp between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Some scholars have argued that his predecessor Felix III may have employed him to draft papal documents, although this is not certain.

Maximus, also known as Maximus I or Maximus the Cynic, was the intrusive archbishop of Constantinople in 380, where he became a rival of Gregory Nazianzus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nectarius of Constantinople</span> Archbishop of Constantinople from 381 to 397

Nectarius was the archbishop of Constantinople from AD 381 until his death, the successor to Saint Gregory Nazianzus and predecessor to St. John Chrysostom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Book of Baruch</span> Deuterocanonical book of the Bible in some Christian traditions

The Book of Baruch is a deuterocanonical book of the Bible, used in many Christian traditions, such as Catholic and Orthodox churches. In Judaism and Protestant Christianity, it is considered not to be part of the canon, with the Protestant Bibles categorizing it as part of the Biblical apocrypha. The book is named after Baruch ben Neriah, the prophet Jeremiah's scribe who is mentioned at Baruch 1:1, and has been presumed to be the author of the whole work. The book is a reflection of a late Jewish writer on the circumstances of Jewish exiles from Babylon, with meditations on the theology and history of Israel, discussions of wisdom, and a direct address to residents of Jerusalem and the Diaspora. Some scholars propose that it was written during or shortly after the period of the Maccabees.

The Gelasian Decree is a Latin text traditionally thought to be a decretal of the prolific Pope Gelasius I, bishop of Rome from 492 to 496. The work reached its final form in a five-chapter text written by an anonymous scholar between 519 and 553, the second chapter of which is a list of books of Scripture presented as having been made part of the biblical canon by a Council of Rome under Pope Damasus I, the bishop of Rome from 366–383. This list is known as the Damasine List. The fifth chapter of the work includes a list of distrusted and rejected works not encouraged for church use.

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The biblical apocrypha denotes the collection of apocryphal ancient books thought to have been written some time between 200 BCE and 100 CE.

The Old Testament is the first section of the two-part Christian biblical canon; the second section is the New Testament. The Old Testament includes the books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) or protocanon, and in various Christian denominations also includes deuterocanonical books. Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Protestants use different canons, which differ with respect to the texts that are included in the Old Testament.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christianity in the 4th century</span> Christianity-related events during the 4th century

Christianity in the 4th century was dominated in its early stage by Constantine the Great and the First Council of Nicaea of 325, which was the beginning of the period of the First seven Ecumenical Councils (325–787), and in its late stage by the Edict of Thessalonica of 380, which made Nicene Christianity the state church of the Roman Empire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christianity in the 5th century</span> Christianity-related events during the 5th century

In the 5th century in Christianity, there were many developments which led to further fracturing of the State church of the Roman Empire. Emperor Theodosius II called two synods in Ephesus, one in 431 and one in 449, that addressed the teachings of Patriarch of Constantinople Nestorius and similar teachings. Nestorius had taught that Christ's divine and human nature were distinct persons, and hence Mary was the mother of Christ but not the mother of God. The Council rejected Nestorius' view causing many churches, centered on the School of Edessa, to a Nestorian break with the imperial church. Persecuted within the Roman Empire, many Nestorians fled to Persia and joined the Sassanid Church thereby making it a center of Nestorianism. By the end of the 5th century, the global Christian population was estimated at 10-11 million. In 451 the Council of Chalcedon was held to clarify the issue further. The council ultimately stated that Christ's divine and human nature were separate but both part of a single entity, a viewpoint rejected by many churches who called themselves miaphysites. The resulting schism created a communion of churches, including the Armenian, Syrian, and Egyptian churches, that is today known as Oriental Orthodoxy. In spite of these schisms, however, the imperial church still came to represent the majority of Christians within the Roman Empire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christianity in late antiquity</span>

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A biblical canon is a set of texts which a particular Jewish or Christian religious community regards as part of the Bible.

The canon of the New Testament is the set of books many modern Christians regard as divinely inspired and constituting the New Testament of the Christian Bible. For most churches, the canon is an agreed-upon list of 27 books that includes the canonical Gospels, Acts, letters attributed to various apostles, and Revelation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Papacy in late antiquity</span> History of papacy between 313-476

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References

  1. 1 2 3 Cross, F. L.; Livingstone, E. A., eds. (2005-01-01). "canon of Scripture". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3 ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 282. doi:10.1093/acref/9780192802903.001.0001. ISBN   978-0-19-280290-3.
  2. ↑ https://www.catholic.com/qa/baruch-is-there-just-sometimes-as-part-of-jeremiah
  3. ↑ Canellis, Aline, ed. (2017). "Introduction : Du travail de Jérôme à la Vulgate" [Introduction: From Jerome's work to the Vulgate]. Jérôme : Préfaces aux livres de la Bible[Jerome : Preface to the books of the Bible] (in French). Abbeville: Éditions du Cerf. pp. 216–7. ISBN   978-2-204-12618-2.
  4. ↑ Sinclair, W. M. (1911). "Nectarius, archbp. of Constantinople". In Wace, Henry; Piercy, William C. (eds.). Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century (3rd ed.). London: John Murray.
  5. ↑ Hahneman, Geoffrey Mark (1992). The Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon. Clarendon Press. p. 158. ISBN   978-0-19-826341-8.
  6. ↑ Jurgens, William (1970). The Faith of the Early Fathers. Liturgical Press. p. 404. ISBN   978-0-8146-0432-8.

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