a person who possesses a prebend, or revenue allotted for the performance of divine service, in a cathedral, or collegiate church.

Canons are of no great antiquity: Paschier observes, that the name canon was not known before Charlemagne; at least the first we hear of are in Gregory de Tours, who mentions a college of canons instituted by Baldwin XVI. archbishop of that city, in the time of Clotharius I. The common opinion attributes the institution of this order to Chrodegangus, bishop of Metz, about the middle of the eighth century.

Originally canons were only priests, or inferior ecclesiastics, who lived in community; residing by the cathedral church, to assist the bishop; depending entirely on his will; supported by the revenues of the bishopric; and living in the same house, as his domestics, or counsellors, &c. They even inherited his moveables, till the year 817, when this was prohibited by the council of Aix-la-Chapelle, and a new rule substituted in the place of that which had been appointed by Chrodegangus, and which was observed for the most part in the west till the twelfth century. By degrees, these communities of priests, shaking off their dependence, formed separate bodies; whereof the bishops, however, were still heads. In the tenth century, there were communities or congregations of the same kind, established even in cities where there were no bishops; these were called collegiate, as they used the terms congregation and college indifferently: the name chapter, now given to these bodies, being much more modern. Under the second race of the French kings, the canonical, or collegiate life, had spread itself all over the country; and each cathedral had its chapter, distinct from the rest of the clergy. They had the name canon from the Greek κανών, which signifies three different things; a rule, a pension, or fixed revenue to live on, and a catalogue or matricula; all which are applicable to them.

In time, the canons freed themselves from their rules, the observance relaxed, and, at length, they ceased to live in community; yet they still formed bodies; pretending to other functions besides the celebration of the common office in the church; yet assuming the rights of the rest of the clergy; making themselves as a necessary council of the bishop; taking upon them the administration of a see during a vacancy, and the election of a bishop to supply it. There are even some chapters exempt from the jurisdiction of the bishop, and owning no head but their dean. After the example of cathedral chapters, collegiate ones also continued to form bodies, after they had abandoned living in community.

Canons are of various kinds; as, Cardinal Canons, which are those attached, and, as the Latins call it, incardinati to a church, as a priest is to a parish.

Domicalary Canons, were young canons, who, not being in orders, had no right in any particular chapters.

Expeditive Canons, were such as, without having any revenue or prebend, had the title and dignities of canons, a voice in the chapter, and a place in the choir; till such time as a prebend should fall.

Foreign Canons, were such as did not officiate in the canonries to which they belonged. To these were opposed manionary canons, or canons residentiary.

Lay or honorary Canons, are such among the laity as have been admitted, out of honour and respect, into some chapter of canons.

Regular Canons, are canons that still live in community; and who, like religious, have, in process of time, to the practice of their rules, added the solemn profession of vows. They are called regulars, to distinguish them from those secular canons who abandon living in community, and at the same time the observance of the canons made as the rule of the clergy, for the maintenance of the ancient discipline. The canons subsisted in their simplicity till the eleventh, some say the twelfth century, when some of them, separating from the community, took with them the name of canons, or acephalous priests, because they declined to live in community with the bishop; and those who were left thenceforth acquired the denomination of canons regular, and adopted most of the professions of the rule of St Augustine. This order of regular canons of St Augustine was brought into England by Adelwald, confessor to Henry I., who erected a priory at Nottel in Yorkshire; and obtained for them the church of Carlisle as an episcopal fee, with the privilege of choosing their own bishop. They were singularly protected and encouraged by Henry I., who gave them the priory of Dunstable in 1107, and by queen Maud, who, in the following year, gave them the priory of the Holy Trinity in London. It appears, that under the reign of Edward I., they had 53 priories.

Tertiary Canons, those who had only the third part of the revenues of the canonicate.

an ecclesiastical sense, is a law or rule, either of doctrine or discipline, enacted especially by a council, and confirmed by the authority of the sovereign.

Canons are properly decisions of matters of religion; or regulations of the policy and discipline of a church, made by councils, either general, national, or provincial. Such are the canons of the council of Nice, or Trent, &c.

