The Quinisext Council, held in Trullo
The ecumenical[122] council which has come to be known as the Quinisext, or "Fifth-Sixth"— actually the Sixth[123]— was assembled in an imperial palace called the Troullos (or, according to the Latin spelling, Trullus) in the reign of Justinian II, in the year 691 after Christ.[124] The number of Fathers who attended it was 327 according to Balsamon and Zonaras, but 340 according to the author of the Conciliar booklet, of whom the leaders were Paul of Constantinople,[125] Basil the Bishop of Gortyna, a province in Crete, a certain Bishop of Ravenna who acted as the legate of the Pope of Rome,[126] Peter the Patriarch of Alexandria, Anastasius the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and George the Patriarch of Antioch. It was assembled at the command of the Emperor, not in order to examine into any special heresy, not in order to settle questions of faith, in such a way as to warrant its being called a special and separate Council, but for the purpose of promulgating necessary Canons relating to correction of outstanding evils and the regulation of the internal polity of the Church. Which Canons are the following, as confirmed by Acts 2 and 4 and 8 of the Seventh Ecumenical Council and by the latter’s Canon I. They are further confirmed by three Popes, namely, Adrian I, Gregory II, and Innocent III, by Gratian, by the legates of the Pope who were present at the Seventh Ec. C., by the so-called First-and-Second Council, which mentions its c. XXXI in its own c. XII. They are also confirmed or attested by Cedrenus, by John of Damacus (or John Damascene), who says, “consult the definitions of the Sixth Council and you will find there the proof.” They were also confirmed or attested by the interpreters of the Canons, by Photius, by the personal signatures both of the Emperor and of the legates of the Pope of Rome, as well as those of the Patriarchs and of the Fathers who attended it. Thus, summarily speaking, it may be said to have been attested and confirmed by the whole catholic Church, notwithstanding that the modern Latins calumiously traduce them because they censure and controvert their innovations. Adrian I in his letter to Tarasius has left us this admirable testimony concerning these Canons in the following words: “I accept the decisions made by the same holy Sixth Council, together with all the Canons it has duly and divinely uttered, wherein they are expressed.” In certain inscriptions of the venerable icons is to be found added also the whole text of its eighty-second Canon (p. 747 of the Collection of the Councils). Pope Gregory in his letter to St. Germanus (which is recorded in Act 4 of the Seventh Ec. C.) says in reference to this same Canon of the present Sixth Council: “Wherefore the assembly of the holy men have delivered this chapter to the Church by God’s design as a matter of the greatest salvation.” Note, too, the fact that he called this Council a holy assembly and said that its Canons were issued by God’s design. But the testimony of Patriarch Tarasius concerning these Canons is sufficient to shut and gag the mouths of the adversaries. In fact it is rather the testimony of the entire Seventh Ecumenical Council and runs word for word as follows: “Some men who are painfully ignorant in regard to these Canons are scandalized and blatantly say, ‘We wonder whether they really are Canons of the Sixth Council.’ Let such men become conscious of the fact that the holy and great Sixth Council was convoked in the reign of Constantine against those who were asserting the energy and the will of Christ to be a single energy and a single will, and that the bishops who attended it anathematized the heretics and stated clearly and emphatically the Orthodox faith, after which they left for home in the year fourteen of Constantine’s reign. Thereafter, however, let it not be forgotten that . . . the same Fathers gathered themselves together in the reign of Constantine’s son Justinian and promulgated the aforementioned Canons, and let no one have any doubt about them. For those who signed their names in the reign of Constantine are the same ones as those who signed their names to the present paper in the reign of Justinian, as becomes plainly evident from the exact likeness of their respective signatures as written by their own hands. For it was incumbent on them after declaring an Ecumenical Council to proceed to promulgate also ecclesiastical Canons (Act 4 of the Seventh Ec. C., p. 780 of the second volume of the Collection of Canons).” In the same Act 4 of the 7th it is written that this very same identical and original paper, which had been signed by the Fathers of the present Sixth Council, was read aloud to the Seventh Ec. C. Peter the Bishop of Nicomedeia stated, though, that there was also another book containing the present Canons of the Sixth Council (see also Dositheus p. 603 to p. 618 of the Dodecabiblus).
