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The Council in Trullo, also called the Quinisext Council, was convened in Constantinople in 692. It did not include any representative from Rome and is not considered an ecumenical council.

Canon 13 of the Council in Trullo specifically condemns the Roman practice of requiring clergy to be celibate (either unmarried, or perminantly abstinent following ordination).

if anyone shall have been found worthy to be ordained subdeacon, or deacon, or presbyter, he is by no means to be prohibited from admittance to such a rank, even if he shall live with a lawful wife. Nor shall it be demanded of him at the time of his ordination that he promise to abstain from lawful intercourse with his wife

This rule is to be enforced by deposition of the offender

If therefore anyone shall have dared, contrary to the Apostolic Canons, to deprive any of those who are in holy orders, presbyter, or deacon, or subdeacon of cohabitation and intercourse with his lawful wife, let him be deposed. In like manner also if any presbyter or deacon on pretence of piety has dismissed his wife, let him be excluded from communion; and if he persevere in this let him be deposed.

As far as I can tell, this is incompatible with the Catholic convention of requiring clergy to be celibate.

Furthermore, the Council in Trullo recognized the 85 Apostolic Canons as authoritative, the 85th of which defines a canon for Scripture which is not followed by the Catholic Church because it includes three books of Maccabees, not two.

However, Nicaea II, which is recognized as ecumenical by the Catholic Church and therefore authoritative, says in its first canon:

we welcome and embrace the divine Canons, and we corroborate the entire and rigid fiat of them that have been set forth by the renowned Apostles, who were and are trumpets of the Spirit, and those both of the six holy Ecumenical Councils and of the ones assembled regionally for the purpose of setting forth such edicts, and of those of our holy Fathers. For all those men, having been guided by the light dawning out of the same Spirit, prescribed rules that are to our best interest. Accordingly, we too anathematize whomsoever they consign to anathema; and we too depose whomsoever they consign to deposition; and we too excommunicate whomsoever they consign to excommunication; and we likewise subject to a penance anyone whom they make liable to a penance. [Emph. added]

The Eastern Orthodox Churches take the boldfaced part as an ecumenical endorsement of the Council in Trullo, and thus view it as an authoritative emendation to the fifth and sixth councils. However, the Catholic Church does not (apparently) interpret this canon in the same way, for the reasons outlined above.

How do Catholics understand this part of Nicaea II, if they do not take it as acknowledging the authoritative emendations from the Council in Trullo to the fifth and sixth councils?

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  • I think you're asking more about whether Trullo was a legitimate council than about Nicæa specifically, right? Commented Mar 14, 2025 at 0:31
  • No, it is plain that the answer to that is "no" as regards the practice of the church as a whole. I'm wondering what the Catholic interpretation of that clause in Nicaea II is, as it is plainly not the same as the EO interpretation. Commented Mar 28, 2025 at 14:41

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Selin, Priestly Celibacy: Theological Foundations ch. 1 "The Development of Clerical Continence and Celibacy in the Latin Church" pp. 30-1:

During this time the earliest legislation that permitted periodic continence for married clerics appeared at a regional council of the Eastern Churches, namely, the Second Council of Trullo (691–692).63 This council upheld the traditional discipline that required bishops to be unmarried, or if married, to live apart from their wives, and also continued the ban on remarriage for all major clerics whose wives had died after their ordination. However, the bishops also introduced a law that was unprecedented in previous local or ecumenical councils. Canon 13 mandated that married priests, deacons, and subdeacons were not permitted to separate from their wives and were to observe periodic rather than perpetual continence. Trullo appealed to apostolic tradition and cited canons from the African Codex (419) to justify this legislation.64 The reigning pope, Saint Sergius I (ca. 650–701), a Syrian by birth, did not accept the Trullan canons on clerical marriage, nor did his successor, John VII (ca. 650–707), who returned the Acts of the Trullan Synod unsigned. However, Adrian I (ca. 700–795), while rejecting the canons on clerical marriage, did accept with qualification other Trullan Acts that were free of anti-Roman canons.65

Canon 13 of Trullo constituted a departure from the apostolic tradition of continence-celibacy that was codified at the Second Council of Carthage. In reflecting on the Trullan legislation, Cardinal William Levada wrote:

It is a common modern understanding of the history of celibacy to suggest that the practice of the early Church, at least until the decrees imposing celibacy ‘in the strict sense’ in the West, was that the early Church’s practice was substantially that which later prevailed in the Eastern Churches, and that the practice of the West in requiring celibacy was a ‘later’ innovation. But recent historical studies have called this once prevalent view into question.66

  1. William Levada, “Celibacy and the Priesthood.” The Holy See.
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