CANON, a person who possesses a prebend, or revenue allotted for the performance of divine service in a cathedral or collegiate church.

Canons are of no great antiquity. Paschier observes, that the name canon was not known before Charlemagne; at least the first we hear of are in Gregory de Tours, who mentions a college of canons instituted by Baldwin XVI. archbishop of that city, in the time of Clotharius I. The common opinion attributes the institution of this order to Chrodegangus, bishop of Metz, about the middle of the eighth century.

Originally canons were only priests, or inferior ecclesiastics, who lived in community, residing by the cathedral church to assist the bishop, depending entirely on his will, supported by the revenues of the bishopric, and living in the same house as his domestics or counsellors. They even inherited his movables till the year 817, when this was prohibited by the council of Aix-la-Chapelle, and a new rule substituted in the place of that which had been appointed by Chrodegangus, and which was observed for the most part in the west till the twelfth century. By degrees these communities of priests, shaking off their dependence, formed separate bodies, of which the bishops, however, were still heads. In the tenth century there were communities or congregations of the same kind established even in cities where there were no bishops; and these were called collegiates, as they used the terms congregation and college indifferently; the name chapter, now given to these bodies, being much more modern. Under the second race of the French kings, the canonical or collegiate life had spread itself all over the country; and each cathedral had its chapter distinct from the rest of the clergy. They had the name canon from the Greek καιwv, which signifies three different things; 'a"Yule, a pension or fixed revenue to live on, and a catalogue or matricula, all which are applicable to them.
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In time, the canons freed themselves from their rules, the observance relaxed, and at length they ceased to live in community; yet they still formed bodies, pretending to other functions besides the celebration of the common office in the church, assuming the rights of the rest of the clergy, making themselves necessary as a council of the bishop, taking upon them the administration of a see during a vacancy, and the election of a bishop to supply it. There ∙are even some chapters exempt from the jurisdiction of the bishop, and owning no head but their dean. From the example of cathedral chapters, collegiate ones also continued to form bodies after they had abandoned living in community.

Canons are of various kinds; as, Cardinal Canons, who were those attached, and, as the Latins cail it, incardinati, to a church, as a priest is to a parish.

Domicellary Canons, young canons, who, not being in orders, had no right in any particular chapters.

Expectative Canons, or such as, without having any revenue or prebend, had the title and dignities of canons, a voice in the chapter, and a place in the choir, till such time as a prebend should become vacant.

Foreign Canons, or such as did not officiate in the canonries to which they belonged. To these were opposed mansionary canons, or canons residentiary.

Lay or Honorary Canons, who are those among the laity who have been admitted, out of honour and respect, into some chapter of canons.

Regular Canons, who are canons that still live in community, and, like religious, have in process of time added the solemn profession of vows to the practice of their rules. They are called regulars, to distinguish them from those secular canons who abandon living in community, and at the same time the observance of the canons made as the rule of the clergy for the maintenance of the ancient discipline. The canons subsisted in their simplicity till the eleventh or twelfth century, when some of them, separating from the community, took with them the name of canons, or acephalous priests, because they declined to live in community with the bishop; and those who were left thenceforth acquired the denomination of canons regular, and adopted most of the professions of the rule of St Augustin. This order of regular canons of St Augustin was brought into England by Adelwald, confessor to Henry I., who erected a priory at Nostel in Yorkshire, and obtained for them the church of Carlisle as an episcopal see, with the privilege of choosing their own bishop. They were singularly protected and encouraged by Henry I. who gave them the priory of Dunstable in 1107; and by Queen Maud, who, in the following year, gave them the priory of the Holy Trinity in London. It appears that under the reign of Edward I. they had fifty-three priories.

Tertiary Canons, or those who had only the third part of the revenues of the canonicate.

Canon, in an ecclesiastical sense, is a law or rule, either of doctrine or discipline, enacted especially by a council, and confirmed by the authority of the sovereign.

Canons are properly decisions of matters of religion; or regulations of the policy and discipline of a church, made by councils, either general, national, or provincial. Such are the canons of the councils of Nice, Trent, &c.

There have been various collections of the canons of the eastern councils; but there are four principal ones, each ampler than the preceding. The first, according to Usher, a. d. 3S0, containing only those of the first ecumenical council, and the first provincial ones; they were only 164 in number. To these, Dionysius Exiguus, in the year 520, added the fifty canons of the apostles, and those of the other general councils. The Greek canons in this second collection end with those of the council of Chalcedon; to which are subjoined those of the council of Sardica, and the African councils. The fourth and last collection comes down as low as the second council of Nice; and it is on this that Balsamon and Zonaras have commented.

Apostolical Canons are those which have been usually ascribed to St Clement. Bellarmin, Baronius, and others, will have them to be genuine canons of the apostles. Ca-telerius observes that they cannot be ascribed to the apostles or Clement, because they are not received with other books of Scripture, are not quoted by the writers of the first ages, and contain many things not agreeable to the apostolical times. Hinemar, de Marca, Beveridge, and others, believe them to have been framed by the bishops who were the apostles’ disciples in the second or third century; S. Basnage is of opinion that they were collected by an anonymous writer in the fifth century, but Daille and others maintain them to have been forged by some heretic in the sixth century; and S. Basnage conjectures that some of them are ancient, and others not older than the seventh century. The Greek church allows eighty∙five of them, and the Latin only fifty; though there are eighty-four in the edition given of them in the Corpus Juris Canonici.

