For the last 20 years, Emeritus Professor Richard M Price has been synonymous with accurate and well-respected annotated translations of the acts of prominent Church Councils of the first millennium. Either alone or with the collaboration of other specialists in the field, Price has so far published, as part of the Translated Texts for Historians series, an English translation of the acts of the Fourth,Footnote ¹ FifthFootnote ² and SeventhFootnote ³ Ecumenical Councils (also known as Councils of Chalcedon; Second Constantinople, 553; and Second Nicaea, 787, respectively), as well as of the Lateran Synod of 649.Footnote ⁴ His most recent work, published in 2022, is his translation of the acts of the Council of Constantinople of 869–870,Footnote ⁵ which is regarded as the Eighth Ecumenical Council by the Roman Catholic Church. Prior to this publication, there appeared his translation of the acts of the Third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus (431)Footnote ⁶ and of the canons of the Quinisext Council (691/2).Footnote ⁷

This latter edition is the slimmest of all that Price has published so far, consisting of only 224 pages. It is in sharp contrast to his 704-page tome on the Council of Ephesus or his three-volume and 1024-page Acts of the Council of Chalcedon. This quantitative difference is the only divergence between Price’s book on the Quinisext Council and all his other works. Besides that, this publication is also characterised, like the previous ones, by the high quality of the English translation of the λόγος προσφωνητικός, namely the assembled bishops’ address to the Emperor Justinian II (668/69-711), who convoked the Council (pp 71–76), of the Council’s 102 canons (pp 77–177), and of the subscription list with the names and titles of the bishops who attended the Council (pp 178–191).

Those familiar with the existing literature about the Quinisext Council will wonder: what was the need for a new English translation when there is already a reliable and well-established one, prepared by Michael Featherstone and included in the volume The Council in Trullo Revisited?Footnote ⁸ The answer to that question can be found in Price’s Preface (pp 54–55), where he explains that the Greek text that he used for his translation was the recent critical edition prepared by Heinz OhmeFootnote ⁹ and published in the series Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum (p viii). For his edition, Ohme consulted 72 of the surviving manuscripts containing the Quinisext canons, including those that preserve the text of the subscription list. Ohme concluded that, unlike the text of the canons (which appears remarkably stable), there is significant variation in the text of the subscription list. Unlike Ohme’s edition, the one by Périclès-Pierre Joannou,Footnote ¹⁰ on which Featherstone’s translation was based, used a very limited number of manuscripts. The editors of The Council in Trullo Revisited recognised the imperfections of Joannou’s volume and the need for a new critical edition.Footnote ¹¹ Ohme, the specialist par excellence in the Quinisext Council, with more than 15 monographs, articles and other studies on it,Footnote ¹² provided this much-desired edition and Price, in turn, has produced a brand new English translation using Ohme’s much more nuanced Greek text.

Price follows Ohme in naming this Council as ‘Quinisext’, instead of the ‘Council in Trullo’ (which was preferred by Joannou and Featherstone). The word ‘Trullo’ denotes the domed hall (Trullos) of the imperial palace in Constantinople where the Council was held. This would have been a more obvious choice for Price, as he chose titles of all his other translations based on the location where each Council took place. On this occasion he opted for the title ‘Quinisext’, which is the Latin equivalent to the Greek word ‘Πενθέκτη’ (meaning Fifth-Sixth) as this Council perceived itself as the canonical supplement to the doctrinal work of the Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils, neither of which issued any canonical material.

Both title options are problematic. The use of ‘Trullo’ is historically inaccurate given that, as Price emphasises (p vii), this Council should actually be called the ‘Second Trullan’ (the Sixth Ecumenical Council [680–681] also having been convened in the imperial domed hall). The term ‘Quinisext’ seems equally problematic in the sense that it appears not to be doctrinally neutral. This is because the notion ‘Quinisext’ inherently contains the pre-supposition that this conciliar gathering, even as a supplement to the Fifth and the Sixth Ecumenical Councils, is still regarded as ‘Ecumenical’.Footnote ¹³ However, the ecumenicity of the Council in Trullo remains disputed. As Price explains in his introduction: even if in the Byzantine canonical collections it gradually found its place along with the canons of the other Ecumenical Councils (pp 46–50), within the Church of Rome its status was complex, alternating between rejection and reception (pp 50–54). According to Price, the reason for this ambivalence in the West can be found not only in those canons of the Quinisext Council that explicitly castigated Roman practices,Footnote ¹⁴ but primarily in the criteria on which Trullo formulated its ecumenicity – by enhancing the role of the Emperor as the sole authority for granting full effect to the canonical pronouncements of the Council, despite the lack of any pontifical participation and even before the papal signature was applied to the conciliar decrees (pp 34–46).

This question of the ecumenicity of the Quinisext Council occupies almost the second half of Price’s introduction, especially if we also include a small section dedicated to the so-called anti-Armenian canons of this Council, which are presented in light of Emperor Justinian II’s policy of renewed interest for the affairs of Armenia (pp 29–34). The first half of the introduction is focused on the Council per se (its context: pp 1–4; purpose: pp 4–7; date: pp 7–8; participants: pp 8–13; proceedings: pp 14–15) and on its legislative work. The author provides illuminating information about the process for the drafting of the canons and the officials that were involved in it (pp 16–17). He then presents the structure of the code-like series of the canons promulgated by the Council, following the monastic genre of the ‘century’Footnote ¹⁵ by issuing a main body of 100 canons (canons 3–102), which were preceded by a tripartite preamble: the λόγος προσφωνητικός (i.e. the assembled bishops’ address to the Emperor Justinian II) and the first two canons of the Council. As Price explains, the λόγος explains why the convocation of this Council and the issuance of new canons was necessary: the restoration of the disrupted church order that resulted from the absence of any legislative production from the work of the Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils. Trullo Canon 1 is a profession of the fidelity of the faith of the Council’s Fathers to the doctrinal teachings and decisions of all the previous Councils. Trullo Canon 2 is the first and sole conciliar document that lists by name all the sources of the Eastern canonical corpus and is, thus, regarded as a ‘milestone’ for the formation of the Byzantine canonical tradition (pp 18–22).

This first half of the introduction concludes with a synthesis of the central message that can be derived from the Trullan canons (pp 22–29). Here Price adopts a nuanced version of the widely supported opinion that the Council’s main goal was to bring into conformity with the Constantinopolitan canonical tradition the divergent Latin and Armenian canonical practices within the borders of the Byzantine Empire.Footnote ¹⁶ According to Price, the Quinisext’s central purpose was not centralisation, but the reaffirmation of the traditional order, through the correction of deviating practices from the standard norm. Uniformity was only a side-effect of the demand for propriety.

Price, with exemplary modesty, claims (p viii) that the only value of this publication lies in the fact that it provides an English version of the content of Ohme’s writings to those historians that are either unable or reluctant to read his scholarship in German. Nevertheless, beyond historians, this work will also benefit both lawyers and canonists, especially those who specialise in the canon law of the Eastern Orthodox Church, where the Trullan Canons are not a mere historical artifact, but still applicable law. It would not be an exaggeration to argue that this publication will be of great interest even to those engaged in the ecumenical movement. As the Ravenna Agreed Statement between the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Churches (13 October 2007) highlighted, ‘in order for there to be full ecclesial communion, there must be, between our Churches, reciprocal recognition of canonical legislations in their legitimate diversities’ (§16).Footnote ¹⁷ Price’s fresh annotated English translation is a significant contribution to a much-needed reassessment of the legislative material from the Quinisext Council, which seeks to find its rightful place in the common canonical heritage of the first millennium.Footnote ¹⁸