The Council in Trullo

Today, the Sunday closest to 16 July, is the Feast of the Fathers of the First Six Œcumenical Councils.

‘Most glorious art Thou, O Christ our God, since Thou hast established our Holy Fathers as luminaries upon the earth and through them hath instructed us all in the true faith. O Most merciful One, glory be to Thee.’
– Troparion of the Fathers in Tone VIII.

‘The preaching of the Apostles and the dogmas of the Fathers have confirmed
the one faith in the Church. In the garment of truth woven by theology from on
high, she rightly divides and glorifies the great mystery of piety.’
– Kontakion of the Fathers in Tone VIII.

‘Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the God of our Fathers, and praised and glorified is Thy name unto the ages of ages.’
– Prokeimenon of the Fathers in Tone IV

Following the 6th Œcumenical Council, held in Constantinople in A.D. 680–81, the need was first felt to bring together the decrees of all the councils held up to that time. A council was duly convened in 692 by the Emperor Justinian II, and issued 102 canons, summarising the teaching of the Church to that point.

The council was held in the same place as the 6th council, in the great domed hall—the Trullo—of the imperial palace, and so came to be called the Council in Trullo. It was not an oecumenical council, although the Eastern church has viewed it as a continuation of the 6th council.

A number of the canons were intended to strengthen the Church’s discipline, for example, concerning whether or not clergy could be married. Unfortunately, by highlighting some of the differences in custom between the Eastern and Western churches, this contributed to the already deepening divide between East and West.

Evidently today’s feast was established before the 7th Œcumenical Council was held in 787. It seems reasonable to suppose that the dogmatic labours of the Council in Trullo were its inspiration.

The first canon of the Council in Trullo recapitulated the teachings of the first six councils:

‘That order is best of all which makes every word and act begin and end in God. Wherefore that piety may be clearly set forth by us and that the Church of which Christ is the foundation may be continually increased and advanced, and that it may be exalted above the cedars of Lebanon; now therefore we, by divine grace at the beginning of our decrees, define that the faith set forth by the God-chosen Apostles who themselves had both seen and were ministers of the Word, shall be preserved without any innovation, unchanged and inviolate … 

‘[The First Œcumenical Council] … revealed and declared to us the consubstantiality of the Three Persons comprehended in the Divine Nature …

‘[The 2nd Œcumenical Council] … accepting their decisions with regard to the Holy Ghost in assertion of his godhead …

‘[The 3rd Œcumenical Council] … teaching that Christ the incarnate Son of God is one; and declaring that she who bare him without human seed was the immaculate Ever-Virgin, glorifying her as literally and in very truth the Mother of God [Theotokos] …

‘[The 4th Œcumenical Council taught] … that the one Christ, the son of God, is of two natures, and must be glorified in these two natures … [without] division … [or] confusion … 

‘[The 5th Œcumenical Council] … anathematized and execrated Theodore of Mopsuestia (the teacher of Nestorius), and Origen, and Didymus, and Evagrius, all of whom reintroduced feigned Greek myths, and brought back again the circlings [transmigration] of certain bodies and souls … [and] what things were written by Theodoret against the right faith and against the Twelve Chapters of blessed Cyril …

‘[The 6th Œcumenical Council] … taught that we should openly profess our faith that in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, our true God, there are two natural wills or volitions and two natural operations; and condemned by a just sentence those who adulterated the true doctrine and taught the people that in the one Lord Jesus Christ there is but one will and one operation …

‘And, to say so once for all, we decree that the faith shall stand firm and remain unsullied until the end of the world as well as the writings divinely handed down and the teachings of all those who have beautified and adorned the Church of God and were lights in the world, having embraced the word of life … For our decrees add nothing to the things previously defined, nor do they take anything away, nor have we any such power.’

Canon I of the Council in Trullo, A.D. 692. [Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series.]

Canon CII, the last of the council’s canons, addresses those who will apply them. John McGuckin has commented: ‘The text is an interesting reflection on the “philosophy” of canon law, subordinating it in its scope to the pastoral care and development of the faithful. The legislator is called upon to be a physician [not a judge], knowing when to administer a severe remedy and when to relax a strict regimen, because of the individual needs of each … The great list of regulations end, therefore, in the spirit in which they were begun, with the primacy of pastoral care to the fore and with a profound sense of legislative discretion afforded to the bishops as canonical adjudicators.’

[John A. McGuckin, The Ascent of Christian Law: Patristic and Byzantine Formulations of a New Civilization, Yonkers, New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2012, pp. 231–32.]