Purpose, origin and organization
The collection can be divided broadly into three sections according to the nature of its contents: cc. I–V, containing conciliar canons from the major fourth-century eastern and African councils; cc. VI–LVII, being a long series of documents (mostly letters) pertaining to doctrinal disputes that arose from the teachings of Pelagius and Celestius and also of Nestorius and Eutyches―at the centre of which series is a dossier (c. XXV) of material pertaining to the council of Chalcedon in 451—and cc. LVIII–XCVIII, a collection of dogmatic and disciplinary letters written by Pope Leo I, many of which (most notably Leo's Tomus) were directed to eastern figures in Leo's contests with the Eutychian and Monophysite heresies.
The entire collection, with its focus on Chalcedon and the letters of Leo, is quite obviously meant as a manifesto against the Acacian schism, in which eastern Bishops led by Acacius, patriarch of Constantinople, challenged the decisions of the council of Chalcedon and the Christology set down in Pope Leo's Tomus. The compiler's principal of selection thus seems to have been any and all documents that support doctrinal unity in general and Leonine Christology in particular. The compiler of the Quesnelliana has avoided inclusion of doubtful or spurious documents, like the so-called Symmachean forgeries and the Decretum Gelasianum de libris recipiendis. But this would seem to be the extent of discrimination exercised in the compilation of the Quesnelliana. Previous scholars have in fact spoken rather disparagingly of the overall organization of the Quesnelliana, characterizing it as something of a hotchpotch, a patchwork of several older and smaller collections that were available to the compiler. Despite its organizational flaws, however, the Quesnelliana enjoyed some popularity in the Gallic church during the eighth century, and much of the ninth as well, until it was superseded by the more comprehensive historical collections (notably the Collectio canonum Dionysio-Hadriana and pseudo-Isidorian collections) that arose in the later Carolingian period.
Of the large chronological canon collections to have come out of the early Middle Ages, the Quesnelliana is perhaps the earliest and, after the Collectio canonum Dionysiana and Collectio canonum Hispana , probably the most influential. It contains Latin translations of the eastern councils that are (with the exception of the council of Chalcedon) taken from a now lost collection of Latin canons made ca. 420. This earliest Latin collection of fourth- and fifth-century conciliar canons was previously known to scholars as either the versio Isidori or the Collectio Maasseniana, but is today referred to as the Corpus canonum Africano-Romanum . [3] The Africano-Romanum collection/translation predates the competing fifth-century Latin translation that Dionysius Exiguus referred to as the prisca (upon which the Collectio canonum Sanblasiana is based). Both the Africano-Romanum and prisca translations were largely superseded by the arrival, shortly after 500, of the superior translations of the several collections of Dionysius Exiguus.
The exact date of the Quesnelliana’s creation is not yet established, but it could not have been earlier than the appearance of the Africano-Romanum in the first half of the fifth century; nor could it have been earlier than the date of the Quesnelliana’s most recent document, Pope Gelasius I’s Generale decretum (not to be confused with the spurious Decretum Gelasianum), which dates to 494. Most historians have accepted the Ballerini brothers’ dating of the Quesnelliana to just before the end of the fifth century, probably during the pontificate of Pope Gelasius I (492–496). [4]
Older scholarship, beginning with the Ballerinis, argued that the Quesnelliana was a Gallic collection, though one with an admittedly "Roman colour". French historians then developed the theory that the collection originated at Arles, which was thought to have been something of a clearing house for canonical materials in the early sixth century. However, more recent scholarship, making much more of the Quesnelliana’s "Roman colour", has argued for an Italian, possibly even Roman origin. [5] Relatively recent work (in 1985) by Joseph Van der Speeten has shown that the Quesnelliana, or at least one of its constituent parts (namely the dossier de Nicée et de Sardique), may have been used as a source for Dionysius's collections. [6] If true, this places the Quesnelliana definitively at Rome during the first decade of the sixth century.
Importance and dissemination
The Quesnelliana has been especially valued by historians for its large complement of correspondence by Pope Leo I. While the exact nature of the compiler's source material for the Leonine letters is still a subject of debate, it seems that at least some of it depended upon a very old tradition. Detlev Jasper remarks that
The compiler of the Quesnelliana seems to have been especially interested in Pope Leo’s writings. He gathered the letters that were available and put them at the end of his collection as numbers LXVII to XCVIIII, although without any recognizable order or organization. [...] The compiler’s main goal seems to have been to maximize the number of Leonine letters in the collection and consequently he placed less stress on order or on the literary shape of his material.
