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Council texts
Read the sources in context.
Find your way into the councils
Begin with the question and its historical setting before reading a definition or canon.
- How is a council received?
Recognition, reception and the limits of formal criteria.
- Chalcedon and the person of Christ
Read the definition alongside the disputed terminology and reception.
- Christ’s two wills
Follow Chalcedon into the definition of Constantinople III.
- Rome, primacy and jurisdiction
Compare a bounded Nicene canon extract and the later Vatican I definition.
Read the included historical texts, or choose “Include external sources” to find works hosted elsewhere. Complete works, chapters and excerpts are distinguished. Edition and reuse notes accompany each included text.
Browse included council texts
- Trent Session IV — Decree concerning the canonical Scriptures (Waterworth 1848)
- Creed150: The Holy Creed of the 150 Fathers, complete Percival edition dossier
- Chalcedon Definition: complete scoped Percival historical edition dossier
- Chalcedon Session I: complete scoped Percival historical edition extract
- Constantinople III: Definition of Faith (historical edition)
- Constantinople I Canon III, complete historical canon unit with commentary
- Chalcedon Canon XXVIII, complete historical canon unit with commentary
- Apostolical Canons, historical introduction and eighty-five canons
- Synod of Antioch in Encæniis (341), introduction, letter and twenty-five canons
- Lateran V: Pastor aeternus gregem (1516; complete named Latin bull in Turin edition)
- Nicaea I canon VIII with complete historical notes and excursus
- Nicaea I canon XI with complete historical notes and excursus
- Nicaea I canon XIII with complete historical notes and excursus
- Sardica: complete scoped historical-edition canons dossier
- Nicaea I: Canon VIII with historical commentary and excursus
- Nicaea I: Canon XIX with historical commentary and excursus
- Session XIII: Honorius second-letter fragments and separate Pyrrhus material (Latin)
- The Decree of the Holy, Great, Ecumenical Synod, the Second of Nice
- Council of Trent, Session XIII: Eucharist decree, Chapters I–VIII and Canons I–XI (Waterworth, 1848)
- Nicaea I, canon VI — first sentence only (Percival edition, 1900)
- Vatican I — Pastor aeternus, Chapters I–IV (English version from Manning’s volume, in Schaff 1896)
- Constance: Haec sancta (five-declaration core, Mansi 1784 / Welter 1903)
- Constantinople 1895: patriarchal and synodal reply (Metallinos 1896, selected §§XVI and XIX)
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