Cresconius Africanus (Crisconius) was a Latin canon lawyer, of uncertain date and place. He flourished, probably, in the latter half of the 7th century. He was probably a Christian bishop of the African Church.
Cresconius made a collection of canons, known as Concordia canonum, inclusive of the Apostolic Canons, nearly all the canons of the fourth- and fifth-century councils, and many papal decretals from the end of the fourth to the end of the fifth century. It was much used as a handy manual of ecclesiastical legislation by the churches of Africa and Gaul as late as the tenth century. Few of its manuscripts postdate that period. [1]
The content is taken from the collection of Dionysius Exiguus, but the division into titles (301) is copied from the Breviatio canonum of Fulgentius Ferrandus, a sixth-century deacon of Carthage. In many manuscripts the text of Cresconius is preceded by an index or table of contents (breviarium) of the titles, first edited in 1588 by Pithou.
In its entirety the work was first published by Voellus and Justellus. [2] One of its best manuscripts, the tenth-century Vallicellianus (Rome), has a note in which Cresconius is declared the author of a metrical poem called "Bella et victorias" by the "Patricius" Johannes in Africa about the Saracens. This was formerly interpreted to mean the African victory of the Byzantine Patricius Johannes in 697, hence the usual date of Cresconius. Some, however, hold that the poem in question is the Johannis of Flavius Cresconius Corippus, a Latin poet of about 550, and on this basis identify him with the canonist, thus placing the latter in the sixth century. Others (with Maassen, p. 810) while admitting that the poem in question can be none other than the Johannis of the aforesaid Latin poet (unknown to Fabricius, and first edited by Mazzuchelli, Milan, 1820), maintain that it has been wrongly attributed to this Cresconius, and that it cannot therefore aid in fixing his date.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia . New York: Robert Appleton Company.{{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in the 15th century.
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 492–496. 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.
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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 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.
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The Collectio canonum Quesnelliana is a vast collection of canonical and doctrinal documents prepared (probably) in Rome sometime between 494 and (probably) 610. It was first identified by Pierre Pithou and first edited by Pasquier Quesnel in 1675, whence it takes its modern name. The standard edition used today is that prepared by Girolamo and Pietro Ballerini in 1757.
