§ 39. Collections Exclusively Canonical

a) In the East. Concerning the first canonical collections of this period, the data are very sparse.[1] The first explicit mention of a canonical collection we find in the acts of the Council of Chalcedon. But there is evidence that some collections existed even before this council. Between 315 and 325 there existed, for a Latin translation, a Greek collection in which were the canons of the Councils of Ancyra and Neocaesarea.[2] If one takes into account the years in which these councils were held, it may then be said that the basis of all the later canonical collections was the body of canons of the Council of Ancyra (314), to which were then added the canons of the Council of Neocaesarea, so that from the canons of these councils the first canonical collection was composed. From the beginning of the fifth century a second Greek collection is mentioned, which again served as the basis for Latin translations, and in this collection, besides the aforementioned canons, were also the canons of the Councils of Nicaea and Gangra;[3] and shortly thereafter a further collection is mentioned, in which were also the canons of the Council of Antioch,[4] and yet another again, in which were further the canons of the Councils of Laodicea and Constantinople.[5] As can be seen from this, before the Council of Chalcedon there existed a collection in which were the canons of seven councils.

1. At the Council of Chalcedon (451), the canons of earlier councils were read at several sessions, and ten of them from a particular book.[6] This collection (the “particular book”) contained all the canons of the councils held before Chalcedon. This collection has not survived, or at least no one has yet discovered it,[7] nor is it known when, nor who composed it; for us it is enough to know that a particular canonical collection existed before the Council of Chalcedon, and that it contained the respective conciliar canons.[8]

2. The first canonical collection that has come down to us in its entirety is the Canonical Synopsis, attributed to Stephen of Ephesus.[9] It contains, in abridged text, the canons of: the holy apostles, and the councils of Nicaea, Ancyra, Neocaesarea, Gangra, Antioch, Laodicea, Constantinople and Ephesus. By origin this collection is dated to the beginning of the sixth century. Because of the practical form of this collection, attention was paid to it every time new canons were issued; and in the measure in which the collection with the full text of the canons multiplied, this one with the abridged text multiplied as well, either contemporaneously with the issuing of the canons themselves, or subsequently.[10] According to the text of the Synopsis printed first in Beveregius’s Synodicon, and then in the Athenian Syntagma, it contained, by the twelfth century, all the canons that were in the basic canonical collection, namely, in synoptic form the canons of the apostles, of the councils and of Basil the Great, and in full text the canons of certain other fathers, and of some again in synoptic form. Alongside the canons were further appended several writings which had a corresponding importance for that period.[11] Aristenus in the twelfth century wrote a commentary on the canons of this supplemented Synopsis,[12] and this same Synopsis, together with Aristenus’s commentaries, was afterward translated into Slavonic and into Romanian.[13]

3. Similar to the Synopsis of Stephen of Ephesus was another collection, bearing the name of Symeon Magistros and Logothetes.[14] It contains, in abridged text, the canons of: the apostles, the first five ecumenical councils, the first seven local councils, and Basil the Great. The difference between this collection and the aforementioned Synopsis lies in this, that here the canons are cited according to the authority of their sources, namely first the apostolic ones, then those of the ecumenical councils, then of the local councils, and finally of the holy fathers.[15] This order was afterward adopted by Zonaras and Balsamon, and since that time the canons have always been cited in this order in the respective collections. —

Besides collections such as these two we have now mentioned, there further appear systematic collections, in which the canons are arranged according to the subjects of which they speak. The aim of such systematic collections was first practical, to facilitate the use of the canons themselves, and then also theoretical, to facilitate the study of the canonical provisions.

4. The first systematic collection in the Eastern church according to the first years of the sixth century. Of it John Scholasticus speaks in the preface to his own collection.[16] It was divided into sixty titles and contained the canons of: the apostles, the first four ecumenical councils, and the local councils down to and including Sardica. There were no canons of the holy fathers in it. Nothing else is known today about this collection.

