Canons of Elvira

Conciliar · Canons · c. 306 · Latin

The oldest body of church legislation that survives, from a Spanish town a few years before Constantine — and it is startlingly severe. Lifelong excommunication for the sacrificing idolater, clergy required to abstain from their wives, Christians forbidden to marry Jews or pagans, and a canon against pictures on church walls that iconoclasts would still be quoting five centuries later. A church legislating under threat and already anxious about its own respectability. 81 canons in all.