by Clement of Rome, but in truth were a gradual production of the third and fourth cen- turies ; ^ then the canons of the most important councils of the fourth and fifth centuries, including those of Sardica and Afri- ca ; and lastly, the papal decretal letters from Siricius (385) to ' It is uncertain whether he obtained the surname Exiguus from his small stature or his monastic humility. ^ It may be found in the above-cited'BiliRotheca, vol. i., and in all good collec- tions of councils. He says in the preface that, confusione priscas translationis (the Priscu or Itala) ofifensus, he has undertaken a new translation of the Greek canons. ^ " Canones, qui dicuntur apostolorum, . . . quibus plurimi consensum non praebuere facilem;" implying that Dionysius himself, with many others, dou!)ted their apostolic origin. In a later collection of canons by Dionysius, of which only the preface remains, he entirely omitted the apostolic canons, with the remark : " Quos non admisit universitas, ego quoque in hoc opere praetermisi." On tlie pseudo-apostolic Canons and Constitutions, comp. vol. i. §113 (p. 440-442), and th^ well-known critical w^cyk^of tl^ Roman (Jatholic Lb^Ii^ian Drey. § 67. BOOKS OF ECCLESIASTICAL LAW, 355 Anastasius II. (498). The Codex Dionysii was gradually en- larged by additions, genuine and spurious, and through the favor of the popes, attained the authority of law almost throughout the West. Yet there were other collections also in use, particularly in Spain and North Africa. Some fifty years aftoir Dionysius, John Scholasticus, pre- viously an advocate, then pi-esbyter at Antiuch, and after 564 patriarch of Constantinople, published a collection of canons in Greek,' which surpassed the former in completeness and convenience of arrangement, and for this reason, as well as the eminence of the author, soon rose to universal authority in the Greek church. In it he gives eighty-five Apostolic. Canons, and the ordinances of the councils of Ancyra (314) and Nicsea (325), down to that of Chalcedon (451), in fifty titles, according t(?'the order of subjects. The second Trullan council (Quini- sextum, of 692), which passes with the Greeks for ecumenical, adopted the eighty-five Apostolic Canons, while it rejected the Apostolic Constitutions, because, though, like the canons, of apostolic origin, they had been early adulterated. Thus arose the difference between the Greek and Latin churches in refer- ence to the number of the so-called Apostolic canons ; the Latin church retaining only the fifty of the Dionysian collection. The same John, while patriarch of Constantinople, com- piled from the Novelles of Justinian a collection of the ecclesi- astical state-laws, or vo/iot, as they were called in distinction from the synodal church-laws or Kav6ve<;. Practical wants then led to a union of the two, under the title of Nomocanon. These books of ecclesiastical law served to complete and confirm the hierarchical organization, to regulate the life of the clergy, and to promote order and discipline ; but they tended also to fix upon the church an outward legalism,