Canon is also used for the authorized catalogue of the sacred writings. See Bible.

The ancient canon, or catalogue of the books of the Old Testament, was made by the Jews, and is ordinarily attributed to Ezra, who is said to have distributed them into the law, the prophets, and the hagiographa, to which our Saviour refers, Luke, chap, xxiv. ver. 44. The same division is also mentioned by Josephus (Cont. App'wn. y )

This is the canon allowed to have been followed by the primitive church till the council of Carthage; and, according to St Jerome, it consisted of no more than twenty-two books, answering to the number of the Hebrew alphabet, though at present they are classed into twenty-four divisions, containing Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the twelve minor prophets, the Psalms, the Proverbs, Job, Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, comprehending the book of Nehemiah and the Chronicles. However, this order is not universally observed either among Jews or Christians; nor were all the books above enumerated admitted into the canon in Ezra’s time. It is most likely, says Dr Prideaux, that the two books of Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Malachi, were added in the time of Simon the Just, when the canon was completed. But that council enlarged the canon very considerably, taking into it the books which we call apocryphal; which the council of Trent has further enforced, enjoining all these to be received as books of Holy Scripture, upon pain of anathema, and being attainted of heresy. The Romanists, in defence of this canon, say that it is the same with that of the council of Hippo, held in 393, and with that of the third council of Carthage, in 397, at which were present forty-six bishops, and among the rest St Augustin, who declared that they had received it from their fathers.

Their canon of the New Testament perfectly agrees with ours. It consists of books that are well known, and some of which have been universally acknowledged, such as the Gospels, and acts of the Apostles, thirteen Epistles of St Paul, one Epistle of St Peter, and one Epistle of St John; and others, concerning which doubts were entertained, but which were afterwards received as genuine, such as the Epistle to the Hebrews, that of James, the second of Peter, the second and third of John, that of Jude, and the Revelation. These books were written at [7:6:91] different times; and they are authenticated, not by the decrees of councils, or infallible authority, but by such kind of evidence as is thought sufficient in the case of any other ancient writings. They were very extensively diffused; they were read in every Christian society; they were valued and preserved with care by the first Christians; they wcrc cited by Christian writers of the second, third, and fourth centuries, as by Irenaeus, Clement the Alexandrian, Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius, and others; and their genuineness is proved by the testimony of those who were contemporary with the apostles themselves, and by tradition. The four Gospels, and most of the other books of the New Testament, were collected either by one of the apostles, or some of their disciples and successors, before the end of the first century. The catalogue of canonical books furnished by the more ancient Christian writers, as Origen about the year 210, Eusebius and Athanasius in 315, Epiphanius in 370, Jerome in 382, Austin in 394, and many others, agrees with that which is now received among Christians.

Some of the fathers distinguish the inspired writings into three classes; proto-canonical, deutero-canonical, and apocryphal.

Paschal Canon, a table of the movable feasts, showing the day of Easter, and the other feasts depending on it, for a cycle of nineteen years.

The paschal canon is supposed to be the calculation of Eusebius of Caesarea, and to have been done by order of the council of Nice.

Canon, in monastic orders, a book in which the religious of every convent have a fair transcript of the rules of their order, frequently read among them as their local statutes. This is also called regula, as containing the rule and institution of their order. The canon differs from the missale, martyrologium, and necrologium. Canon, again, is used for the catalogue of saints acknowledged and canonized in the Romish church.

Canon is also used, by way of excellence, in the Romish church, for the secret words of the mass, from the preface to the Pater ; in the middle of which the priest consecrates the host. The common opinion is, that the canon of the mass commences with Te igitur, &c. The people are to be on their knees, hearing the canon, and are to rehearse it to themselves so as not to be heard.

Canon, in the ancient music, is a rule or mode of determining the intervals of notes. Ptolemy, rejecting the Aristoxenian way of measuring the intervals in music, by the magnitude of a tone, which was supposed to be formed by the difference between a diapente and a diatessaron, thought that musical intervals should be distinguished according to the ratios or proportions which the sounds terminating those intervals bear to one another, when considered according to their degree of acuteness or gravity, which, before Aristoxenus, was the old Pythagorean way. He therefore made the diapason consist in a double ratio, the diapente in a sesquialterate, the diatessaron in a sesquitertian, and the tone itself in a sesquioctave, and all the other intervals according to the proportion of the sounds that terminate them; wherefore taking the canon, as it is called, for a determinate line of any length, he shows how this canon is to be cut accordingly, so that it may represent the respective intervals; and this method answers exactly to experiment, in the different lengths of musical chords. From this canon Ptolemy and his followers have been called Canonici, as those of Aristoxenus were called AIusici. Canon, in modern music, is a kind of fugue which they v call a perpetual fugue, because the different parts beginning one after another repeat incessantly the same air. See Music.

Canon, in Geometry and Algebra, a general rule for the solution of all cases of a similar nature to that from which it is primarily deduced. Thus every last step of an equation is a canon; and, if turned into words, becomes a rule to solve all questions of the same nature with that proposed.