The Living Tradition An Orthodox Archive of the Church Fathers and Early Church

The First Council of Nicaea

Canon IX

Presbyters ordained without examination, or ordained despite confessing crime, are not admitted by the canon.

  • Canonical normEstablished by a received canon of a council, or of a Father whose canons the Church has received. Canons are applied within the Church's pastoral and conciliar life; a canon is not a rule a reader applies to themselves or to anyone else.
  • Historical consensusBroadly agreed among historians working from the surviving evidence. Consensus can shift when the evidence or the method changes.

Primary evidence verified Content last reviewed 2026-08-29

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  • Add a second independent modern translation of the canon for comparison.

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Canon IX — conciliar text

If any presbyters have been advanced without examination, or if upon examination they have made confession of crime, and men acting in violation of the canon have laid hands upon them, notwithstanding their confession, such the canon does not admit; for the Catholic Church requires that [only] which is blameless.

Henry R. Percival (ed.), The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. XIV (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1900). Public domain.

Ancient Epitome, as printed in the same edition

Whoever are ordained without examination, shall be deposed if it be found out afterwards that they had been guilty.

A Byzantine-era summary carried in the canonical collections. It is a witness to how the canon was read, not the canon itself.

Plain-language summary — this project's words, not the canon's

If presbyters have been advanced without examination, or if on examination they confessed to serious sin and hands were laid on them anyway, the canon does not admit them — because the Catholic Church requires what is blameless.

The fourth-century problem

Ordinations were sometimes hurried, and bishops sometimes proceeded despite what they had been told. The canon addresses both the failure to examine and the decision to ordain regardless.

It is aimed at the ordaining bishop's conduct as much as at the ordained man's standing.

Canonical principle

An ordination performed against the Church's own requirements does not become valid because it happened. The canon treats the process as substantive rather than formal.

The phrase the canon does not admit refers to an existing rule, as in canon I — the council is confirming rather than inventing.

What kind of canon this is

  • disciplinary

Percival's edition groups the Nicene canons without formal classification. The kinds named above are this project's analysis, offered so that a reader can see which parts of a canon are principle and which are the arrangement of a particular century.

Later interpretation and reception

Read together with canons II and X, this forms a small group on the integrity of ordination: time and testing before, examination during, and the consequences when either was neglected.

Percival's notes connect it to the apostolic canons on the same subject.

  • Canon II, on the ordination of recent converts.
  • Canon X, on the ordination of the lapsed.

  • The First Council of Nicaea

    The council that confessed the Son to be of one substance with the Father, addressed the date of Pascha, and issued twenty disciplinary canons. It did not decide which books belong to the Bible.

    Council

  • The canons and Church order

    What canons are, how they are received, and why they are not an internet law code.

    Theme

  • The twenty canons of Nicaea: an overview

    What the first council actually legislated about, in one pass, before you read them one by one.

    Lesson

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Sources for this page

  1. Tier C The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church Henry R. Percival (ed.); Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (series eds.) Canon IX of Nicaea annotated edition of conciliar texts The conciliar text as archived here. Source record
  2. Tier C The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church Henry R. Percival (ed.); Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (series eds.) Ancient Epitome of Canon IX, with Percival's notes annotated edition of conciliar texts Nineteenth-century editorial apparatus and Byzantine canonists. Source record

Tiers are explained in the methodology. No page on this site has been reviewed or approved by any bishop, priest, synod or seminary.