The Structure and Elements of the ‘Ideal’ Session-Record and the Role of ‘Editing’

Abstract

Summarizing the findings of the previous chapters, this chapter sketches what might be considered an ideal type of a conciliar session protocol, as it starts with a conventional frame giving date and place and elucidation of the occasion, then progresses through the agenda and culminates in the recording of the oral verdicts of the bishops, concluding with the written formulization in a verdict signed by them. The protocol of the much-criticized Council of Ephesus (449) paradoxically comes very close to this ideal, when taken on its own terms. The seeming contradiction between this document’s smooth formality and the alleged tyrannical manipulations of the meeting it portrays alerts us to the role of a deeper editing, here and generally, by which the records were made to match the designs and self-image of both ecclesiastical and civil authorities, and which cannot be entirely captured by the attention to the textual processes required for their production alone.