CANONI APOSTOLICI

APOSTOLIC CANONS. — In the eighth book of the Apostolic Constitutions are appended 85 apostolic canons (Didaskalia et Constitutiones apostolorum, ed. F. X. Funk, I, Paderborn 1906, cap. 47, p. 564 ff.). As is shown by canon 85 (p. 592, 6 ff.), these were added by the compiler of the Apostolic Constitutions who concealed himself under the name of Clement, seeking for his work the secrecy of diffusion customary in the pseudo-Clementine literature. The apostolic canons partly acknowledge the decisions of the Councils of Antioch (341) and of Laodicea (between 343 and 381). Canon 85 contains a list of biblical books, among which are three books of the Maccabees, two epistles of Clement, and the Apostolic Constitutions in eight books. The Apocalypse is missing. The Acts of the Apostles are placed at the end of the list, unless an allusion is intended to apocryphal acts attributed to Clement. The first fifty apostolic canons, translated into Latin by Dionysius Exiguus (d. c. 540), were inserted into his great collection of canons and thus made known in the West (C. H. Turner, Notes on the «Apost. Constitut.», II: The Apost. Canons, in Journal Theol. Stud., 16 [1914-15], p. 523-38).