5. A second systematic collection was composed by John Scholasticus. He was a presbyter and apocrisiarius of the church of Antioch in Constantinople, and then, from 566 to 577, Patriarch of Constantinople.[17] Around the year 550, as presbyter of Antioch, John composed a systematic canonical collection in fifty titles from the canons that the preceding collection (in sixty titles) had contained, and further added 68 canons of Basil the Great, namely his second and third epistle to Amphilochius.[18] — After the preface, in which the aim of the labor is set out, there stands a survey of the canons by source, then a survey of all the titles, then the titles in order, and under each title is cited the text of all those canons that speak on the subject of the title.[19]

b) In the West. Church life in the West was not so developed in the first centuries as in the East. It does not, accordingly, show us so many sources of canon law in the first centuries as does the Eastern church. This explains why in the Western church for several centuries we find no independent canonical collections composed from its own sources; whereas in the East already before the time of the Council of Chalcedon, that is, before the middle of the fifth century, independent canonical collections already existed. The first canonical collections of the West are only translations of those canons by which the Eastern church was governed, and these canons, especially after their approval by the Roman pope, acquired generally binding significance for the whole Western church. The collections of the Eastern church, then, in Latin translation, were the first canonical collections by which the Western church was governed, right up until the publication of the Pseudo-Isidorian collection around the middle of the ninth century. To these translated collections were afterward added the legal provisions of Western councils, and chiefly the ordinances of the Roman popes.[20] — A considerable quantity of such collections has survived; we shall mention the principal ones.

1. Versio Isidoriana. This is the name of a Latin translation prepared in Italy around the middle of the fifth century, bearing the name of Isidore, Archbishop of Seville, of the first half of the seventh century, since it is found in one of his works.[21] It contains, in its first redaction, the canons of the councils of Nicaea, Ancyra, Neocaesarea and Gangra, and then, in a second redaction, besides those mentioned, also the canons of the councils of Sardica, Antioch, Laodicea, Constantinople and Chalcedon.[22]

2. Prisca translatio or versio, so named by Dionysius, is the translation of the canons of the Eastern church which, on account of its incompleteness, gave occasion to this same Dionysius to prepare a new translation.[23] The Prisca was likewise prepared in Italy, in the second half of the fifth century,[24] and contains all the same canons as the Isidoriana, except the canons of the Council of Laodicea.[25]

3. Codex canonum ecclesiae romanae. This is the title of the canonical collection published by Paschasius Quesnel in the second half of the seventeenth century, and which is held to have been the official collection of the Roman church at the end of the fifth century.[26] This collection contains the canons of the councils of Nicaea, Sardica, Carthage, Ancyra, Neocaesarea, Gangra, Chalcedon, Constantinople, Antioch and Laodicea, then the canonical epistles of several popes of the fifth century, several provisions of the Greco-Roman state authority, and finally various articles of doctrinal content.[27]

4. Codex canonum ecclesiasticorum Dionysii Exigui occupies the first place among all the canonical collections in the West for the first nine centuries. This collection was prepared by Dionysius, by origin a Slav, superior of a monastery in Rome; he lived in the first half of the sixth century and was very learned.[28] He undertook this task at the request of Stephen, bishop of Salona (in Dalmatia), and directly at the request of a certain priest Laurentius, who was confused in his understanding of the canons of the Eastern councils “confusione priscae translationis.”[29] From several collections Dionysius translated and incorporated into his collection the canons of: the apostles (50 in number), the first four ecumenical councils, and seven local councils: Ancyra, Neocaesarea, Gangra, Antioch, Laodicea, Sardica and Carthage—that is, all the canons that were then in force in the Eastern church.[30] This collection of Dionysius acquired a high reputation throughout the West, of which, among other things, it bears witness that Pope Hormisdas (514–523) ordered that an official edition be prepared, and that in the Greek text and, alongside it, a Latin translation.[31] — After the publication of this collection, at the invitation of a certain Roman priest Julian, Dionysius prepared a second collection,

