Canons of the Council of Carthage (397), with the Summary of Hippo (393)

The council that met at Hippo Regius on 8 October 393 left no surviving minutes. Its decisions are known from a summary, the Breviarium Hipponense, drawn up for the council held at Carthage on 28 August 397 under Bishop Aurelius, and from the canons of that council, which repeat them. Both were read again and confirmed at the council of 419, whose collection is known as the Code of Canons of the African Church; there the canon on the Scriptures is number 24.

The texts come down through the medieval collections of church law, and their wording varies from one collection to another. For the canon on the Scriptures the chief variant is at the end. In one family of manuscripts the canon closes by counting the twenty-seven books of the New Testament and saying that the churches across the sea are to be consulted to confirm it. In others, and in the African Code, it asks that the list be made known to “our brother and fellow bishop Boniface”. Boniface was bishop of Rome at the time of the council of 419, not in 397, so that clause belongs to the later council. Some copies of the African Code also lack the two books of Maccabees. Bruns and Westcott record these variants in their notes. These are the bishops’ own decisions, but they are the decisions of a regional council, and they say so by asking for confirmation from elsewhere.