8 oktober - 1 november 451

• Sessio V - Definitio de duabus naturis Christi[774]
• Sessio XV - Canones[7015]
  • The first canon approved the canons passed in previous synods.
  • The second[7015|(2)] established severe penalties against those who conferred ecclesiastical orders or positions for money, or received such orders or positions for money, and acted as intermediaries in such transactions.
  • The third forbade secular traffic to all ecclesiastics, except in the interest of minors, orphans, or other needy persons.
  • The fourth forbade the erection of a monastery or an oratory without the permission of the proper bishop; recommended to the monks a life of retirement, mortification, and prayer; and forbade the reception of a slave in a monastery without the permission of his master.
  • The fifth inculcated the canons of previous synods concerning the transfer of bishops and clerics from one city to another.
  • The sixth recommended that no one should be ordained except he were assigned to some ecclesiastical office. Those ordained contrary to this provision were not to exercise their order.
  • The seventh forbade ecclesiastics to exercise the military art or to hold a secular office.
  • The eighth decreed that the clerics of charitable homes, monasteries, or oratories of martyrs should be subject to the bishop of the territory.
  • The ninth ordained that ecclesiastics should conduct their lawsuits only before the bishop, the synod of the province, the exarch, or the Bishop of Constantinople.
  • The tenth forbade ecclesiastics to be enrolled in the church-registers of different cities.
  • The eleventh ordained that the poor and needy, when travelling, should be provided with letters of recommendation (litterae pacificae) from the churches.
  • The twelfth[7015|(12)] forbade the bishops to obtain from the emperors the title of metropolitans to the prejudice of the real metropolitan of their province.
  • The thirteenth forbade to strange clerics the exercise of their office unless provided with letters of recommendation from their bishop.
  • The fourteenth[7015|(14)] forbade minor clerics to marry heretical women, or to give their children in marriage to heretics.
  • The fifteenth decreed that no deaconess should be ordained below the age of forty[7015|(15)]; and no person once ordained a deaconess was allowed to leave that state and marry.
  • The sixteenth forbade the marriage of virgins or monks consecrated to God.
  • The seventeenth ordained that the parishes in rural districts should remain under the jurisdiction of their respective bishops; but if a new city were built by the emperor, its ecclesiastical organization should be modelled on that of the State.
  • The eighteenth forbade secret organizations in the Church, chiefly among clerics and monks.
  • The nineteenth ordained that the bishops of the province should assemble twice a year for the regular synod.
  • The twentieth forbade again the transfer of an ecclesiastic from one city to another, except in the case of grave necessity.
  • The twenty-first ordained that complaints against bishops or clerics should not be heard except after an investigation into the character of the accuser.
  • The twenty-second forbade ecclesiastics to appropriate the goods of their deceased bishop.
  • The twenty-third forbade clerics or monks to sojourn in Constantinople without the permission of their bishop.
  • The twenty-fourth ordained that monasteries once established, together with the property assigned to them, should not be converted to other purposes.
  • The twenty-fifth ordained that the metropolitan should ordain the bishops of his province within three months (from election).
  • The twenty-sixth ordained that ecclesiastical property should not be administered by the bishop alone, but by a special procurator.
  • The twenty-seventh decreed severe penalties against the abduction of women.
  • The twenty-eighth ratified[7015|(28)] the third canon of the Council of Constantinople (381), and decreed that since the city of Constantinople was honoured with the privilege of having the emperor and the Senate within its walls, its bishop should also have special prerogatives and be second in rank, after the Bishop of Rome. In consequence thereof he should consecrate the metropolitan bishops of the three civil Dioceses of Pontus, Asia, and Cappadocia.