Theodore Walsamon

Theodore Walsamon was born in Constantinople , under the emperors Manuel I Comnenus and Isaac II Angel in the dignity of deacon held important posts in the Church of Constantinople . In 1193, he was elevated to the Antiochian Patriarchal Department , but continued to live in Constantinople, being only a nominal patriarch, since the Antiochian Patriarchate was at that time in the power of the Crusaders .

On behalf of the emperor Manuel and the Patriarch of Constantinople Michael III, Walsamon wrote “An Explanation of the Sacred and Divine Rules of the Saints and All Saints Apostle and the Holy Councils of the Ecumenical and Local or Private and Other Saints Father ” (or Scholia ( Greek Σχόλια ) on Nomocanon Photius ). The reason for this work was the difficulties encountered in church practice due to the obsolescence of certain laws included in the Nomocanon of Photius, but which lost their practical significance and were not included in the later legislative collection - the Basilica . Walsamon was instructed to consider the sacred canons, to explain and interpret the obscurity in them and seeming to be inconsistent with the laws.

The first part of his work is the interpretation on the Nomocanon of the patriarch Photius (more devoted to the harmonization of various secular laws than the church rules ), the second part is devoted to the interpretation of church rules directly. Walsamon based his work on the idea that rejection of one or another rule of the Code of Justinian in the Basilica should be interpreted as repealing this law. Regarding each Justinian law included in the Nomokanon, he makes a comment whether to accept this law in the Basilica and in which part of them. If the law is not in the Basilica, then Walsamon almost always notices that he has lost the force of existing law. However, such testimonies of Walsamon regarding the absence of a provision in the Basilica from the Justinian Codex are not always error-free (this is due to the fact that he used only the lists that were at his disposal, but the Basilicus’s manuscripts were preserved, which contain some texts from the Justinian Codex, which, according to Walsamon, were omitted from the Basilica).

There are contradictions in Walsamon's work - sometimes he notes that the law from the Nomocanon is absent in the Basilica, and then indicates the place where this same law is located in them. Also, although he holds the idea of ​​the superiority of church canons over laws (the former he recognizes the authority of emperors and holy fathers and equates this authority with the Holy Scriptures ), but in some places of his interpretation he prefers secular laws over church canons.

Walsamon's commentary on secular laws is an original work; he did not use the writings of any previous canonists. On the contrary, in commenting on church canons, he follows his predecessor, John Zonara, and sometimes literally reproduces his interpretations, sometimes only supplements and corrects them. The main feature of Walsamon’s commentary on church canons, compared to the work of Zonara, is that Walsamon, when indicating the differences between the church practice of his time and the practice of the period of Ecumenical Councils, widely used the imperial laws and decrees of the patriarchal synod .

• Walsamon // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• Theodore Balsamon // Catholic Encyclopedia