§ 114. Concilium Quinisextum. a.d. 692.
Mansi., XI. 930–1006. Hefele, III. 328–348. Gieseler,I. 541 sq.
Wm. Beveridge (Bishop of St. Asaph, 1704–1708): Synodicon, sive Pandectae canonum. Oxon.
1672–82. Tom. I. 152–283. Beveridge gives the comments of Theod. Balsamon, Joh. Zonaras,
etc., on the Apostolical Canons.
Assemani (R.C.): Bibliotheca juris orientalis. Rom 1766, Tom. V. 55–348, and Tom. I. 120 and
408 sqq. An extensive discussion of this Synod and its canons.
The pope of Old Rome had achieved a great dogmatic triumph in the sixth oecumenical council,
but the Greek church had the satisfaction of branding at least one pope as a heretic, and soon found
an opportunity to remind her rival of the limits of her authority.
The fifth and sixth oecumenical councils passed doctrinal decrees, but no disciplinary
canons. This defect was supplied by a new council at Constantinople in 692, called the Concilium
Quinisextum,^638 also the Second Trullan Council, from the banqueting hall with a domed roof in
the imperial palace where it was held.^639
It was convened by the Emperor Justinian II. surnamed Rinotmetos,^640 one of the most
heartless tyrants that ever disgraced a Christian throne. He ruled from 685–695, was deposed by a
revolution and sent to exile with a mutilated nose, but regained the throne in 705 and was assassinated
in 711.^641
The supplementary council was purely oriental in its composition and spirit. It adopted 102
canons, most of them old, but not yet legally or oecumenically sanctioned. They cover the whole
range of clerical and ecclesiastical life and discipline, and are valid to this day in the Eastern church.
They include eighty-five apostolic canons so called (thirty-five more than were acknowledged by
the Roman church), the canons of the first four oecumenical councils, and of several minor councils,
as Ancyra, Neo-Caesarea, Gangra, Antioch, Laodicea, etc.; also the canons of Dionysius the Great
of Alexandria, Peter of Alexandria, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa
and Gregory of Nazianzum, Amphilochius of Iconium, Timothy of Alexandria, Cyril of Alexandria,
Gennadius of Constantinople, and an anti-Roman canon of Cyprian of Carthage. The decretals of
the Roman bishops are ignored.
(^638) Σύνοδοςπενθέκτη. The Greeks consider it simply as the continuation of the sixth oecumenical council, and call its
canonsκανόνεςτη̑ς ε κτης συνόδου. For this reason it was held in the same locality. The Latins opposed it from the start as
a "Synodus erratica," or "Conciliabulum pseudosextum." But they sometimes erroneously ascribed its canons to the sixth council.
(^639) Concilium Trullanum in an emphatic sense. The sixth council was held in the same locality.
640
̔ ινότμητοςfromῥις,nose, in allusion to his mutilation.
(^641) Gibbon (ch. 48) gives the following description of his character: "After the decease of his father the inheritance of
the Roman world devolved to Justinian II.; and the name of a triumphant law-giver was dishonored by the vices of a boy, who
imitated his namesake only in the expensive luxury of building. His passions were strong; his understanding was feeble; and
he was intoxicated with a foolish pride that his birth had given him the command of millions, of whom the smallest community
would not have chosen him for their local magistrate. His favorite ministers were two beings the least susceptible of human
sympathy, a eunuch and a monk: to the one he abandoned the palace, to the other the finances; the former corrected the emperor’s
mother with a scourge, the latter suspended the insolvent tributaries, with their heads downward, over a slow and smoky fire.
Since the days of Commodus and Caracalla the cruelty of the Roman princes had most commonly been the effect of their fear;
but Justinian, who possessed some vigor of character, enjoyed the sufferings, and braved the revenge of his subjects about ten
years, till the measure was full of his crimes and of their patience."