5. Collectio decretorum pontificum romanorum,[32] in which are contained the canonical ordinances, or decretals,[33] of eight Roman popes, from Siricius to Anastasius II.[34] It was In time these two collections of Dionysius were combined into one collection, called 6. Collectio Dionysio-Hadriana,[35] so named because this collection, with the addition of several new decretals, Pope Hadrian I presented to Charlemagne in the year 774.[36] By this the official significance of this supplemented Dionysian collection was confirmed by the pope; and from that time this Collectio Dionysio-Hadriana served as the official canonical collection in the Frankish state.[37]

7. Collectio hispana, or Isidoriana.[38] This collection is similar to that of Dionysius, and was prepared in Spain in the last years of the sixth or the first years of the seventh century. It was held that Isidore of Seville prepared this collection, but without foundation.[39] It is divided into two parts: the first contains the canons of the same Eastern councils as in the Dionysian collection, then the canons of individual Gallic and Spanish councils, and finally various articles of religious content; the second contains 103 decretals of Roman popes from Damasus to Gregory I.[40] — This collection is important in the history of law in that it served as the basis for

8. Collectio canonum Isidori Mercatoris. The whole collection is divided into three parts: the first contains first the apostolic canons, then 60 decretals of thirty popes, beginning with Clement, who lived in the first century, down to Melchiades of the beginning of the fourth century; in the second part there are first four various articles, among which is the letter on the donation of the Emperor Constantine to Pope Sylvester, then the canons of ten Eastern, and several African, Spanish and Gallic councils; the third part contains, besides several minor articles, again the decretals of popes, beginning with Sylvester, the successor of Melchiades, whose decretal concludes the first part, and down to Gregory II (†731).[41] As can be seen, in this collection the decretals make up the greater part. They are not all authentic; rather a greater part of them was composed in the ninth century and attributed to various popes of the first four centuries. The aim of such a labor consisted in this, that it was desired, by the authority of the Roman pontiff, to overcome the boundless power of secular rulers over the church and to establish a church authority which, especially in the Frankish state, had been reduced almost to nothing, and where bishops and metropolitans alike depended unconditionally on the favor and disfavor of secular rulers and their officials. Force had to be opposed with force, and this force, this power, could not at that time be asserted otherwise than through the authority of the Roman pontiff.[42] For this reason there was composed this collection; and since the basis of its second part, where the canons are cited, is the Hispana, which was attributed to Isidore of Seville, the whole collection, too, was given the name of Isidore. Conjectures as to the true author of the collection vary, but in general it can only be said that he is unknown. The period in which this collection appeared falls between 847 and 852; and the place where it appeared is the western part of the Frankish state, where church authority was at that time most oppressed.[43] — At first all the decretals that were in the collection were accepted on faith, and so it remained until the fifteenth century, when the first voice was raised against them. After that, they were subjected to the most thorough analysis, and by the sixteenth century the whole matter had already been fully clarified.[44] Today no one any longer defends the authenticity of the collection, but in all canonical writings it is called the Pseudo-Isidorian collection, or collectio decretalium pseudo-Isidori mercatoris.[45]

According to the faith with which they regarded this collection in the ninth century, and especially in consequence of the fact that it was taken under his protection by Pope Nicholas I, this collection produced a fundamental transformation in the canon law of the Western church, and from that time a new law is already being created there.[46] The sources of law change places as regards their importance. The concentration of church authority in the West in the person of the Roman pontiff was already fully achieved by this collection, and the starting point in resolving canonical questions became from then on the ordinances of that pontiff.[47] According to this new starting point in canon law, all the canonical collections of the Roman Catholic church, too, take a new direction beginning from the ninth century onward—a direction entirely different from the canonical collections of the Orthodox church, and as a consequence the canonical collections of the Western church after the aforementioned century no longer have for the law of the Eastern church the significance that the Western collections had down to that century.[48]

Footnotes

[1] In general, on the collections of this period, which contain only provisions of church legislation, the following should be compared: Biener, De coll. can p 1—23.—Ballerini, De antiq. collection. can. Pars I (ap. Galland. De vetustis can. collect. p. 97—121)—Van Espen, De antiquis can. codicibus (in Comment. in can. p. 18—20. 25—36).—Zachariae, Historiae juris delin. p 32. 82.—Doujat, Praenot. canonic. p. 288—312.—Spittler, Gesch. d. kan. Rechts. p. 83—124. 181—187.—Pitra, Jur. hist. et. monum. II, 366—385—Mortreuil, Histoire du droit byz. I, 200—203.—Hergenröther, Photius. III, 82—109.—C. W. E. Heimbach, Griech.-röm. Recht (in Ersch u. Gruber, Allgem. Encykl. Bd. 86. S 283—284).—Zaozersky, The Origin and Formation of the Byzantine Nomocanon (Readings in the Society of Lovers of Spiritual Enlightenment, Moscow, 1882. I, 103—121) and The Significance of Pre-Nicene Canon Law in the Church Legislation of the 4th and Following Centuries (Ib. II, 583—618).

[20] Cf. on this question: Van Espen, De ant. can. codicibus (Ed. cit p. 14—18. 21—30. 482—510).—Petr. Constant De ant. can. collection (ap. Galland. O. c p 25—41. 47—60)—Petr. de Marca, De veter. collect canonum (Ib. 69—72)—Ballerini, De antiq. coll. canonum (Ib. 122—134 151—224. 230—263). Berardi, De variis ss. canonum collectionibus ante Gratianum (Ib. 269—283).—P. Quesnelli Dissertationes de codicibus can. (Ib. 287—353).—Car. Blasci De collect can. Isidori mercatoris (Ib. 357—420).—Spittler, Gesch. d kan. Rechts. S 127—138. 145—181. 191—196. 199—284.—Doujat, Praenot. canonic. p. 313—325. 329—370.—Maassen, Gesch. des kan. Rechts. 420—721.—Schulte, Die Quellen des kath. Kirchenrechts. S. 271—317.—P Hinschius, Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae Lipsiae, 1863.

[33] “Decretales dicebantur romanorum pontificum epistolae, quibus vel ad diversorum consultationes respondere solerent, vel cum quid servandum, vitandumque esset, edicerent”—thus Cardinal Baronius defines a decretal. In the West, among all the local churches, the Roman church occupied the place of greatest distinction from the very earliest times, as the only one founded in the West by the apostles. To this church, or rather to the chief priest of that church, bishops from various parts of the West would turn, seeking clarification in the questions about which they had any doubt, and they received the answers of that chief priest as apostolic word, inasmuch as he alone was regarded in the West as the guardian of the apostolic tradition; and they ascribed to those answers the significance of a canonical ordinance, binding in every respect on the questions addressed. In the 5th century these answers, which the Roman chief priests gave in epistles, received the name of ordinances, ordinance-epistles (decretale constitutum, decretum, decretalis epistola, and simply decretalis). The oldest of these decretals dates from the closing years of the 4th century, and thereafter they were issued without interruption. In the first centuries of the church the significance of the decretals was exactly the same as that which the epistles of the Eastern holy fathers had, and they entered the Western canonical collections in exactly the same way as, e.g., the epistles of Basil the Great entered the collection of John Scholasticus—that is, according to their intrinsic significance. Beginning with the 9th century, the decretals become, after holy scripture, the first source of ecclesiastical law in the Western church. See on the decretals in general Doujat, Praenot. canonic. p. 173—226, and Phillips, Du droit ecclesiastique dans ses principes généraux. 3 vols. Paris, 1875. III, 333 sq