Notes
[122] For many reasons the present Council is called and is an Ecumenical Council. Firstly, because in the salutatory address which it makes to Justinian, as well as in its third Canon, it labels itself Ecumenical. Secondly, because the Seventh Ecumenical Council in its Act 8 and in its first Canon also calls it an Ecumenical Council. In addition, Adrian I, the Pope of Rome, in his letter to Tarasius, recorded in Act 2 of the 7th Ec. C. (page 748 of the Collection of the Councils), counts this among the Ecumenical Councils. Thirdly, because in its Canons it lays down legislation and pronounces decrees relating, not to any one part of the inhabited earth, but to the whole inhabited portion of the globe, both to the Eastern Churches and to the Western ones; and it specifically refers to Rome, and to Africa, and to Armenia, to the provinces in Barbary — as appears in Canons XII, XIII, XVIII, XXIX, XXXV, and XXXVI. It would be ridiculous, of course, for it to lay down legislation for so many and so widely distributed provinces, and especially to improve upon Canons of many local and regional Councils and Synods, were it not in reality an Ecumenical Council, and had it not in reality the dignity and office of an Ecumenical Council. As concerning this see the Footnote to its c. II. Fourthly, because all of the four Patriarchs of the inhabited earth attended it, and so did the Pope of Rome through his legates (or lieutenants, or proxies, or deputies); and the churches everywhere on the face of the earth recognized it and accepted it — a fact which serves as an essential mark of identification and a constitutive characteristic, or constituent feature, of Ecumenical Councils. Fifthly, and lastly, because it agrees in its Canons with the divine Scriptures and with the Apostolic and Conciliar and Synodic traditions and instructions and injunctions, a fact which in itself is a sign and a peculiar token of Ecumenical Councils, as we said in the prologue to the First Ecumenical Council, if it be not their most specifically peculiar feature.
[123] I said that more properly speaking this Council is or ought to be designated the sixth, because, though the later exegetes of the Canons sometimes call it the Quinisext (or Quinisextine), and others do too, by reason of the fact that it may be said to have supplied what the Fifth and Sixth Councils failed to provide — that is to say, that it furnished Canons to help in the regulation of the ecclesiastical polity, such as those Councils failed to promulgate — yet, in spite of the significance of this fact, it may be averred that, properly and truly speaking, this Council is and ought to be called the Sixth Ecumenical. Firstly, because, according to the author Romanus in his Prolegomena to the present Council, the prelates who convoked the Sixth Ecumenical Council in the reign of Pogonatus convoked also this one in the reign of his son Justinian. For, according to him, forty-three of the bishops who attended the former were present also at the latter. It would appear, however, that there were more of them, judging from the words of St. Tarasius which he addressed to the Seventh Ecumenical Council. Secondly, because the Seventh Ecumenical Council, in its Act 4 and its Act 8, and in its first Canon, specifically calls it the Sixth. Adrian II, too, in his letter to Tarasius, accepts its Canons as if considering it the Sixth Ecumenical Council proper (page 748 of the Collection of Councils), and in writing to Emperor Charles of France he calls it the Sixth and Holy Council. The legates of the Pope, too, confirmed it as the Sixth at the Seventh Ecumenical Council; and Pope Innocent III says in reference to c. XXXII of the Council, “it was arranged at the Sixth Council”; and Gratian (i.e., Franciscus Gratianus) refers to it by its proper name as the Sixth. And thirdly, also because this Council is identical with the Sixth more than with the Fifth Ecumenical Council, both as being closer to it in point of time and as having been held in the same geographical locality, since it convened in the very same palace of the Troullos (or Trullus) as that in which the Sixth Ecumenical Council convened.
[124] For this is the date of it according to chronological calculations. For the Council called the Sixth which was held before it convened in the Ninth Indiction and finished its work A.D. 681 in the first month of the Tenth Indiction, as the minutes of its meetings bear witness. But this Council (which we are considering to be the real Sixth Ecumenical Council) assembled in the year 6199 after Adam, and 691 after Christ, as its Third and Seventeenth Canons bear witness; this means that it took place in the Fifth Indiction immediately following the past period of fifteen years of the preceding Indiction in which the Sixth Council which was held prior thereto finished its business. So that from the Sixth to the present Council ten or eleven years passed in point of fact, and not twenty-seven, as the Latins allege.
[125] That this Council convened in the time of Paul of Constantinople is attested by the Collection of the Councils, on page 698 thereof; and not in the time of Callinicus, as Binius and Baronius babblingly assert.
[126] Not only does Balsamon say that he discovered in old codices of Nomocanons that these men were representing the Pope at this Council, and that the Bishops of Sardinia, of Thessalonica, and of Corinth were also acting as legates of the Pope, but even c. III of this same Sixth Ec. C. obviously bears witness that there were legates and representatives of the Pope of Rome attending it (concerning these see ibidem in the Collection). The Bishop of Gortyna, the Bishop of Thessalonica, and the Bishop of Corinth acted in place of the Pope at this Council, not because they were subject to the Pope, by any reason of their having been ordained by him, but on account of the distance, says Blastaris, from Rome to Constantinople.