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The acts of the Second Council of Nicaea (787). Translated and introduced by Richard Price. 2 vols. (Translated Texts for Historians, 68.) Pp. xiv + 377, viii + 378–738. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018. £120. 978 1 78694 127 5
Over the last fifteen years Richard Price has done much to make the acts of major ecclesiastical councils from the fifth through eighth centuries accessible by producing reliable, well-annotated translations in the Translated Texts for Historians series. The present two-volume work follows translations of the acts of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 (vol. xlv; with Michael Gaddis), the Council of Constantinople in 553 (vol. li) and the Lateran Synod of 649 (vol. lxi). Readers of previous volumes will be pleased to find here the same helpful introductory materials and smooth translation style. The volume additionally benefits from Price's close collaboration with Erich Lamberz, who between 2008 and 2016 published a critical edition of the acts of this council in the second series of the Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum (vols iii/1–3). The acts of the Second Council of Nicaea had already been translated into English in 1849 by John Mendham, but Mendham based his translation on J.-D. Mansi's eighteenth-century edition. The publication of a new English translation so shortly after the appearance of the critical edition is thus very welcome. Price has helpfully included the page numbers of both Mansi's and Lamberz's editions for quick cross-referencing.
The work is divided into three major sections: the introduction, the translation and the end matter....