Lesser Nomocanon

Rule and ordinance and the canonical collection of the Sixth Council of the one hundred sixty-eight holy fathers, who assembled in Constantinople, in New Rome, under Constantine, the God-serving emperor, the grandson of the emperor Heraclius. The leaders of this council were Agatho, pope of Rome, and George of Constantinople, and Theophanes of Antioch, and the other God-clad fathers. This holy Sixth Council of the one hundred sixty-eight fathers, who assembled in Constantinople in the imperial palace, confirmed the true faith and wrote a monument of theology and canons of the church for the guidance of the believing people. First they proclaimed the faith established by the Council of Nicaea of the 318 fathers, and that of Constantinople of the 150 fathers, that of Ephesus of the 200 fathers, and that of Chalcedon of the 630 fathers, and again that of Constantinople of the 165 fathers; and they accepted and confirmed everything preached by those five councils; and those whom they had anathematized and condemned, they condemned; and those whom they had accepted and glorified, they glorified and accepted. And they also referred to other councils that had been held in various places in a godly and orthodox manner and had established canons, as they themselves mention below.

And thereafter they utterly cast out the newly arisen heresy of the one will and one energy of the Monothelites, and they condemned the Monothelites of that heresy: Theophanes of Pharran, Honorius of Rome, Cyrus of Alexandria, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter of Constantinople, Macarius of Antioch, and Stephen, his disciple, for all these dared to say concerning our Lord Jesus Christ: "He had one will and one energy only after the incarnation," which is a denial of the two natures. And they also condemned the foolish and mad monk Polychronius, who boasted that in that heresy he would raise the dead. But the holy fathers gave him permission to raise [the dead], and when he raised nothing, he all the more exposed his own blasphemy. These above-written heretics the holy fathers condemned. And they accepted the epistle written by Agatho, Pope of Rome, to Emperor Constantine, as being in accord with the epistle of the great Leo, Pope of Rome, which was written to the Council of Chalcedon. And that council of one hundred fifty bishops, whom the venerable Agatho assembled in Rome, they requested and confirmed everything said and ordained by them, and they counted them as one council: the one hundred seventy of Constantinople and the one hundred fifty of Rome.

And they greatly extolled the holy Martin, Pope of Rome, and the holy Maximus the Confessor, and established for them eternal blessedness and praise in perpetual remembrance. And that written monument of the true faith and those ecclesiastical canons were read aloud before the God-serving Emperor Constantine, and the Emperor Constantine himself, with his own hand, in red ink, wrote down the confirmation of that divine monument, and all those priestly hierarchs wrote their own names, each with his own hand. And this is that which was spoken and ordained by those holy and God-clad fathers. Chapter 1. This great and from all cities and villages, by the will and grace of God and by the command of the faithful and God-serving Emperor Constantine, the Sixth Council, divinely protected, assembled in the imperial city in the hall of the great palace, thus wrote and ordained, and says this: The only-begotten Son and Word of God and Father, who became altogether like unto us, except for sin, Christ our true God, through the preaching of the holy Gospel, commands thus: "I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." And again he said: "I give you peace. I bequeath my peace to you.

Illuminated by the radiance of this divinely proclaimed, true and unclouded light, this God-serving king of ours adhered to it and brought about the peace that had been promised by him as a guide. And he became a supporter of orthodoxy and an opponent of heresy. For this reason, this holy and ecumenical council quickly assembled these worthy priestly leaders and united the entire fullness of the church. And this holy and venerable council uprooted from the whole church the tares sown by the enemy, drove out all the impiety of heresy, adhered to the teaching of the holy apostles and of the God-chosen fathers, and became wholly of one mind and one purpose with those holy and universal illuminators, the five councils. First, with the holy fathers assembled at Nicaea, the refuters of the impious Arius, who loudly proclaimed the consubstantiality, co-eternity and co-essentiality of the holy Trinity, and with one and indivisible faith taught the worship of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit to the believing people, and through the co-witnessing and co-striving of the great God-serving King Constantine, they drove out all those opponents of the true faith, the heretics.

