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It is decreed that among the clergy, presbyters and deacons who abstain from flesh shall taste of it, and afterwards, if they shall so please, may abstain. But if they disdain it, and will not even eat herbs served with flesh, but disobey the canon, let them be removed from their order.
A priest who is an abstainer from flesh, let him merely taste it and so let him abstain. But if he will not taste even the vegetables cooked with the meat let him be deposed (πεπάυσθω).
There is a serious dispute about the reading of the Greek text. I have followed Routh, who, relying on three mss. the Collectio of John of Antioch and the Latin versions, reads εἰ δὲ βδελύσσοιντο instead of the εἰ δὲ βούλοιντο of the ordinary text, which as Bp. Beveridge had pointed out before has no meaning unless a μὴ be introduced.
Zonaras points out that the canon chiefly refers to the Love feasts.
I cannot agree with Hefele in his translation of the last clause. He makes the reference to “this present canon,” I think it is clearly to the 53 (52) of the so-called Canons of the Apostles, τῷ κανόνι “the well-known Canon.”