Leo's letters represent one of the most important historical sources for the doctrinal controversies that troubled the mid fifth-century church, especially the Eutychian controversy, which centred on a Christological debate that eventually led to the separation of the eastern and western churches. Because its collection of Leonine letters is more extensive than almost any other early medieval collection, the Quesnelliana stands as something of a textbook on this particularly important doctrinal dispute. Moreover, it also contains a significant complement of documents pertaining to the heresies of Pelagius, Celestius and Acacius (Quesnelliana cc. VI–LVII), making it an unusual canonical collection in that it focuses about as much on doctrinal issues as on disciplinary ones.
Insofar as the Quesnelliana is a textbook on the controversies that beset the early Latin church, one might expect that it would not have been of much use to bishops after the seventh century, when the last vestiges of Eutychianism and Monophysitism were suppressed in West. Nevertheless, the Quesnelliana remained a popular work well into the ninth century, particularly in Francia. Most likely this was because of the numerous papal letters it contained that dealt with disciplinary matters that retained ecclesiastical importance throughout the Middle Ages. The Quesnelliana played a particularly important role in the spread of Leo's letters in Western canonistic literature, and was notably instrumental in the compilations of pseudo-Isidore for just this reason. Manuscript evidence alone indicates that the Quesnelliana had a fairly wide dissemination in Gaul during the eighth and ninth centuries; though it had perhaps already found a welcome audience with Gallic or Frankish bishops in the sixth century, when it may have been used as a source (along with the Sanblasiana) for the Collectio canonum Colbertina and the Collectio canonum Sancti Mauri. By the mid-eighth century, the Quesnelliana had secured its place as an important lawbook within the Frankish episcopate, for whom it served as the primary source-book during the influential council of Verneuil in 755, over which Pepin the Short presided. Thus, despite its probably being generally perceived as an archaic document that had much to say about doctrinal controversies that were no longer relevant, the Quesnelliana continued to exert considerable influence on canonical activities in Francia throughout the eighth and ninth centuries.
Dionysius Exiguus was a 6th-century Eastern Roman monk born in Scythia Minor. He was a member of a community of Scythian monks concentrated in Tomis, the major city of Scythia Minor. Dionysius is best known as the inventor of Anno Domini (AD) dating, which is used to number the years of both the Gregorian calendar and the (Christianised) Julian calendar. Almost all churches adopted his computus for the dates of Easter.
Anatolius was a Patriarch of Constantinople. He is regarded as a saint, by both the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches.
Decretals are letters of a pope that formulate decisions in ecclesiastical law of the Catholic Church.
The Gelasian Decree is a Latin text traditionally thought to be a decretal of the prolific Pope Gelasius I, bishop of Rome from 492 to 496. The work reached its final form in a five-chapter text written by an anonymous scholar between 519 and 553, the second chapter of which is a list of books of Scripture presented as having been made part of the biblical canon by a Council of Rome under Pope Damasus I, the bishop of Rome from 366–383. This list is known as the Damasine List. The fifth chapter of the work includes a list of distrusted and rejected works not encouraged for church use.
The Decretum Gratiani, also known as the Concordia discordantium canonum or Concordantia discordantium canonum or simply as the Decretum, is a collection of canon law compiled and written in the 12th century as a legal textbook by the jurist known as Gratian. It forms the first part of the collection of six legal texts, which together became known as the Corpus Juris Canonici. It was used as the main source of law by canonists of the Roman Catholic Church until the Decretals, promulgated by Pope Gregory IX in 1234, obtained legal force, after which it was the cornerstone of the Corpus Juris Canonici, in force until 1917.
The Apostolic Canons, also called Apostolic canons, Ecclesiastical Canons of the Same Holy Apostles, or Canons of the Holy Apostles, is a 4th-century Syrian Christian text. It is an Ancient Church Order, a collection of ancient ecclesiastical canons concerning the government and discipline of the Early Christian Church, allegedly written by the Apostles. This text is an appendix to the eighth book of the Apostolic Constitutions. Like the other Ancient Church Orders, the Apostolic Canons uses a pseudepigraphic form.
The canon law of the Catholic Church is "how the Church organizes and governs herself". It is the system of laws and ecclesiastical legal principles made and enforced by the hierarchical authorities of the Catholic Church to regulate its external organization and government and to order and direct the activities of Catholics toward the mission of the Church. It was the first modern Western legal system and is the oldest continuously functioning system of law in the West, while the unique traditions of Eastern Catholic canon law govern the 23 Eastern Catholic particular churches sui iuris.
The Scythian monks were a community of monks from the region around the mouths of the Danube, who played an influential role in Christian theological disputes between the 4th and 6th centuries. The name Scythian comes from Scythia Minor, the classical name of the modern Dobruja region in Romania and Bulgaria, at the time a Roman province. The monks were raised not only from local Christian elements, but also from immigrant Christians who came to live ascetic lives.
