The Council of Rome was a
meeting of
Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...
officials and theologians which took place in AD 382 under the authority of
Pope Damasus I
Pope Damasus I (; c. 305 – 11 December 384) was the bishop of Rome from October 366 to his death. He presided over the Council of Rome of 382 that determined the canon or official list of sacred scripture. He spoke out against major heresies (i ...
, the then-
Bishop of Rome
A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution.
In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is ...
. According to the (a work written by an anonymous scholar between AD 519 and 553), the Council of Rome cites a list of books of
scripture presented as having been made
canonical which is identical with the list given at the
Council of Trent
The Council of Trent ( la, Concilium Tridentinum), held between 1545 and 1563 in Trent (or Trento), now in northern Italy, was the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation, it has been described a ...
.
, but indeed no official acts have been preserved and Jerome never mentions such a list.
The previous year, the Emperor
Theodosius I
Theodosius I ( grc-gre, Θεοδόσιος ; 11 January 347 – 17 January 395), also called Theodosius the Great, was Roman emperor from 379 to 395. During his reign, he succeeded in a crucial war against the Goths, as well as in two ...
had appointed the "dark horse" candidate
Nectarius as Archbishop of Constantinople. The bishops of the West opposed the election result and asked for a common synod of East and West to settle the succession of the
see of Constantinople, and so the Emperor Theodosius, soon after the close of the
First Council of Constantinople in 381, summoned the Imperial bishops to a fresh synod at Constantinople; nearly all of the same bishops who had attended the earlier synod re-assembled in the early summer of 382. On arrival they received a letter from the
synod of Milan, inviting them to a great general council at
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus ( legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
; they indicated that they must remain where they were, because they had not made any preparations for such long a journey; however, they sent three—Syriacus, Eusebius, and Priscian—with a joint synodal letter to
Pope Damasus,
Ambrose, archbishop of Milan, and the other bishops assembled in the council at Rome.
''Decretum Gelasianum'' and damasine
The Decree of the Council of Rome (AD 382) on the Canon of Scripture during the reign of Pope Damasus I (AD 366–384) reads thus, according to the later ‘Gelasian Decree’:
The ''Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church'', states:
The ''Oxford Dictionary'' also notes that "according to E. von Dobschütz,
he Galasian Decree
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
is not a Papal work at all, but a private compilation which was composed in Italy (but not at Rome) in the early 6th cent. Other scholars, while accepting this date, think it originated in Gaul."
Catholic apologist and historian
William Jurgens writes:
The apocrypha that Jurgens mentions are not the deuterocanonical books mentioned in the authentic list of the Council of Rome in 382 A.D., rather they are a list of Gnostic and other texts rejected by the early church, for example the Gospel of Thomas.
References
Further reading
* Geoffrey Mark Hahneman,
The Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon', Oxford University Press, 1992 - pages 158−161
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Council Of Rome
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus ( legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus ( legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
Ancient city of Rome
Development of the Christian biblical canon
4th century in Italy
380s in the Roman Empire
382