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Canon Law
frequently used by the Correctores Romani (see below, 7) is that compiled by a certain Cardinal Gregory in 1144, principally from the two collections Anselmi and Anselmo dedicata. It is usually cited as Polycarpus, from the designation given to it by the compiler himself in his preface, addressed to Bishop Didacus of Compostella.
These collections, from such diverse countries and periods, had many defects when it came to a question of practical use. There was no sort of general arrangement, but ecclesiastical and secular, universal and local law were inextricably mixed up; discrepancies and contradictions were numerous; many regulations had become obsolete, and been replaced in actual practise by others. There was great need for the compilation of a new 2. Gratian. work which should give a comprehensive survey of the law that was in force. This was undertaken by Gratian, a brother of the Camaldolite monastery of St. Felix at Bologna. Between 1139 and 1142 he compiled a work entitled Concordantia discordantium canonum, though since the end of the twelfth century it has usually been known simply as the Decretum Gratiani. It is composed principally of the material found in (3) and (5) to (10) of the works named in the last section, and is divided into three parts. The first twenty " distinctions " in the first part contain propositions as to the sources of law, which Gratian designates as a treatise on decretals, followed by other treatises on qualifications for ordination, on ordination, and on ecclesiastical promotion. The second part, though other subjects occasionally come in, is mainly devoted to ecclesiastical jurisdiction, offenses, and legal proceedings, dealing in the last nine causw with the law of matrimony, with a separate treatise on penance put into the thirty-third. The last part, entitled " Of consecration," deals with religious functions, and especially the sacraments, in five di1 tinctions. The feature most characteristic of the work as a whole is that Gratian did not content himself with collecting canons to illustrate and enforce the principles to which they related and arranging them after a certain rather unsatisfactory system, but in the first two parts himself e'r.cidated these principles in (generally short) explanations to which he appended the canons as pieces justificatives. In these dicta of his the attempt is frequently visible to reconcile or eliminate the discrepancies appearing in the canons as they stand.
The extent to which the Decretum, in spite of all its defects, met a practical want of its day is seen by the approval and currency which it attained. The older collections were superseded by it; the work which Cardinal Laborans put together in 1182, containing much the same material with a really better arrangement, failed to attract attention. The wide popularity of Gratian's work is to be explained partly by the fact that it appeared at a time when Bologna was the headquarters for the study of law. The laborious activity of the glossators of the Roman law afforded a model for the application of the same learned method to Gratian's material. He himself lectured upon it, and thus became the founder of a new school of II.— 25
canonists who, in addition to their lectures, like the civil jurists, expounded separate passages of the Decretum by glosses or commentaries (see Glosses and Glossators op Canon Law). In this way it became known far and wide; and its authority was further strengthened by the fact that the popes made use of it and cited it. It was never, indeed, expressly confirmed by any pope, or received in the Church as an official codex; but the influence of the university insured its respectful acceptance and its application in practise. It was not long before others, particularly a pupil of Gratian's named Paucapaleo, added canons here and there to make it more complete — at first in the form of marginal glosses, but later as a. part of the text, with the designation Paha, whi„h must have referred originally to the above-named scholar (though other interpretations have been attempted). and then have been adopted as a specific term for these additions. That they must early have crept into the text is shown by the fact that the majority of them are accepted in the work of Cardinal Laborans, a few years later.
6. Collections of Decretals: Great as was the popularity and the practical importance which the Decretum acquired at the outset, it appeared, none the less, in a period characterized by great legislative activity on the part of the popes, who were now approaching the height of their power. The decretals issued from the twelfth century on contained an extraordinary wealth of new material for ecclesiastical law, which in many particulars altered and further developed the previous discipline of the Church; and thus it was not long before the work of Gratian, which, when it was compiled, represented practically the whole extant canon law, came inevitably to be regarded as antiquated or incomplete, and the need of new collections was felt. These, because they were composed almost wholly of papal decrees and the canons of councils held under the pope's eye, were usually known as collectiones decretalium.
Of such collections made before Gregory IX., five deserve special mention. (1) The Breviarium extravagantium, completed about 1191 by Bernard, dean of Pavia. The title comes from the fact that the laws included in it, principally new ones, were such as were not found in the Decretum, but, so to speak, wandered about homeless (extra Decretum vagantes). Bernard took his material partly from some older collections, of which he names explicitly the Corpus canonu.n (probably the Collectio Anselmo dedicata) and liurchard, and partly, especially for the newer decretals, from collections made after Gratian. In the division and arrangement of his work, he evidently took the code of Justinian for a model. The first book deals with ecclesiastical offices and prerequisites for judgment; the second, with judicial tribunals and their procedure ; the third, with the clergy and religi. Before ious orders; the fourth, with mar- Gregory IX. riage, and the fifth with crime and its |
punishment. The work was accepted by the Bolognese teachers, and, as the first of its kind, became known as CompUatio prima. (2) By order of Innocent III. the papal notary Petrus Col-
Canon Law