f the Nestorians, and were not communicated to
the West), Chalcedon, Sardica, Carthage (that of 419, according to
Dionysius), Constantinople (394); thirdly, the series of canonical
letters of the following great bishops--Dionysius of Alexandria, Peter
of Alexandria (the Martyr), Gregory Thaumaturgus, Athanasius, Basil,
Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, Amphilochus of Iconium,
Timotheus of Alexandria, Theophilus of Alexandria, Cyril of Alexandria,
Gennadius of Constantinople; the canon of Cyprian of Carthage (the
Martyr) is also mentioned, but with the note that it is only valid for
Africa. With the addition of the twenty-two canons of the ecumenical
council of Nicaea (787), this will give us the whole contents of the
official collection of the Greek Church; since then it has remained
unchanged. The law of the Greek Church was in reality rather the work of
the Byzantine emperors.[4]

Nomocanon.

The collection has had several commentators; we need only mention the
commentaries of Photius (883), Zonaras (1120) and Balsamon (1170). A
collection in which the texts are simply reproduced in their
chronological order is obviously inconvenient; towards 550, Johannes
Scholasticus, patriarch of Constantinople, drew up a methodical
classification of them under fifty heads. Finally should be mentioned
yet another kind of compilation still in use in the Greek Church,
bearing the name of _nomocanon_, because in them are inserted, side by
side with the ecclesiastical canons, the imperial laws on each subject:
the chief of them are the one bearing the name of Johannes Scholasticus,
which belongs, however, to a later date, and that of Photius (883).

In the West.

The canon law of the other Eastern Churches had no marked influence on
the collections of the Western Church, so we need not speak of it here.
While, from the 5th century onwards a certain unification in the
ecclesiastical law began to take place within the sphere of the see of
Constantinople, it was not till later that a similar result was arrived
at in the West. For several centuries there is no mention of any but
local collections of canons, and even these are not found till the 5th
century; we have to come down to the 8th or even the 9th century before
we find any trace of unification. This process was uniformly the result
of the passing on of the various collections from one region to another.

Africa.

The most remarkable, and the most homogeneou