[41] The best edition of this collection is that of Hinschius, which we mentioned above (note 20 of this §). It was prepared on the basis of an enormous number of manuscripts, all of which Hinschius examined and compared. In an extensive Commentatio he presented, down to the year 1863, the results of all the questions that concern this important collection, worthy of attention in every respect. At the end of the book (pp. 757—769) there has been added a second collection of the same nature as the pseudo-decretals, which, according to the most recent scholarly investigations, was compiled by the same Pseudo-Isidore. The title of this second collection is: Capitula Angilramni, which (capitula) Pope Adrian supposedly handed over to Angilramnus, bishop of Metz, when that bishop was in Rome on account of a certain accusation brought against him. It has been proven, meanwhile, that all of this is not at all true, and that Pope Adrian handed no collection whatsoever over to that bishop

[42] All sorts of conjectures are put forward as to the purpose for which this collection was compiled, and for the most part of an ugly character. On the basis of what I myself was able to judge, after studying this collection and the circumstances of the Western Church of that time, the opinion that I set forth in the text seems correct to me. Neander, considering this collection and the position of the clergy of that time vis-à-vis the secular authority, observes: “Das einzige Mittel, um die Unabhängigkeit und Unverletzbarkeit der Bischöfe zu behaupten, war, wen man ihnen in einem Haupt der ganzen Kirche eine sichere Zufluchtstätte gegen alle Willkür und Bedrückung von Seiten der weltlichen Macht und ihrer kirchlichen Vorgesetzten und Collegen gab, wen man den Papst zu dem einzigen entscheidenden vollgültigen Richter der Bischöfe machte. So wird nun der zusammenhängende, in einer Stufenfolge sich entwickelnde Organismus der Kirchengewalten entwickelt, über die Metropoliten werden die Primaten und Patriarchen gestellt. Ueber Alle aber wird der Bischof von Rom, als der Nachfolger des Apostels Petrus, dem Christus besonders die Gewalt zu binden und zu lösen übertragen, gesetzt.” Allgem. Geschichte der christl. Religion u. Kirche. Gotha, 1864 Bd VI. S. 102. Cf. also Hinschius, de consilio Pseudo-Isidori Op. cit. Commentatio p. CCXIII—CCXXIX.

[48] Besides the collections mentioned from the era of the undivided church, two others are important, which were compiled in the African church, namely: Fulgentii Ferrandi Breviatio canonum from the first half of the 6th century. It contains all those canons that were in force at that time in the Eastern church, and that in systematic order under nine main rubrics, like the collection of Scholasticus, except that its system is much better than that of Scholasticus. It was printed in Voelli et Justel. Bibliotheca jur. I, 445—455. The second is the collection Cresconii episcopi africani Breviarium canonicum from the last years of the 7th century. It contains the apostolic canons, those of the first and fourth ecumenical councils, of the local councils: of Ancyra, Neocaesarea, Gangra, Antioch, Laodicea, Sardica and Carthage, and the canonical ordinances of the Roman pontiffs: Siricius, Innocent, Zosimus, Celestine, Leo and Gelasius. This collection, too, is set forth in a certain system, but it is not possible to bring it under any established rubrics. It has 300 articles, and under each are given the numbers of the corresponding canonical provisions. It was printed in the same Bibliotheca (I, 456—466), and afterwards again (Append. tomi I, p XXXIII—CXII) under the title “liber canonum”, in which is presented the text itself of the canonical provisions. On these two collections see Van Espen, De ant. can. codic. (Ed. cit. p 30—35. 279—305) Petr. Constant, De ant. can. collection. (Ed cit. p. 41—47). Petri de Marca, De veter. can. collection. (Ed. cit p. 72—92). Ballerini. De ant. collection ed collect. can (Ed cit. p 134—151. 225—227 229—230). Doujat, Praenot. can. p. 325—328. Spittler, Gesch. des kan. Rechts. S. 138—145. 196—199. Maassen, Gesch. d. kan. Rechts. 138—145 196—199.

§ 39. Collections Exclusively Canonical

§ 39. Зборници искључиво канонички