Free tribune

This article constitutes a response by Aram Mardirossian to the review published by Grégoire Papathomas in the journal *Contacts* (no. 237, 2012) of his monograph devoted to the *Canonical Collection of Antioch* (CCA), the first corpus of ecclesiastical legislation from the fourth century. In the form of a polemical tribune, the author refutes two main objections: the contestation of the Homoean origin of the CCA and the refusal to recognize a juridical dimension in conciliar canons. Mardirossian defends the thesis that the CCA is a combative compilation elaborated by the Arian bishop Euzôios of Antioch, in a context where official orthodoxy was subordinationist and not Nicene. He also emphasizes that canonical legislation constitutes a legal category in its own right, whose emergence in the fourth century results from specific politico-religious dynamics. The article thus sheds light on the historiographical and methodological issues related to the origins of Eastern canon law.