768 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
was sent by that pontiff to the university of Bologna to be included in its course of instruction. This compilation was the first book of canon law having papal sanction.
The demand for a complete collection of these materials induced Gregory IX. to commit the task of gathering them into a single volume to his chaplain Raymund de Pennaforte.1 The work, usually called Decretales G-regorii IX., was fin ished and sent to Paris and Bologna in 1234 with the di rection that it be used for purposes of instruction, and in the trial of cases. The preparation of other compilations was strictly forbidden. Gregory's collection comprises 185 titles and 1871 decretals and follows the fivefold division of Bernard of Pavia's work.2
A new collection, called the Sixth Book, liber sextus — or, as by English writers, the Sext, — was issued by the author ity of Boniface VIII., 1298, and carried the collections of Gratian and Gregory IX. into Boniface's reign. In 1314, Clement V. issued another collection, which included his own decretals and the decrees of the council of Vienne and was called the Seventh Book, liber Septimus, or the Clementines. In 1317, John XXII. officially sent Clement's collection to the universities of Bologna and Paris. Subsequent to the publication of the Clementines, twenty of John's own decre tals were added. In 1500 John Chappuis, in an edition ©f the liber sextus and the Clementines, added the decretals of John and seventy-one of other popes. This series of collec tions, namely, Gratian's Decretum, Gregory IX. 's Decretales, the Sext, the Clementines, and the Extravag antes of John XXII., constitutes the official body of canon law — corpus juris canonici — and was published in the edition of Gregory XIII.
The canon law attempted the task of legislating in detail for all phases of human life — clerical, ecclesiastical, social, domestic — from the cradle to the grave by the sacramental decisions of the priesthood. It invaded the realm of the
1 Gregory's bull is given in Wetzer-Welte, III. 1446-1450.
2 Friedberg gives the text, II. 6-927, and also Gregory IX. 's letter trans mitting the decretals to the university of Bologna.
§ 122. THE CANON LAW. 769
common law and threatened to completely set it aside. The Church had not only its own code and its specifically reli gious penalties, but also its own prisons.
This body of law was an improvement upon the arbitrary and barbaric severity of princes. It, at least, started out from the principles of justice and humanity. But it degenerated into an attempt to do for the individual action of the Chris tian world what the Pharisees attempted to do for Jewish life. It made the huge mistake of substituting an endless number of enactments, often the inventions of casuistry, for inclusive, comprehensive moral principles. It put a crushing restraint upon the progress of thought and bound weights, heavy to be borne, upon the necks of men. It had the virtues and all the vices of the papal system. It protected the clergy in the commission of crimes by demanding that they be tried in ecclesiastical courts for all offences whatsoever. It be came a mighty support for the papal claims. It confirmed and perpetuated the fiction of the pseudo-Isidorian decretals and perpetrated new forgeries. It taught that the decisions of Rome are final.1 As Christ is above the law, even so is the pope.2 Dollinger closes his examination of the Decretum, by pronouncing it " filled through and through with forgery and error " and says " it entered like a mighty wedge into the older structural organization of the Church and split it apart."
The canon law also gave its sanction to the devilish prin ciple of ecclesiastical compulsion, declaring that physical force is to be used to coerce ecclesiastical dissidents. It
1 Dist., XIX. 3, Friedberg, I. 61. Eomana ecclesia, cut nos Christus preesse voluit, posita est, omnibus, quicquid statuit, quicquid ordinal, perpetuo, irrefragabiliter observandum est.
2 Causa, XXV. I. 16 ; Dollinger, Papstthum, pp. 55 sqq. Gratian mis quoted the 36th canon of the Sixth (Ecumenical council which, giving to the patriarch of Constantinople equal rights with the patriarch of Rome, made it say the very opposite. Misquoting the synod of Carthage of 418, which forbade appeals across the sea, Gratian made the synod say the very oppo site. Causa, II. 6, 37. Leaning upon pseudo-Isidore, Gratian allows the transfer of bishops from one see to the other with the assent of the pope. Causa, VII. I. 34.
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