Sacred Texts Christianity Early Church Fathers Index Previous Next
p. 370 Canon XI.
Let no one in the priestly order nor any layman eat the unleavened bread of the Jews, nor have any familiar intercourse with them, nor summon them in illness, nor receive medicines from them, nor bathe with them; but if anyone shall take in hand to do so, if he is a cleric, let him be deposed, but if a layman let him be cut off.
Jewish unleavened bread is to be refused. Whoever even calls in Jews as physicians or bathes with them is to be deposed.
Theodore Balsamon is of opinion that this canon does not forbid the eating of unleavened bread; but that what is intended is the keeping of feasts in a Jewish fashion, or in sacrifices to use unleavened bread (azymes), and this, says Balsamon, on account of the Latins who celebrate their feasts with azymes.
Canon lxix. [i.e., lxx.] of those commonly called Apostolic forbids the observance of festivals with the Jews; and declares it to be unlawful to receive manuscula from them, but by this canon all familiar intercourse with them is forbidden.
While there can be no doubt that in all the Trullan canons there is an undercurrent of hostility to the West, yet in this canon I can see no such spirit, and I think it has been read into it by the greater bitterness of later times. This seems the more certain from the fact that there is nothing new whatever in the provision with respect to the passover bread, vide canons of Laodicea xxxvij. and xxxviij.
This canon is found in the Corpus Juris Canonici, Gratian’s Decretum, Pars II., Causa xxviij., can. xiii. 359
Van Espen says that in his copy of Gratian this canon is assigned to the VIIth Synod. Such is not the case in the edition in Migne’s Patrologia Latina, where the reference is given as ex VI. Synodo. c. II., and Judæorum is found in the text instead of the eorum of which Van Espen complains.