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The Canon Written Against a Single Church

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The Canon Written Against a Single Church

The Quinisext Council, meeting in the domed hall of the Byzantine imperial palace in 692 and commonly called Trullo after that hall, devoted one of its 102 canons to a single region's liturgical habit. Canon 32 states plainly that in Armenia the wine offered on the altar goes unmixed with water, names the apostle James, the Lord's own brother, and Basil of Caesarea as authorities for the mixed chalice, and threatens deposition against any bishop or presbyter who omits the water, calling the wine-only offering an imperfect showing forth of the mystery. A collected modern study of the council notes that Trullo is a council the Armenian Church, like Rome, never recognized as ecumenical, so a decree binding within Constantinople's own communion was aimed at a practice its authors could not actually compel anyone outside it to change. The canon did what canons do: it named the dissenting usage, supplied a rationale, and set a penalty, and none of the three moved Armenia's own altar. The bread itself became a separate target only later: the term azymite, first leveled by Byzantine polemicists in the eleventh century, accused the Latin Church of a related but distinct fault, using unleavened bread at all, a charge Trullo's own canon does not raise, since Constantinople's dispute with Rome over unleavened bread developed independently and further into the schism era. Armenia has always used both practices, unmixed wine and unleavened bread, together, but the historical record shows the two entered controversy on different timelines and through different opponents rather than as one combined objection raised on a single occasion.

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Source The Council in Trullo RevisitedGeorge Nedungatt and Michael Featherstone (eds.)
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The Council in Trullo Revisited
George Nedungatt and Michael Featherstone (eds.), Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 1995Canon 32 of the Council in Trullo (692), naming the Armenian practice and its penalty
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