Apostolic Canons

CANONI APOSTOLICI. - To the eighth book of the Apostolic Constitutions are appended 85 apostolic canons (Didascalia et Constitutiones apostolorum, ed. F. X. Funk, I, Paderborn 1906, chap. 47, p. 564 ff.). As can. 85 demonstrates (p. 592, 6 f.), they were added by the compiler of the Apostolic Constitutions, who concealed himself under the name of Clemente, requesting secrecy in the circulation of his work, as was customary in pseudo-Clementine literature. The apostolic canons partly reproduce the decisions of Antiochia (341) and Laodicea (between 343 and 381). Can. 85 contains the list of biblical books, including three books of the Maccabees, two epistles of Clemente, and the Apostolic Constitutions in 8 books. Revelation is absent. The Acts of the Apostles have been placed at the end of the list, unless the intention is to refer to apocryphal acts attributed to Clemente. The first 50 apostolic canons, translated into Latin by Dionigi il Piccolo (d. c. 540), were included in his great collection of canons and thus made known in the West (C. H. Turner, Notes on the «Apost. Constit.», II: The Apost. Canons, in Journal Theol. Stud., 16 [1914-15], p. 523-38).