The second council assembled in Constantinople, of the God-bearing fathers, under the great king Theodosius, who expelled the evil Macedonius, the adversary of the Holy Spirit, and the wicked Apollinaris, who said: "The Lord did not assume a human mind." And by this blasphemy against the mystery of our life, he intended to deny its fullness; and together with Macedonius, those holy fathers expelled them. The third council assembled in Ephesus, of the fathers, under King Theodosius, son of Arcadius, who condemned the rebellious Nestorius and proclaimed our Lord incarnate as one Christ, and acknowledged and proclaimed the holy Virgin Mary, the immaculate and most blessed, truly as the Mother of God; and they expelled and utterly abolished the foul corruption of the evil Nestorius, who spoke of the one Christ as separately man and separately God, and denied the holy Mother of God; for this reason those holy fathers utterly abolished him. The fourth council assembled in Chalcedon, under King Marcian, of the holy fathers, who loudly proclaimed the one Christ, the Son of God, incarnate for us, with two natures, fully God and fully man. And they condemned the evil heretics Eutyches, Dioscorus, and Severus.

and with them also Nestorius, who divided the body of Christ, and those who confounded the natures, who, by their mutual separation and contradictory blasphemy, together plunged into the abyss of destruction and impiety. Fifthly, in this imperial city, under the emperor Justinian, the 160 holy fathers assembled, who condemned Theodore of Mopsuestia, the teacher of Nestorius, and Origen, who spoke of many sufferings, and Didymus and Evagrius. And they anathematized the chapters of Theodoret which were opposed to the God-clad Cyril, and the epistle of Ibas written to Mar the Persian, and they condemned every suffering and confirmed the faith established by those first holy councils.

Now we, all of us, preach and affirm the faith proclaimed by those holy councils, and thus we cry out, gathered in this holy Sixth Council: "We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of the Father, born before all ages, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father, through whom all things were made; who for us, for the sake of men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man, and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, suffered, was buried, and rose on the third day according to the Scriptures, ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, and will come again to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom has no end; and the Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver, who proceeds from the Father, who together with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, who spoke through the prophets; and one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; we await the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come. Amen.

It is sufficient for knowledge and for the confirmation of the true faith, this righteous confession established by those God-inspired fathers. But since the originator of evil did not cease from the beginning, waging war against the human race, and just as he first took the serpent as his helper and through it injected that venomous poison of death into human nature, so now he found vessels conformed to his own will: a certain Theophanes of Pharan, a bishop, and Sergius, and Pyrrhus, and Paul, and Peter, who were priests of this royal city; together with them, Honorius, the Pope of Rome, and Cyrus of Alexandria, Macarius of Antioch, and Stephen, his disciple.

These the evil enemy found as executors of his will, and he strove through them to set up in the Church an evil deception, for these first-mentioned men, from the beginning, with the blasphemies of the man-slayer, dared to speak of one will and one work of those two natures, of that one from the Trinity, our God Christ, and in this way renewed among the Christian people that tribulation of Apollinaris, Severus, and Themistius, those faithless ones, so that the perfection of the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ might be nullified by such cunning, and they showed the Lord’s rational, spiritual flesh to be without will and work. Therefore, our God Christ raised up this faithful king, the new David, and found his heart, who, as it is written: “He gave no sleep to his eyes, nor rest to his limbs, nor relaxation to his flesh,” until he held this God-gathered council and through these holy fathers found the complete preaching of Orthodoxy, for as the Lord says: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am truly among them.” Therefore, the good one is among us and leads us on the path of truth.