There have been various collections of the canons of the Eastern councils; but four principal ones, each ampler than the preceding. The first, according to Usher, A.D. 380, containing only those of the first ecumenical council, and the first provincial ones: they were but 164 in number. To these, Dionysius Exiguus, in the year 520, added the 50 canons of the apostles, and those of the other general councils. The Greek canons in this second collection end with those of the council of Chalcedon; to which are subjoined those of the council of Sardica, and the African councils. The fourth and last collection comes down as low as the second council of Nice; and it is on this that Balfour and Zonaras have commented.

Apostolical Canons, are those which have been usually ascribed to St Clement. Bellarmine, Baronius, &c., will have them to be genuine canons of the apostles: Cotelarius observes, that they cannot be ascribed to the apostles or Clement, because they are not received with other books of scripture, are not quoted by the writers of the first ages, and contain many things not agreeable to the apostolical times: Hincmar, De Marca, Beveridge, &c., take them to be framed by the bishops who were the apostles disciples in the second or third century; S. Balaigue is of opinion, that they were collected by an anonymous writer in the fifth century; but Daille, &c., maintain them to have been forged by some heretic in the fifth century; and S. Balaigue conjectures, that some of them are ancient, and others not older than the seventh century. The Greek church allow only 85 of them, and the Latins only 50; though there are 84 in the edition given of them in the Corpus Juris Canonici.

Canon is also used for the authorised catalogue of the sacred writings. See Bible.

The ancient canon, or catalogue of the books of the Old Testament, was made by the Jews, and is ordinarily attributed to Ezra; who is said to have distributed them into the law, the prophets, and the hagiography, to which our Saviour refers, Luke, chap. xxiv. ver. 44. The same division is also mentioned by Josephus, cont. Appion.

This is the canon allowed to have been followed by the primitive church, till the council of Carthage; and, according to St Jerom, this consisted of no more than 22 books; answering to the number of the Hebrew alphabet; though at present they are classified into 24 divisions, containing Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the twelve minor prophets, the Psalms, the Proverbs, Job, Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, comprehending the book of Nehemiah and the Chronicles. However, this order is not universally observed either among Jews or Christians: nor were all the books above enumerated admitted into the canon in Ezra's time. It is most likely, says Dr Prideaux, that the two books of Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Malachi, were added in the time of Simon the Just, when the canon was completed. But that council enlarged the canon very considerably, taking into it the books which we call apocryphal; which the council of Trent has further enforced, enjoining all these to be received as books of Holy Scripture, upon pain of anathema, and being attainted of heresy. The Romans, in defence of this canon, say, that it is the same with that of the council of Hippo, held in 393; and with that of the third council of Carthage, in 397, at which were present 46 bishops, and, among the rest, St Augustine; who declared that they received it from their fathers.

Their canon of the New Testament perfectly agrees with ours. It consists of books that are well known; some of which have been universally acknowledged; such are the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, thirteen Epistles of St Paul, one Epistle of St Peter; and... Canon, and one Epistle of St John: and others, concerning which doubts were entertained, but which were afterwards received as genuine; such are the epistle to the Hebrews, that of James, the second of Peter, the second and third of John, that of Jude, and the Revelation. These books were written at different times, and they are authenticated, not by the decrees of councils, or infallible authority, but by such kind of evidence as is thought sufficient in the case of any other ancient writings. They were very extensively diffused; they were read in every Christian society; they were valued and preserved with care by the first Christians; they were cited by Christian writers of the second, third, and fourth century, as by Irenaeus, Clement the Alexandrian, Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius, &c., and their genuineness is proved by the testimony of those who were contemporary with the apostles themselves, and by tradition. The four Gospels, and most of the other books of the New Testament, were collected either by one of the apostles, or some of their disciples and successors, before the end of the first century.

