Synodicon Orientale

The collection opens with the words “we transcribe the synodal decisions established at various times by our holy fathers in the land of the East”. It gives the acts of thirteen synods held under the catholicos, the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, beginning with that of Mar Isaac in 410, with their narratives, canons, statements of faith and lists of signatures. The last synod in it is dated 775, so the collection was made after that year. Chabot published the Syriac text with a French translation and notes in 1902.

These are the documents of the bishops themselves and the first source for the history of this church, which lay outside the Roman empire and is poorly known to the Greek and Latin historians. The acts of 410 are written in the voice of the assembled bishops and in praise of the king who allowed them to meet. Two cautions apply. The text of the early synods has passed through centuries of copying, and Chabot marks places where it is damaged, as at the start of the twenty-first canon of 410. And the creed of that synod is transmitted in two forms: the one in this collection is the creed of Nicaea of 325 with its anathemas, while another manuscript of the canons of 410, noted by Chabot, has a creed worded differently.