THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
38S
discovers not only the errors and deviations but the inevitable tendencies and direction of the development. In modern times, since the delimitation of the boundary between Church :md State, doubt has been cast upon the independence of the church law, as if there could be no law without the action of the State, and what passed for law outside this action was only an ethical standard, not a juridical. The law of the State, however, in its essence, is a product not so much of the State as of the national consciousness of what is just, and really precedes rather than follows the operation of the State; its standards do not have to wait for sanction until the State declares its readiness to enforce them by pains and penalties. The Church as a distinct moral order is qualified to regulate and develop its own internal functions and institutions of its own motion. It is true that until recently Protestant churches have to a large extent been organized, especially in England and Germany, by secular legislation; but this state of things is really an anomalous one, not corresponding to the essential idea and meaning of the Church. The result of the modern settlement has been in most cases to leave the Church free to develop independently its own system, without the need of any special permission or privilege from the State in order to give such regulations the force of law within the Church. Its members realize that they are bound to the fulfilment of such ordinances because they have come into being in a regular and legal manner, and so long as they are not repealed in the same manner. This obligation is not a mere matter of conscience, but rests on a basis of positive law, because the standards of action imposed by it are the expression of the will of the Church in its corporate capacity. Nor does the Church lack means to enforce obedience by the withdrawal of blessings which it alone is empowered to impart and equally empowered to withhold. According to the Protestant conception, it is true, the binding force of ecclesiastical regulations is to a great extent dependent upon the will of the individual to be and remain a member of the church fellowship. E. Sehling.
II. Collections of Canons and Decretals. — 1. Early- History: In the first three centuries the term canon was applied to the standard of right living accepted in the Church, resting partly on written and partly on oral tradition. When the synods, especially the general ones, became the main agents in the development of church life, their decisions on points of practise were also known as canons — though this name was not usually applied to the decrees of local synods until the sixth century, after their inclusion in the great and widely circulated collections had given them a status and an authority in a measure analogous to those of the ecumenical councils. With the development of the primatial power of the pope, the name came at the beginning of the ninth century to be applied also to his decrees, and finally its use was extended in medieval terminology to any ecclesiastical enactment. The collections of canons were made up at first of the decrees of councils and of popes; later collections include, in addition to these, excerpts from
the Fathers, from letters and regulations of bishops, from Scripture, and even from Roman law, Frankish capitularies, and ordinances of German emperors. The Council of Trent employed the word exclusively for dogmatic propositions couched in juridical form and followed by an anathema.
2. First Codification: During the primitive age of the Church, when its constitution and discipline rested quite simply upon the precepts of Christ and the Apostles, and the new problems which were later to make the Christian life more complicated had not yet come up, there was no need for a codification of the laws. It is hardly necessary to say that the so-called Apostolic Constitutions and Canons (q.v.) are the product of a later age. The systematic formulation of law began with the closer organization of the Church and the holding of synods. The earliest mention of a Codex canonum is found in the acts of the Council of Chalcedon (451), at which certain canons were read to the assembly from a collection. These, though numbered consecutively in the collection, can be identified as the sixth of Nica?a (325) and the fourth, fifth, sixteenth, and seventeenth of Antioch (332). This collection, accordingly, seems to have contained the canons of several councils, beginning with the twenty of Nicsea and possibly closing with those of Antioch, including between these twenty-five of Ancyra (314), fourteen of Neo- Cffisarea (314), and twenty of Gangra (c. 365). There were undoubtedly other collections known in this period; one, which is still recognizable in the oldest Western Latin version, which omitted the canons of Antioch; others which included those of Laodicea (between 347 and 381), Constantinople (381), and Chalcedon (451); and still others which had also those of Sardica (347) and Ephesus (431). There is, however, no basis for the supposition that either the collection read from at the Council at Chalcedon or any other of these collections had an official character.
3. Earliest Western Collections: Of these Greek canons, only those of Nicaea were at first accepted in the West, and those of Sardica in the Latin original. As early as the fifth century, however, there were collections here also of Greek canons in a Latin version, through which the Eastern decrees gradually acquired authority. Of these three deserve special mention. (1) The Isidorian
version, incorrectly so called because
i. The it is found in the great collection long
Quesnel- ascribed to Isidore of Seville, is the
liana. oldest. It seems to have included
originally only the canons comprised in the oldest Greek collection, to which those ot Antioch, Laodicea, and Constantinople were added later. It was probably made in Italy; its date can not be determined, but its version of the Nicene canons was known in Gaul as early as 439. It was first published in 1675 by Paschasius Quesnell, from a manuscript at Oxford of a collection apparently made in Gaul at the end of the fifth century. (2) The Versio prisca, made in Italy in the latter half of the fifth century, which contains the canons of Ancyra, Neocasarea, Nicaea, Antioch, Gangra, Constantinople, and Chalcedon; frequent use was