The Collectio canonum Hibernensis is a systematic Latin collection of Continental canon law, scriptural and patristic excerpts, and Irish synodal and penitential decrees. Hib is thought to have been compiled by two Irish scholars working in the late 7th or 8th century, Cú Chuimne of Iona and Ruben of Dairinis.
The Corpus Juris Canonici is a collection of significant sources of the Canon law of the Catholic Church that was applicable to the Latin Church. It was replaced by the 1917 Code of Canon Law which went into effect in 1918. The 1917 Code was later replaced by the 1983 Code of Canon Law, the codification of canon law currently in effect for the Latin Church.
Collections of ancient canons contain collected bodies of canon law that originated in various documents, such as papal and synodal decisions, and that can be designated by the generic term of canons.
Gregory of St. Grisogono was a cardinal and author on canon law. He is known for his work Polycarpus, i.e.. Canonum collectio "Polycarpus".
The Collectio canonum quadripartita is an early medieval canon law collection, written around the year 850 in the ecclesiastical province of Reims. It consists of four books. The Quadripartita is an episcopal manual of canon and penitential law. It was a popular source for knowledge of penitential and canon law in France, England and Italy in the ninth and tenth centuries, notably influencing Regino's enormously important Libri duo de synodalibus causis. Even well into the thirteenth century the Quadripartita was being copied by scribes and quoted by canonists who were compiling their own collections of canon law.
The Libellus responsionum is a papal letter written in 601 by Pope Gregory I to Augustine of Canterbury in response to several of Augustine's questions regarding the nascent church in Anglo-Saxon England. The Libellus was reproduced in its entirety by Bede in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, whence it was transmitted widely in the Middle Ages, and where it is still most often encountered by students and historians today. Before it was ever transmitted in Bede's Historia, however, the Libellus circulated as part of several different early medieval canon law collections, often in the company of texts of a penitential nature.
Jus antiquum is a period in the legal history of the Catholic Church, spanning from the beginning of the church to the Decretum of Gratian, i.e. from A.D. 33 to around 1150. In the first 10 centuries of the church, there was a great proliferation of canonical collections, mostly assembled by private individuals and not by church authority as such.
The Collectio canonum Wigorniensis is a medieval canon law collection originating in southern England around the year 1005. It exists in multiple recensions, the earliest of which — "Recension A" — consists of just over 100 canons drawn from a variety of sources, most predominantly the ninth-century Frankish collection of penitential and canon law known as the Collectio canonum quadripartita. The author of Recension A is currently unknown. Other recensions also exist, slightly later in date than the first. These later recensions are extensions and augmentations of Recension A, and are known collectively as "Recension B". These later recensions all bear the unmistakable mark of having been created by Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester and archbishop of York, possibly sometime around the year 1008, though some of them may have been compiled as late as 1023, the year of Wulfstan's death. The collection treats a range of ecclesiastical and lay subjects, such as clerical discipline, church administration, lay and clerical penance, public and private penance, as well as a variety of spiritual, doctrinal and catechistic matters. Several "canons" in the collection verge on the character of sermons or expository texts rather than church canons in the traditional sense; but nearly every element in the collection is prescriptive in nature, and concerns the proper ordering of society in a Christian polity.
The Catholic Church utilizes the oldest continuously functioning legal system in the West, much later than Roman law but predating the evolution of modern European civil law traditions. The history of Latin canon law can be divided into four periods: the jus antiquum, the jus novum, the jus novissimum and the Code of Canon Law. In relation to the Code, history can be divided into the jus vetus and the jus novum. Eastern canon law developed separately.
The Paenitentiale Theodori is an early medieval penitential handbook based on the judgements of Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury. It exists in multiple versions, the fullest and historically most important of which is the U or Discipulus Umbrensium version, composed (probably) in Northumbria within approximately a decade or two after Theodore's death. Other early though far less popular versions are those known today as the Capitula Dacheriana, the Canones Gregorii, the Canones Basilienses, and the Canones Cottoniani, all of which were compiled before the Paenitentiale Umbrense probably in either Ireland and/or England during or shortly after Theodore's lifetime.
The Collectiones canonum Dionysianae, also known as Collectio Dionysiana or Dionysiana Collectio, are the several collections of ancient canons prepared by a Scythian monk, Dionysius 'the humble' (exiguus). They include the Collectio conciliorum Dionysiana I, the Collectio conciliorum Dionysiana II, and the Collectio decretalium Dionysiana. They are of the utmost importance for the development of the canon law tradition in the West.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the canon law of the Catholic Church:
