Presbyters Uniwersytet Warszawski
ID
ER 261
Canon 29 of the Council of Carthage (North Africa, AD 419) reminds excommunicated clerics not to take communion before their case has been heard.
Canon 29
 
Item placuit uniuerso concilio ut qui excommunicatus fuerit pro suo neglectu siue episcopus siue quilibet clericus et tempore excommunicatus suae ante audientiam communionem praesumpserit, ipse in se damnationis iudicetur protulisse sententiam.
 
(ed. Munier 1974: 110)
Canon 29
 
Similarly it pleased the whole council that if someone, a bishop or any cleric, has been excommunicated because of his neglect, and he dared to accept communion in the time of his excommunication, before his cause was heard, he will be considered as having given the sentence of condemnation against himself.
  
(trans. S. Adamiak)
 
 
 

Place of event:

Region
  • Latin North Africa
City
  • Carthage

About the source:

Title: Canones in causa Apiarii
Origin: Carthage (Latin North Africa)
Denomination: Catholic/Nicene/Chalcedonian
Apiarius, a presbyter of Sicca Veneria in North Africa, was excommunicated for some unspecified crimes by his bishop, Urbanus. In 418 he appealed directly to Pope Zosimus, who sent legates to Africa to assess the charges. The council of African bishops gathered in Carthage in May 419 to address the question. On the 25 May they approved several disciplinary canons, mainly repeated from previous councils, which are known collectively in scholarship as “Canones in causa Apiarii”. They were also sometimes transmitted as the part of “Codex Apiarii causae”, together with other acts of the council of 419.
We follow the edition of Munier, who followed Turner, who established the text according to three codices: Vindobonensis 2141, fol. 106, Monacensis (olim Frisingensis), fol. 64`, and Wirceburgensis Univ. mp. th. f. 146, fol. 66. We ignore the later textual traditions, namely Italian collections (which were the basis of the edition of brothers Ballerini in PL 56), and the redaction of Dionysius Exiguus; both of them have been included in the Corpus Christianorum edition, and they contain only minor changes, which we ignore, with the exception of two canons not transmitted in the first recension.
Edition:
C. Munier ed., Concilia Africae a. 345-a. 525, Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina 149, Turnhoult 1974, 79-165.  
 
Bibliography:
J. Gaudemet, Les Sources du droit de l'Église en Occident du IIe au VIIe siècle, Paris, 1985.
C.H. Turner, Ecclesiae occidentalis monumenta iuris antiquissima, vol. 1-2, Oxford 1889-1939.

Categories:

Described by a title - Clericus
    Public law - Ecclesiastical
      Administration of justice - Ecclesiastical
        Administration of justice - Excommunication/Anathema
          Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL: S. Adamiak, Presbyters in the Late Antique West, ER261, http://www.presbytersproject.ihuw.pl/index.php?id=6&SourceID=261