Greater Nomocanon

Collection of Ecclesiastical Canons Divided into Fourteen Parts of the Great God and Our Savior Jesus Christ, the Disciples and Apostles, and after them, in their likeness, the Holy Priests and Teachers of His Church, gathered from the Gentiles and Jews, and freed from the power of the devil and from deception, and with right reason and faith toward the Lord of all glory and the merciful Lord of all, they were appointed as shepherds by grace, not deeming it just that, like the civil laws, the sinners should be punished by beating, for they considered this entirely foolish and utterly improper, but rather they were ready to suffer with them, those who, after the first fall, were eager to return to conversion, while toward those still in error and turned away from the right path, like good shepherds, they diligently watched over them and, with all haste, labored to raise up those who had fallen into the pit.

Now, these collected and divinely established laws, with the sword of the spirit, are to be purified with all wisdom and skill, and their simplicity, ruin and dissolution are to be bound and strengthened by certain medicines and verbal bonds, and thus, by grace and co-operation of the spirit, they are to be restored to their former integrity, the weakened ones. And so that their successors and vicars may preserve unharmed the souls of the men entrusted to them, each of them in their own times gathered together the thrice-blessed ones / by such dispensation of divine grace and by the strong gathering of each council, and they established certain laws and canons, not civil but divine, for the regulation of proper and improper orders, for each man's life and form, which confirm those who walk the royal path, while for those who deviate from it by inclination, they become correctors. Thus, from ancient times, from time to time, by individual persons, for various matters, appropriate ecclesiastical laws and canons were established, for after the holy apostles, ten great councils of fathers were held. Along with these, the great Basil also established canons concerning many matters.

For this reason, they were scattered, as from time to time their appearance gave occasion, and not according to any order of composition, but as divided into chapters and arranged according to the persons and their subject matter, the canons were written by them. Until it became difficult to find and laborious to search out for the investigator of these canons to quickly find them. For this reason, by the grace of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, we have hastened to gather together into one collection those which were determined by them in a scattered manner at each time, and we divide these into fourteen parts. But we do not observe any order or sequence of number, and we do not join the first and second, as one might think, and the third and fourth, and again the fifth canon together with each other; rather, we unite like with like, and as is fitting, we compose and join them together with their corresponding chapters written concerning the same person, so that we make easy and effortless, as I think, the finding of what is sought for all. But not first and alone have we accomplished this.

We did not compose this, but others have been found who divided these into sixty parts. Neither the canons of Basil the Great were joined with others, nor were similar matters, as was fitting, combined with their like, as now in the parts many canons are found concerning one subject, and the multiple legislation of one person becomes more confirmatory, because for the sake of greater clarity of this mutual arrangement of like matters we strove to make a division of the canons, so that the inscribed parts concerning each of them and the force they possess might declare everything well. And the arrangement of the councils—after that of the holy apostles—and how many canons are assigned to each of them, or how many are ascribed to Basil the Great, will be revealed without labor by these preceding matters to every inquirer, since this is made very easy and clear and not obscure, but is very well examinable for those who wish to investigate them. Now then, the disciples of the Lord and the apostles wrote forty-five canons through Clement. And after them, the councils held at each time, as are mentioned here:

First, the three hundred and eighteen holy fathers gathered at Nicaea under the great Constantine, in the consulship of Paulinus and Julian, the most illustrious, in the year six hundred and thirty-six from Alexander, on the nineteenth day of the month of Desius, before the thirteenth of the Kalends of July, canons numbering twenty.