At this point the official collections stop. The two last, which have found a place in the editions of the Corpus, are collections of private authority, but in which all the “Extravagantes” of John XXII. documents are authentic. Evidently the strict prohibition of the publishing of collections not approved by the Holy See had been forgotten. The Extravagantes (i.e. extra collectiones publicas) of John XXII. number 20, And “communes.” and are classified under fourteen titles. The Extravagantes communes (i.e. coming from several popes) number 73, from Boniface VIII. to Sixtus IV. (1484), and are classified in books and titles. These two collections were included in the edition of Jean Chappuis in 1500; they passed into the later editions, and are considered as forming part of the Corpus juris canonici. As such, and without receiving any complementary authority, they have been corrected and re-edited, like the others, by the Correctores romani. They are cited, like the decretals, with a further indication of the collection to which they belong: Extrav. Jo. XXII., or inter-comm-(unes).
Thus was closed, as the canonists say, the Corpus juris canonici; but this expression, which is familiar to us nowadays, is only a bibliographical term. Though we find in the 15th The “Corpus juris canonici.” century, for example, at the council of Basel the expression corpus juris, obviously suggested by the Corpus juris civilis, not even the official edition of Gregory XIII. has as its title the words Corpus juris canonici. and we do not meet with this title till the Lyons edition of 1671.
The history of the canonical collections forming the Corpus juris would not be complete without an account of the labours of which they were the object. We know that the universities of the middle ages contained a Faculty The study of canon law. of Decrees, with or without a Faculty of Laws, i.e. civil law. The former made doctores decretorum, the latter doctores legum. The teaching of the magistri consisted in oral lessons (lecturae) directly based on the text. The short remarks explanatory of words in the text, originally written The glosses. in the margin, became the gloss which, formed thus by successive additions, took a permanent form and was reproduced in the manuscripts of the Corpus, and later in the various editions, especially in the official Roman edition of 1582; it thus acquired by usage a kind of semi-official authority. The chief of the glossatores of the Decretum of Gratian were Paucapalea, the first disciple of the master, Rufinus (1160-1170), John of Faenza (about 1170), Joannes Teutonicus (about 1210), whose glossary, revised and completed by Bartholomeus Brixensis (of Brescia) became the glossa ordinaria decreti. For the decretals we may mention Vincent the Spaniard and Bernard of Botone (Bernardus Parmensis, d. 1263), author of the Glossa ordinaria. That on the Liber Sextus is due to the famous Joannes Andreae (c. 1340); and the one which he began for the Clementines was finished later by Cardinal Zabarella (d. 1417). The commentaries not so entirely concerned with the text were called Apparatus; and Summae was the name given to The “Summae.” general treatises. The first of these works are of capital importance in the formation of a systematic canon law. Such were the Summae of the first disciples of Gratian: Paucapalea (1150),[27] Rolando Bandinelli[28] (afterwards Alexander III., c. 1150), Rufinus[29] (c. 1165), Étienne of Tournai[30] (Stephanus Tornacensis, c. 1168), John of Faenza (c. 1170), Sicard, bishop of Cremona (c. 1180), and above all Huguccio (c. 1180). For the Decretals we should mention: Bernard of Pavia[31] (c. 1195), Sinibaldo Fieschi (Innocent IV., c. 1240), Henry of Susa (d. 1271), commonly called (cardinalis) Hostiensis, whose Summa Hostiensis or Summa aurea is a work of the very highest order; Wilhelmus Durantis or Durandus, Joannes Andreae, Nicolas de Tudeschis (abbas siculus), &c. The 15th century produced few original treatises; but after the council of Trent the Corpus juris was again commented on by distinguished canonists, e.g. the Jesuit Paul Laymann (1575-1635), the Portuguese Agostinho Barbosa (1590-1649), Manuel Gonzalez Tellez (d. 1649) and Prospero Fagnani (1598-1687), who, although blind, was secretary to the Congregation of the Council. But as time goes on, the works gradually lose the character of commentaries on the text, and develop into expositions of the law as a whole.
