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Council of Elvira


IV Century
A local council of the Spanish Church, with St. Hosius of Córdoba, later Constantine's representative in the East, presiding or at least present. The generally harsh canons deal mostly but not exclusively with sexual issues and many are theologically quite dubious (forbidding the use of icons, mandating clerical celibacy, encouraging Saturday fasting, prohibiting a wife from writing or receiving letters without her husband's consent, etc.) This council, needless to say, is not accepted as authoritative by the Orthodox Church.

Norman Hugh Redington

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