Primary source · Latin
The Canons of the Council of Elvira
The Council of Elvira (Illiberis) · c. AD 300–324 — the date is disputed and unresolved
What this text is
Eighty-one canons from a synod of nineteen bishops and some twenty-four to twenty-six presbyters at Illiberis near Granada — the earliest conciliar legislation of the Western church, and the first real evidence of what Christianity in Spain looked like. Felix of Acci presided as senior bishop; Hosius of Córdoba, later the architect of Nicaea, sat second. Canon 33 is the first recorded rule requiring total continence of bishops, priests and deacons; canon 36 forbids pictures in churches, and its intent is still argued over. The date runs anywhere from Duchesne’s 300–303 to the 324 implied by some manuscripts of the acts, and Meigne argued that only the first twenty-one canons are original to the council. Both disputes are recorded here and neither is resolved.
Public-domain translations
Karl Joseph von Hefele, tr. William R. Clark, A History of the Councils of the Church, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1883) — English
Editions & scholarship
Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.
- La colección canónica Hispana IVGonzalo Martínez Díez and Félix Rodríguez, 1984the critical Latin text
- A History of the Councils of the Church, vol. 1, pp. 131–72Karl Joseph von Hefele, tr. William R. Clark, 1883the canons in English, public domain
- Power and Sexuality: The Emergence of Canon Law at the Synod of ElviraSamuel Laeuchli, 1972A statistical reading of the canons as evidence for the discipline of a Spanish church emerging from persecution.
Figures named in this text (19)
- Camerinus of Tucci
- Cantonius of Urci
- Decentius of Legio
- Eutychian of Basti
- Felix of Acci
- Flavian of Eliberis
- Januarius of Fibularia
- Liberius of Emerita
- Melantius of Toletum
- Pardus of Mentesa
- Patricius of Malaca
- Quintianus of Elbora
- Secundinus of Castulo
- Sinaginus of Epagra
- Successus of Eliocroca
- Vincent of Ossonoba
- Valerius of Saragossa
- Sabinus of Hispalis
- Hosius of Cordova
Eighty-one canons from a council of the Spanish church at Illiberis in Baetica, and the fullest picture anywhere of an ordinary local church on the eve of the Great Persecution — who could marry whom, what a Christian magistrate could do, what happened to a lapsed cleric. The date is disputed and unresolved, usually put c. AD 305–306. The canons are in English in Hefele’s History of the Councils, vol. 1 (1883), which is public domain; the critical Latin is in La colección canónica Hispana IV.