council · 314 · Ancyra
Meeting at Ancyra in Galatia as the persecutions ended, the bishops of Asia Minor faced the wreckage: clergy and laity who had sacrificed, fled or bought certificates. Their canons grade repentance by the weight of the fall — the church's first systematic penance code, received into the canon corpus of East and West.
The Synod of Ancyra was an ecclesiastical council, or synod, convened in Ancyra, the seat of the Roman administration for the province of Galatia, in 314. Together with the synods of Neocaesarea, Antioch, Gangra and Laodicea, the canons of the council formed the nucleus of nearly all future collections of church law.
How to receive back the many who lapsed during the Great Persecution.
Graded penances for the lapsed by degree of compulsion; canons on clergy who sacrificed — mercy with order after the storm.