That Œconomi ought to be in the Episcopal palaces and in the Monasteries.
Since we are under obligation to guard all the divine canons, we ought by all means to maintain in its integrity that one which says œconomi are to be in each church. If the metropolitan appoints in his Church an œconomus, he does well; but if he does not, it is permitted to the Bishop of Constantinople by his own (ἰδίας) authority to choose an œconomus for the Church of the Metropolitan. A like authority belongs to the p. 563 metropolitans, if the Bishops who are subject to them do not wish to appoint œconomi in their churches. The same rule is also to be observed with respect to monasteries.
If the Metropolitan does not elect an œconomus of the metropolis, the patriarch shall do so. If the bishop shall not do so, the Metropolitan shall; for so it seemed good to the fathers assembled at Chalcedon. The same law shall hold in monasteries.
The Synod of Chalcedon required the appointment of special œconomi only for all bishops’ churches; but our synod extended this prescription also to monasteries.
Bishops at their ordination among other things promise that they will observe the canons, and the bishops of the Synod say that among these canons they are bound to keep the one that orders them to appoint an Œconomus.
Among the officials of the Constantinopolitan Church, Codinus names first The Grand Œconomus, “who” (he says) “holds in his own power all the faculties of the Church, and all their returns; and is the dispenser in this matter as well to the Patriarch as to the Church.”
Balsamon and Aristenus refer to Canon xxvj. of Chalcedon; and point out how here the power of Constantinople was added to.
This canon is found in the Corpus Juris Canonici, Gratian’s Decretum, Pars. II., Causa IX., Quæst. III., Canon iij.