Commission for the Publications of a Second Series of the Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum

The task of the Commission is to continue the edition of Acts of the Ecumenical Councils begun by the great philologist Eduard Schwartz (1858–1940), and to provide reliable scholarly texts of the minutes and documents of those Councils whose decisions in matters of belief were regarded as binding both Eastern and Western Churches. Up to the time of his death Schwartz had published editions of the Acts of the Councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451) as well as one volume of the Second Council of Constantinople (553). In 1971 Johannes Straub published the second volume of this Council, and between 1974 and 1984 Rudolf Schieffer produced indexes to the volumes that had so far appeared.

The Commission was established at the Bavarian Academy in 1968. Under its direction Rudolf Riedinger published in 1984 the Acts of the Lateran Council of 649, and from 1990 to 1995 in three volumes those of the Third Council of Constantinople (680/1). Since 1991 work has continued on the Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea (787), which was concerned with the iconoclastic controversy. The first volume, edited by Erich Lamberz, was published in 2008.

Das VII. Ökumenische Konzil (Nikaia 787) im Menologion Basileios' II.

The seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicaea, 787) depicted on the menologion of Basileios II. A stylised representation of the Council: by the Cross the Roman-Byzantine Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople, on each side participants in the Council, in front the condemned heretic. Vatican Library.