§ 40. Church-Civil Collections

Of collections in which are contained the laws of Greco-Roman civil legislation regarding the church, there are three, and all three were prepared in the East:

1. Collectio 87 capitulorum.[1] This collection was composed by John Scholasticus between 565 and 578, as a supplement to his canonical collection, of which we have already spoken,[2] and with which this same collection is always found joined in the manuscripts. That John Scholasticus indeed composed this collection is attested, among other things, by the concluding note found in the collection.[3] It is divided into 87 chapters, and composed exclusively of extracts from the Novels of Justinian, namely Novels 6, 5, 83, 46, 120, 56, 57, 3, 32, 131, 67, and especially 123, which alone makes up 60 chapters (28–87).[4] In the Slavonic Kormchaia this collection is printed as chapter 42.[5]

2. Collectio 25 capitulorum.[6] It is not known who composed this collection; it was composed roughly in the last years of the sixth or the first years of the seventh century, in any case before the Emperor Heraclius (610–641).[7] It is divided into 25 chapters, of which the first 21 contain as many imperial laws taken from Justinian’s Code, and the last four chapters contain Novels 137, 133, 120, and chapter 2 of Novel 123.[8]

3. Collectio constitutionum ecclesiasticarum, or Collectio tripartita, or also Paratitla.[9] In this collection are contained all the laws of the state authority that concern the church, as set out in all of Justinian’s collections.[10] This collection is divided into three parts, on account of which it is also called the tripartita collectio, namely: the first part contains, in an extensive extract, the first thirteen titles of Justinian’s Code, with the corresponding paratitla, that is, parallel passages from other titles of the Code and of the Novels.[11] The second part, in six titles without paratitla, is composed of extracts from the Digest and the Institutes concerning sacred matters.[12] The third part is composed of 34 Novels, and has three headings, the first on bishops, clergy and monks, the second on church matters, and the third on heretics, Jews and Samaritans.[13] As an appendix to that collection are found, at the end, four Novels of the Emperor Heraclius.[14] It is not known who composed this collection;[15] it may be the same person who composed, in its first redaction, the Nomocanon in Fourteen Titles, of which we speak in the following section. The time, however, when this collection was composed, is fixed by the aforementioned Novels of Heraclius, that is, in the last years of Heraclius’s reign.[16] No other collection of church-civil laws has been so much used by the Eastern canonists as this one, and it served as the chief source in the composition of the aforementioned Nomocanon.