Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils:
Cunningham, Lawrence S
Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (2 vol.), edited by Norman P. Tanner, SJ., Georgetown University Press, $195,2,400 pp. In the 1960s, in response to the Second Vatican Council's efforts at...
...This is followed by an index of proper names and an exhaustive index of subject matter...
...Each of the councils is briefly introduced with an historical essay and concluded with a bibliography of secondary sources for study and consultation...
...There is a good chance that it will first find its way onto reference shelves of theology departments and in college and university libraries...
...A group of British Jesuit scholars under the editorship of Norman P. Tanner, S.J...
...Perhaps Georgetown University Press, which is to be congratulated for seeing the work through to print, might be encouraged, when initial costs are recouped, to issue the work in a less expensive format since, in my estimation, every student of theology will consult the work and, in time, need to possess it for his or her personal library...
...The pagination is such that it conforms to the original COD so that scholarly citations will be uniform...
...At the end of volume two there is both a chronological appendix of all of the councils and a series of indices (running to over two hundred pages) which tabulate scriptural, patristic, and liturgical references as well as citations from documents of the Roman magisterium and canon law...
...The result is the current two-volume set which I have no hesitation in describing as both beautifully realized and, for the theologian and intellectual historian, indispensable...
...LAWRENCE S. CUNNINGHAMCUNNINGHAM...
...One great project undertaken by the institute was a critical edition of all of the decrees and canons of the twenty-one ecumenical councils from Nicaea to Vatican II itself...
...thus the omnes homines of Vatican II, to cite one small example, is rightly translated as "all men and women...
...The Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta (its Latin title) has gone through three editions (the last was published in 1973) as errata were detected and new emendations came to light...
...The bindings are such that the book lies flat when in use...
...That would be a modest institutional investment for such a crucial work...
...Until the publication of this work there was no single source which collected all of the decrees and canons of all of the councils in one place with the result that theologians either had to hunt down material in various places or, more typically, rely on the brief excerpts found in one of the many editions of that old warhorse the Enchiridion Symbolorum of Henry Denziger...
...Determined students of the councils will still have to consult the many volumes of Mansi's classic Amplissima Collectio for the Ada (the proceedings of the councils...
...In the 1960s, in response to the Second Vatican Council's efforts at church reformation, the Istitutoper Scienze Religiose was founded in Bologna, Italy, to do serious research in matters both theological and historical with a special emphasis on con-ciliar matters...
...The entire set is elegantly printed on acid-free paper and comes boxed...
...The critical text of the conciliar decrees in Greek and/or Latin is printed on the verso (along with a modest critical apparatus) while the English translation appears on the recto...
...had the felicitous notion of reproducing those texts with English translations...
...The price of the set might give pause...
...Finally, one is grateful that the translators were sensitive to the need for gender-inclusive language...
...the Ada do not appear, understandably enough, in Tanner's work) of the councils through Vatican I and the emergent Ada of Vatican II, but for most this work will more than suffice as a research tool for one of the basic sources for Christian theology...
Vol. 117 • October 1990 • No. 17
