Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/29

This page needs to be proofread.
CANON LAW
19

ecclesiastical officials and judges ; (2) procedure in ecclesi astical courts ; (3) rights, duties, and property of the clergy; (4) law of marriage; (5) criminal law and ecclesiastical discipline. This order is briefly summed up

in the following hexameter:—

Judex, Judicium, Clems, Connubia, Crimen.

The comp. tertia and comp. quinta are the only two that received the Papal sanction.

2. The second part of the Corpus Juris Canonici is made up of the following four collections of decretals:—

(a.) Decretals of Gregory IX.—The same causes that occasioned the compilation of the Decretum induced Pope Gregory IX. to commission his chaplain, Raymond of Penna- forte (near Barcelona), formerly a professor of canon law in Bologna university (and since canonized), to digest into a code the decretals since the time of Gratian. The usual arrangement in five books was observed, and these were subdivided into tituli, consisting of capita in chronological order. It was completed in four years, and officially promulgated in 1234. Its original name was Libri extra (sc. Decretum} which was abbreviated to X. for convenience in citation, e.g., cap. 9, X. de eo qui cognovit (iv. 13), or c. 9, X. 4, 13 refers to the 4th book, title 13, chap. 9. The laws are in the form of decisions pronounced in cases submitted to the Pope from all parts of Christendom. Among these are several cases from England and Scotland. (For a list of the latter see Ecclesice Scoticance Statuta, ii. 232). Raymond, in accordance with the Pope s instruc tions, omitted such facts and other matter as he considered irrelevant to the case in hand. These so-called jxtrtes decisce (generally indicated in the text by the words " et infra" or shortly " et j.") have been restored in modern editions, since without them the law is often to us unintel ligible.

(b.) The Liber Sextus was published by Pope Boniface VIII. in 1298. It contains the decretals down to that date from the time of Gregory s collection, and acquired its name from being intended as a supplement to Gregory s five books. In one important respect it differs from the latter. Instead of a case being stated with the Papal decision thereon, abstract rules of law are laid down, extracted originally, no doubt, from actual judgments. A series of eighty-eight Regulce Juris, chiefly borrowed from Roman law, are appended to the work, having been added, it is said, by the civilian Dinus to procure its accept ance among the legistce of Bologna. In citing from the Liber Sextus it is usual to give the number of the chapter, with the abbreviation " in vi " or " in 6," the number of the book, and the number and rubric of the title, e.g., c. 1. in vi to de const. I., 2, or c. 1. de const, in 6, I. 2.

(c.) The Clementinæ.—By direction of Pope Clement V. the canons of the Council of Vienne in 1311 (at which he presided, the Papal court having been transferred to Avignon), and his own decretals before and after that date, were collected and published in 1313. They were almost immediately withdrawn again for revision, and were pro mulgated in their present form by his successor Pope John XXII. in 1317, under the name of Constitutions Clementis Papce V. or Clementince. The mode of citation is either by the chapter, the title-rubric, the words "in Clementinis," and the number of book and title (e.g., c. 1. de summa trin. in Clem. I. 1.), or by calling the chapter itself the Cle mentina, and adding its number, with the title-rubric, and numbers of book and title (e.g.. Clem. 1., de summa trin. 1.1).

(d.) The Extravagantes.—The Clementinas were the last of the collections formally promulgated by the popes. In the 15th century the term Corpus Juris Canonici was applied to the body of law composed of the Decretum and the collections of Gregory, Boniface, and Clement, as appears from the canons of the councils of Constance and Basel. The more important of the decretals omitted from the Clementinse or issued subsequently (distinguished from those in the Corpus Juris Canonici by the name " Extra vagantes ") were circulated or added in the manuscripts as a supplement to the Corpus Jiiris, and studied along with it at the universities. Two collections of them were printed by Jean Chappuis in his edition of the Corpus Juris Canonici, published at Paris in 1500. The first, which was entitled Extravagantes Joannis XXII., comprised twenty constitutions of that pope, arranged in fourteen titles. The second collection was called Extravagantes Communes, and consisted of 73 decretals issued in the period from Boniface VIII. to Sixtus V. (1298-1484), systematically arranged according to the traditional scheme of five books (" sed vacat liber quartus," devoted in pre vious compilations to the law of marriage), divided into titles and chapters. The following examples will explain the method of citing the first and second collections respectively: c. un. Xvag. lo. xxii. 12, or (mentioning the rubric of the title) c. un. de poenis in Extrav. lo. xxii. (12),andc. 2, Xvag. comm. III. 2, or (giving the title-rubric) c. 2, de prfeb. et dig. in Extrav. comm. III. 2. Neither collection was sanctioned as such ; each decretal is inde pendent, and authoritative propi io vigore. The two sets of Extravagantes being retained in subsequent editions have become by use and wont part of the Corpus Juris Canonici. They received a semi-official approval by being included in the edition revised by the Correctores Romani (a learned commission appointed by Pius IV. in 1563), and published as the authorized text by Pope Gregory XIII. in 1582.

The different portions of the Corpus Juris Canonici

stand to each other in the relation of lex prior and lex post&)-ior, so that in cases of contradiction the latest in date is preferred. The same rule is applied to the single capita or laws of the private collections (the Decretum and the Extravagantes), but not to those of the other books, which were published as official codes, and the different capita of which are all regarded as bearing the date of promulgation of the whole. A distinction is also made respecting the authority of the rubrics of the titles. Those found in the Decretum, irrespective of the fact that they are not the work of Gratian, have no sanction except that of usage ; while in the decretals of Gregory, Boniface, and Clement the rubric (rubrum} has as much authority as the text (nigrum], both having been issued together. The sum- maria, or summce, prefixed to the canons and chapters emanate from the glossators, and have no legislative authority. But they generally state the substance of the law correctly, and are useful for purposes of interpretation. The Superscriptiones Capitulorum, giving the source and date of a law, and in the case of each decretal, the person to whom it was addressed, are, so far as we know, in their original state, but are not to be depended upon in all cases. A few of Gregory s decretals, for instance, bear the dates 1235 and 1236, whereas we know they must have been 1 pronounced prior to the promulgation of the collection in 1234. No decretal anterior to 1298 is of authority unless found in the Decretum or the collections of Gregory or Boniface. The Clementince and Extravagantes, on the con trary, are not exhaustive for the period they cover, find omission from them does not affect the credit of an other wise genuine constitution. Andre" (Cours de Droit Canon, 3 me <d., 1860, vol. iii. p. 151) gives a list of the apo cryphal laws in the Decretum and Gregory s Decretals. They are more numerous in the former, owing to Gratian s having selected his materials from the older compilations instead of the original sources, many of which were lost,

and are of no authority except so far as adopted by sub-