We can mention here only the chief editions of the Corpus. The council of Trent, as we know, ordered that the official books of the Roman Church—sacred books, liturgical books, Editions. &c.—should be issued in official and more correct editions; the compilations of ecclesiastical law were also revised. The commission of the Correctores romani,[32] established The “Correctores romani.” about 1563 by Pius IV., ended its work under Gregory XIII and the official edition, containing the text and the glosses, appeared at Rome in 1582. Richter’s edition (2 vols., Leipzig, 1839) remains valuable, but has been greatly surpassed by that of E. Friedberg (Leipzig, “Institutiones Lancelotti.” 1879-1881). Many editions contain also the Institutiones composed at the command of Paul IV. (1555-1559) by Giovanni Paolo Lancelotti, a professor of Bologna, on the model of the Institutes of Justinian. The work has merits, but has never been officially approved.
Though the collections of canon law were to receive no more additions, the source of the laws was not dried up; decisions of councils and popes continued to appear; but there was no attempt made to collect them. Canonists obtained the recent texts as they could. Moreover, it was an epoch of trouble: the great Schism of the West, the profound divisions which were its result, the abuses which were to issue in the Reformation, were conditions little favourable for a reorganization of the ecclesiastical laws. Thus we are brought to the third period.
3. After the Council of Trent.—The numerous important decrees made by the council of Trent, in the second part of its sessions, called de reformatione, are the starting-point of the canon law in its latest stage, jus novissimum; it is this which is still in force in the Roman Church. It has in no way undermined the official status of the Corpus juris; but it has completed the legislation of the latter in many important respects, and in some cases reformed it.
The law during this period, as abstracted from the texts and compilations, suggests the following remarks. The laws are formulated in general terms, and the decisions in particular cases relegated to the sphere of jurisprudence; Final state of the law. and the canonists have definitely lost the function which fell to them in the 12th and 13th centuries: they receive the law on authority and no longer have to deduce it from the texts. The legislative power is powerfully centralized in the hands of the pope: since the reforming decrees of the council of Trent it is the pontifical constitutions alone which have made the common law; the ecumenical council, doubtless, has not lost its power, but none were held until that of the Vatican (1870), and this latter was unable to occupy itself with matters of discipline. Hence the separation, increasingly marked, between the common law and the local laws, which cannot derogate from the common law except by concession of the Holy See, or by right of a lawfully authorized custom. This centralization, in its turn, has greatly increased the tendency towards unity and uniformity, which have reached in the present practice of the Roman Church a degree never known before, and considered by some to be excessive.
If we now consider the laws in themselves, we shall find that the dispersed condition of the legislative documents has not been modified since the closure of the Corpus juris; on the contrary the enormous number of pontifical Dispersion of the texts. constitutions, and of decrees emanating from the Roman Congregations, has greatly aggravated the situation; moreover, the attempts which have been made to resume the interrupted process of codification have entirely failed. As regards the texts, the canon law of to-day is in a very similar position to that of English law, which gave rise to J.S. Mill’s saying: “All ages of English history have given one another rendezvous in English law; their several products may be seen all together, not interfused, but heaped one upon another, as many different ages of the earth may be read in some perpendicular section of its surface.”[33] Nothing has been abrogated, except in so far as this has been implicitly demanded by subsequent laws. From this result insoluble controversies and serious uncertainties, both in the study and practice of the law; and, finally, it has become impossible for most people to have a first-hand knowledge of the actual laws.
For this third period, the most important and most considerable of the canonical texts is the body of disciplinary decrees of the council of Trent (1545-1563). In consequence of the prohibition issued by Pius IV., they have not Decrees of the Council of Trent. been published separately from the dogmatic texts and other acts, and have not been glossed;[34] but their official interpretation has been reserved by the popes to the “Congregation of the cardinal interpreters of the Council of Trent,” whose decisions form a vast collection of jurisprudence. Next in importance come the pontifical constitutions, which Pontifical constitutions. are collected together in the Bullarium; but this is a collection of private authority, if we except the Bullarium of Benedict XIV., officially published by him in 1747; further, the Bullarium is a compilation arranged in chronological order, and its dimensions make it rather unwieldy. In the third place come the decrees of the Roman Congregations, which have the force of law. Several Decrees of the Curia. of these organs of the papal authority have published official collections, in which more place is devoted to jurisprudence than to laws; several others have only private compilations, or even none at all, among others the most important, viz. the Holy Office (see [Curia Romana]). The resulting confusion and uncertainty may be imagined.