The catalogue of canonical books furnished by the more ancient Christian writers, as Origen about the year 210, Eusebius and Athanasius in 315, Epiphanius in 370, Jerome in 382, Austin in 394, and many others, agrees with that which is now received among Christians. For the time of writing the several books of the New Testament, see the titles of the books themselves; as the Gospel of St Matthew, Mark, &c.

Some of the fathers distinguish the inspired writings into three classes; proto-canonical, deutero-canonical, and apocryphal.

Paschal Canon, a table of the moveable feasts, showing the day of Easter, and the other feasts depending on it, for a cycle of 19 years.

The paschal canon is supposed to be the calculation of Eusebius of Caesarea, and to have been done by order of the council of Nice.

monastic orders, a book wherein the religious of every convent have a fair transcript of the rules of their order, frequently read among them as their local statutes. This is also called regula, containing the rule and institution of their order.

The canon differs from the missale, martyrologium, and necrologium.

Canon, again, is used for the catalogue of saints acknowledged and canonized in the Roman church.

Canon is also used, by way of excellence, in the Romish church, for the secret words of the mass, from the preface to the Pater; in the middle of which the priest consecrates the host. The common opinion is, that the canon of the mass commences with Te igitur, &c. The people are to be on their knees, hearing the canon; and are to rehearse it to themselves, so as not to be heard.

the ancient music, is a rule or method of determining the intervals of notes.

Ptolemy, rejecting the Aristoxenus way of measuring the intervals in music, by the magnitude of a tone (which was supposed to be formed by the difference between a diapente and a diatessaron), thought that musical intervals should be distinguished, according to the ratios or proportions which the sounds terminating those intervals bear to one another, when considered according to their degree of acuteness or gravity; which, before Aristoxenus, was the old Pythagorean way. He therefore made the diapason consist in a double ratio; the diapente, in a sesquialterate; the diatessaron, in a sesquiterian; and the tone itself, in a sesquioctave; and all the other intervals, according to the proportion of the sounds that terminate them: wherefore taking the canon (as it is called) for a determinate line of any length, he shows how this canon is to be cut accordingly, so that it may represent the respective intervals: and this method answers exactly to experiment, in the different lengths of musical chords. From this canon, Ptolemy and his followers have been called Canonici; as those of Aristoxenus were called Musici.

modern music, is a kind of fugue, which they call a perpetual fugue, because the different parts beginning one after another, repeat incessantly the same air.

Formerly, says Zarlino, they placed, at the head of perpetual fugues, particular directions which showed how this kind of fugues was to be sung; and these directions being properly the rules by which perpetual fugues were composed were called canoni, rulers, or canons. From this custom, others taking the title for the thing signified, by a metonymy, termed this kind of composition canon. Such canons are composed with the greatest facility, and of consequence most generally used; begin the fugue either with the octave or the unison; that is to say, that every part repeats in the same tone the melody of the preceding. In order to form a canon of this kind, it is only necessary for the composer to make an air according to his taste; to add in score as many parts as he chooses, where the voices in octave or unison repeat the same melody; then forming a single air from all these parts successively executed, to try whether this succession may form an entire piece which will give pleasure, as well in the harmony as the melody.

In order to execute such a canon, he who sings the first part begins alone, and continues till the air is finished; then recommences immediately, without any suspense of sound or interruption of time: as soon as he has ended the first couplet, which ought to serve for the perpetual subject upon which the whole canon has been composed, the second part begins and repeats the same couplet, whilst the first who had begun pursues the second: others in succession begin, and proceed the same way, as soon as he who precedes has reached the end of the first couplet. Thus, by incessantly recommencing, an universal close can never be found, and the canon may be repeated as long as the fingers please.

A perpetual fugue may likewise consist of parts which begin with the intervals of a fourth or fifth; or, in other words, every part may repeat the melody of the first, a fourth or a fifth higher or lower. It is then necessary that the whole canon should be invented di prima intenzione, as the Italians say; and that sharps or flats should be added to the notes, whose natural gradations do not answer exactly, by a fourth or fifth, to the melody of the preceding part, and produce the same intervals with itself. Here the composer cannot pay the least regard to modulation; his only care is, that the melody may be the same, which renders the formation of of a canon more difficult; for at every time when any part resumes the fugue, it takes a new key; it changes the tone almost at every note, and what is still worse, no part is at the same time found in the same tone with another; hence it is that this kind of canons, in other respects far from being easy to be pursued, never produces a pleasing effect, however good the harmony may be, and however properly it may be sung.

