RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Liber Pontificalia Liber Vitse
Bohier, transcribed and glossed it, and dedicated it to Charles V. of France. Of greater literary importance is the second continuation, Cardinal Boso's Liber pontificalis, written c. 1 178. This begins where the older one stopped, with Stephen V., and thus stamps itself as a direct continuation. By way of introduction, Boso utilizes the brief outline of the papal history which Bonizo of Sutri included in the fourth book of his Decretals. He takes the first part, from John XII. to Gregory VII., word for word from Bonizo's Liber ad amicum, omitting Urban II. and Victor III. In the case of Paschal II. he draws on the archives; from Gelasius II. he gives his own narrative, employing a wealth of documents easily accessible to him as camerarius of the apostolic see. This continuation, because incomplete, was not fused with the early Liber pontificalis, but gained significance in connection with the Liber censuum of the Church of Rome; for since Boso had most probably undertaken to write a Liber censuum, it was a natural supposition that his collection of biographies was designed to serve as introduction to that work. In this connection, the work was repeatedly copied, the best-known edition being that of Cardinal Nicholas Roselli, in the middle of the fourteenth century, which was diffused in countless manuscripts all over the world. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, although private works in the sphere of papal history for this period are common enough, including lists of popes, particular biographies (Innocent III., Gregory IX., Innocent IV., Gregory X., Celestine V.), papal chronicles (Bernardus Guidonis, Ptolemy of Lucca, Amalricus Augerius de Biterris, Petrus de Herentals, etc.), there was no thought of continuing the Liber pontificalis. Not until the beginning of the fifteenth century, and anonymously, was the attempt made; but the author is thoroughly dependent, copying the work of Pandulph, with a continuation taken word for word from the chronicle of Martinus Polonus, while from Martin IV (1281) to John XXII. (1328) he copies the chronicle of Bernardus Guidonis. A more meritorious continuation, likewise anonymous, dates from the middle of the same century. In general the author copied the work just mentioned down to 1328; he took the last part of the life of John XXII. and those of the three following popes (Benedict XII., Clement VI., Innocent VI.) from a continuation of Bernardus Guidonis, and wrote an independent continuation from Urban V. to Martin V (1362-1431). This, however, is rather a history of the great schism than a Liber pontificalis. This edition was soon afterward copied again, and expanded by extracts from Martinus Polonus and Bernardus Guidonis. Two other continuations of the fifteenth century were never combined with the Liber pontificalis, though their entire scope entitles them to be regarded as continuations. One extends from Benedict XII. to Martin V. (1334-1431), and contains, especially in respect to the history of Boniface IX., Innocent VI., and Gregory XII., more ample information than the continuation dating from the middle of the fifteenth century, as well as more candid verdicts upon the personal characters and transactions
of the popes described. It appears in a Vatican manuscript with the additional biography of Eugenius IV. The second continuation begins with Urban VI. and extends to Pius II. (1378-1464), evidently an unfinished work.
Of all these later works, the only ones of literary importance toward the close of the Middle Ages were the continuation dating from the middle of the fifteenth century, and that of Boso. Both works were soon supplanted by the Liber de vita Christi ac de vitis summorum pontificum Romanorum of Platina, librarian of Pope Sixtus IV (Venice, 1479). He transformed the early Liber pontificalis and its continuations into a book which even Humanists could read with pleasure, and thus drove the other continuations from the field. It was not until the beginning of the seventeenth century that attention was again turned to the old Liber pontificalis. At this time it was first printed, and has since, in its turn, caused Platina's book to be forgotten. A. Bhackmann.
Bibliography: The two editions which are of superlative worth are (1) L. Duchesne, 2 vols., Paris, 1886-92, and (2) T. Mommsen, in MGH, Gest. pont. Rom., vol. i., Berlin, 1898. Other editions are mentioned and a list of the best literature prior to 1896 is given in Potthast, Wegweiser, pp. 737-739 (not to be overlooked). Further matter of importance is to be found in: I. Chapman, in Revue benedictine, xviii (1901), 399-417; T. Lindner, in Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte, xii (1872), 235-250, 656 sqq.; P. Fabre, in Melanges ^d'archeologie et d'histoire, vol. vi., Rome, 1886; idem, Etude sur le Liber censuum de Veglise romaine, Paris, 1892; J. B. Lightf oot, The Apostolic Fathers, part I., »S. Clement of Rome, i. 201-345, London, 1890; F. H. Glassschroder, in Rbmische Quartalschrift fur Alterthumskunde, iv. 125 sqq., v. 178; idem, in Historisches Jahrbuch der Gorresgesellschaft, xi (1890), 240-266; T. Mommsen, in NA, xix (1894), 285-293, xxi (1896), 333-357, xxii (1897), 545-553; Sagmuller, in Historisches Jahrbuch der Gorresgesellschaft, xv (1894), 802-810; F. G. Rosenfeld, Ueber die ^Composition des Liber pontificalis, Marburg, 1896; I. Giorgi, in Archivio delta societa Romana di storia patria, xx (1897), 247 sqq.; A. Harnack, in Sitzungsberichte der Berliner Akademie, 1892, pp. 761-778; H. Griser, Analecta Romana, Rome, 1899.
LIBER SEXTUS. See Canon Law, II., 6, § 3.
LIBER WITM (DIPTYCHS) : The official register of the members of the congregation, also a list of the clergy, and others. The establishment of such a register was inseparably connected with the rise of the ecclesiastical organization. Baptism, which consummated the entrance into the congregation, occasioned at once the necessity and the right of enrolment; death, voluntary withdrawal, or expulsion by way of discipline, caused erasure. Besides this there were special lists of the clergy and of other persons in the service or under the care of the Church. The more complicated the apparatus of ecclesiastical government and administration became, the more these registers increased in number and in size. A special group was formed by the lists, with the names of the spiritual and temporal rulers, which were read aloud during the supplications, and also by those containing the names of persons who participated in the eucharistic offerings or who deserved mention for some other reason. These may all be included under the general designation " book of life," " book of the living," in which may be seen a connection with expressions
Liber Vitse Liberius