Ancyra - Canon 22

Concerning willful murderers let them remain prostrators; but at the end of life let them be indulged with full communion.

This is a continuation of the previous canon but directed to those who murdered those born into the world.  Full communion was barred until their final hour was near.

One might ask how the differentiation could be made between the unborn and born to allow mercy for murdering the first but not the second.  There was and is a common conception that life does not begin until the first breath outside the womb.  Only at that point does the breath of life enter the baby.  This position was confronted by Tertullian.

Those who profess the truth care nothing about their opponents, especially such of them as begin by maintaining that the soul is not conceived in the womb, nor is formed and produced at the time that the flesh is molded, but is impressed from without upon the infant before his complete vitality, but after the process of parturition.  They say, moreover, that the human seed having been duly deposited ex concubiterin the womb, and having been by natural impulse quickened, it becomes condensed into the mere substance of the flesh, which is in due time born, warm from the furnace of the womb, and then released from its heat.  (This flesh) resembles the case of hot iron, which is in that state plunged into cold water; for, being smitten by the cold air (into which it is born), it at once receives the power of animation, and utters vocal sound.  This view is entertained by the Stoics, along with Ænesidemus, and occasionally by Plato himself, when he tells us that the soul, being quite a separate formation, originating elsewhere and externally to the womb, is inhaled when the new-born infant first draws breath, and by and by exhaled with the man’s latest breath.¹

While we may not agree with the consequences meted out, we can appreciate cultural issues in dealing with the different types of cases before them and coming to a just solution.


¹ ANF 3:205.