There is a third kind of canon, but very scarce, as well because it is extremely difficult, as because it is for the most part incapable of giving pleasure, and can boast no other merit but the pains which have been thrown away in its composition. This may be called a double canon inverted, as well by the inversions which are practised in it with respect to the melody of the parts, as by those which are found among the parts themselves, in fingering. There is such an artifice in this kind of canon, that, whether the parts be sung in their natural order, or whether the paper in which they are set be turned the contrary way, to sing them backward from the end to the beginning, in such a manner that the bass becomes the upper part, and the rest undergo a similar change, still you have pretty harmony, and still a regular canon. The reader may consult Rouffian's Dictionary in this article, where he is referred to plate D fig. 11, for two examples of canons of this sort extracted from Bontempi, who likewise gives rules for their composition. But he adds, that the true principle from which this rule is deduced will be found at the word Syllene, in his account of the system of Tartini, to which we must likewise once more refer the reader; as a quotation of such length must have protracted our article to an enormous extent.

To form a canon in which the harmony may be a little varied, it is necessary that the parts should not follow each other in a succession too rapid, and that the one should only begin a considerable time after the other. When they follow one another so immediately as at the distance of a semibreve or a minim, the duration is not sufficient to admit a great number of chords, and the canon must of necessity exhibit a disagreeable monotony; but it is a method of composing, without much difficulty, a canon in as many parts as the composer chooses. For a canon of four bars only, will consist of eight parts if they follow each other at the distance of half a bar; and by each bar which is added, two parts will constantly be gained.

The emperor Charles VI., who was a great musician, and composed extremely well, took much pleasure in composing and fingering canons. Italy is still replete with most beautiful canons composed for this prince, by the best masters in that country. To what has been said by Rouffian, we need only subjoin, that the English catch and the Italian canon are much the same; as any intelligent reader may perceive, from comparing the structure and execution of the English catch with the account of canons which has now been given.

geometry and algebra, a general rule for the solution of all cases of a like nature with the present inquiry. Thus every last step of an equation is a canon; and, if turned into words, becomes a rule to solve all questions of the same nature with that proposed.

Canon-Law, a collection of ecclesiastical laws, serving as the rule and measure of church-government.

The power of making laws was exercised by the church before the Roman empire became Christian. The canon-law that obtained throughout the West, till the 12th century, was the collection of canons made by Dionysius Exiguus in 520, the capitularies of Charlemagne, and the decrees of the popes from Sincius to Anastasius.

The canon-law, even when papal authority was at its height in England, was of no force when it was found to contradict the prerogative of the king, the laws, statutes, and customs of the realm, or the doctrine of the established church.

The ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the see of Rome in England was founded on the canon-law; and this created quarrels between kings and several archbishops and prelates who adhered to the papal usurpation.

Besides the foreign canons, there were several laws and constitutions made here for the government of the church; but all these received their force from the royal assent; and if, at any time, the ecclesiastical courts did, by their sentence, endeavour to enforce obedience to such canons, the courts at common law, upon complaints made, would grant prohibition. The authority vested in the church of England of making canons, was ascertained by a statute of Henry VIII., commonly called the act of the clergy's submission; by which they acknowledged, that the convocation had always been assembled by the king's writ; so that though the power of making canons resided in the clergy met in convocation, their force was derived from the authority of the king's assent to and confirming them.

The old canons continued in full force till the reign of James I., when the clergy being assembled in convocation, the king gave them leave to treat and consult upon canons; which they did, and presented them to the king, who gave them the royal assent; these were a collection out of the several preceding canons and injunctions. Some of these canons are now obsolete. In the reign of Charles I., several canons were passed by the clergy in convocation.