This holy council piously and fully accepted the epistle of the holy and blessed Agathon, Pope of Rome, written to our God-serving Emperor Constantine, wherein is written the condemnation and rejection of all who preached one will and one energy in the economy of the incarnation of our God Christ. Likewise, the epistle of the three hundred and twenty-four God-bearing bishops who assembled with the worthy Agathon, written to this faithful emperor, they received graciously and well, for these epistles bore witness to and confirmed that epistle of the great Leo, Pope of Rome, which he wrote to the holy Flavian, Patriarch of Constantinople, at the Council of Chalcedon, which this holy council called the monument of Orthodoxy. Likewise, this holy council confirmed those epistles of the holy and blessed Cyril, the condemnatory ones against the impious Nestorius, and as many as he wrote to the bishops of the East. Likewise, the epistles of Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem. All this we have received, all of us, and we adhere to the teaching of those five holy councils and of those holy and God-bearing fathers.

And we confess our Lord and true God Jesus Christ, one of the holy and consubstantial Trinity, complete in divinity and complete in humanity, in all things like unto us, except sin, who before the ages was born of the Father in divinity, but in the latter times for us and for our salvation was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and from Mary the Virgin, the true Theotokos, in nature human; one Lord Jesus Christ, only-begotten, in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, known; for the division of the natures was not admitted, nor was it dissolved by the union of the hypostasis, but rather the property of each nature was confirmed, united in one person and one hypostasis. For it was not cut into two persons or divided into two hypostases, but the same one only-begotten Word of God, Lord Jesus Christ, in two natures and two energies, as from the beginning the prophets proclaimed, and Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the holy apostles announced to us, and the God-bearing fathers taught us, we also preach two natures and two natural wills and two natural energies, but those two natural wills are not opposed.

Let it not be, as the faithless heretics say, that: “His human will was joined to His divine will and was not opposed, nor did it fight, but rather it obeyed that divine and all-powerful will.” For it was necessary that the constitution and subordination of His fleshly will to that will of the Godhead be, as the great Athanasius says: “Just as His flesh is called and is the flesh of the Word of God, so also the natural will of His flesh is called and is the will of the Word of God.” As He Himself says: “I came down from heaven, not that I might do my own will, but the will of my sender.” He spoke of His own will as that fleshly will, for they were also His flesh; and just as those holy and immaculate flesh were not destroyed by deification, but remained in their own order and nature, so also His human will was not destroyed by the union with the Godhead, nor was it annihilated, but rather was strengthened, as the holy Gregory the Theologian says: “That will of the man was not opposed to the divine will, but was entirely deified and followed the divine will.

Likewise, we confess the two natural activities of our Lord and God Jesus Christ—the divine activity and the human activity—inseparably, unchangeably, and without confusion, as the God-clad Leo declares clearly: “Each of his natures performs its own function in communion with the other.” The nature of the Word performs the works of the Word, and the nature of the flesh performs what is proper to the flesh. For it is not permissible to say that the natural activity of the divinity and that of the flesh are one, so that we neither elevate the created to the essence of the divinity nor bring down the height of the wondrous divine nature to the created and ordered place. We know both the miracles and the sufferings of the one Lord, one Christ, but in different forms, corresponding to the natures of which and in which He existed, as the blessed Cyril said.

Now, therefore, in every respect, we preach that mystery indivisibly and inseparably, and we declare everything in brief words, and we believe in one of the Trinity, our Lord Jesus Christ, true God, after the incarnation with two natures, which shine forth in that one body of His, by which both the miracles and the sufferings at the times of His economy were not shown by illusion, but in truth, and that distinction of the natures in that one body was recognized, when, by communion with the other, each nature would will and perform its own work indivisibly and inseparably. In this manner we preach the two natural wills and works of the Lord for the salvation of assembled men. All this we believe, confess, and preach with much caution and truth, and we establish thus, that henceforth no one shall dare to speak, or write, or teach any other faith outside this faith. But if anyone is found to have altered this right confession in another form and teaches, or utters, or writes some other perverted faith, let him be condemned, cut off, and anathematized. If he has the priesthood, let him be alienated from that honor; if he is a monk or a layman, let him be under a curse.

This is the faith of the Apostles, this is the faith of the Fathers, this is the faith of the Orthodox. This faith was confirmed in the Catholic Church by the Holy Trinity, for to it belong the glory, power, and dominion of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever and unto the ages of ages, amen.