ABSTRACT
The commentaries of Theodore Balsamon are one of the most important keys to an understanding of the normative context in which orthodoxy and heresy are articulated in Byzantium. Theodore Balsamon together with John Zonaras and Alexios Aristenos represent the Golden Age of Byzantine Canon Law in the twelfth century. All three canonists produced commentaries of what is to become the standard corpus of canon law of the Chalcedonian Orthodox churches. What these commentaries do offer, however, is an opportunity to explore the ways in which heresy and orthodoxy are treated in civil law and in canon law and how and what to read in these interconnected and yet distinct perspectives. Balsamon's take on heresy and orthodoxy from the point of view of canon and civil law did not emerge in isolation from trends which began to emerge in Byzantium in the eleventh century and shaped the commentaries of Balsamon and his distinguished contemporaries Zonaras and Aristenos.
