7. Rabbula forbade even the priests and deacons to drink wine, except in case of sickness.
8. This practice seems; to have been common among the Syrian solitaries. It is mentioned by Theodoret (see Dom Butler's Lausiac History of Palladius. I. p. 241).
9. lit., " If there is any that has grace (or, favour) openly." There is something to be said for the rendering: "If there is one who plainly has the grace" (i.e. the grace of healing). Isaac of Antioch, in one of his poems, written about the end of the fifth cent., makes it clear that the power of producing cures by means of anointing with oil was often claimed by quack hermits. Isaac sets down such cures to magic and the power of the devil, and denounces these who have recourse to these solitaries instead of to their own priests.
10. Christians, and particularly clerics and monks, were forbidden to go into the secular courts. Special persons of tried integrity were delegated to hear causes in the diiferent localities. They were appointed by the Periodeutes----who was either a sort of suffragan Bishop or a Vicar General----and had the power to inflict a limited number of stripes. Those who had merited graver punishment were banded over to the civil authorities.
11. In a shorter set of "Canons" for monks, most of which are included in these "Admonitions," this command reads thus: "Let none of the monks take an oracle out of the Holy Scriptures for any one." The allusion is to the sortes sanctorum, or dipping at random into the Bible, and regarding the first passage that met the eye as an omen or oracle. The abuse was derived from paganism. St. Augustine, Ep. 109, ad Januarium. writes: "As for those who take sortes from the Gospel pages: it is better indeed for them to do this than to have recourse to the counsel of devils.; yet this practice displeases me, whereby men would turn to the use of secular business and to the vanities of this life those divine oracles which tell of the life to come" (see Du Cange. s.v, sortes ).
12. The reason for this mode of electing superiors was, no doubt, that those chosen for the ministry and entrusted with the cure of souls were usually men of superior learning and judgment. Living outside the monastery, too, they would be free from the temptation to choose an easy-going superior.
13. The beth sahde, or martyrium, was not a separate building, but a shrine within the church where relics of the Saints were kept. Here also ----certainly at a later date----the monks were buried (see Budge, The Book of Governors. Introd. pp. lii. ff)
14. Waking at funerals was a deep-seated abuse among the Syrians. An inheritance from heathendom, it was extremely difficult to eradicate, since paganism lingered on in considerable force for another century or more in many Syrian cities.
15. See the Lausiac History. I. p. 235.
16. See M. Labourt. Le Christianisme dans l'Empire Perse, p. 324.
17. See Dom Butler (I p 241), who quotes to this effect Cassian, Inst. II. 2, III. 1, 4, 8.
18. . Translated from Bedjan's ed. p.605-6.
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