I. Early History. —The earliest body known to us of purely church law is the spurious work called the Apostolic Constitutions (διδασκαλία των αποστόλων, Constitutiones Apostolorum), which originated in Syria. Its eight books, uf which the first six date from the end of the 3d century, and the two remaining ones from the first quarter of the 4th century, contain a variety of moral and liturgical precepts, and regulations on ecclesiastical discipline, bearing to proceed from the apostles themselves. As a supplement to the eighth book there appeared also in Syria, about the beginning of the 6th century, a collection of eighty-five disciplinary regulations under the name of the Apostolic Canons (κανόνες τών αποστόλων, Canones Apostolorum). The Council in Trullo (692) sanctioned the Constitutions as law for the Greek Church, but rejected the Canons. The Latin Church adopted neither, but subsequently fifty of the Canons found their way into the Western collections. Though not what they profess to be, these writ ings are instructive on early ecclesiastical usages and discipline.

Editions :— The Apostolical Constitutions, edited by Dr James Donaldson for Clark’s Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Edinr. 1870; Ueltzen, Constitutiones Apostolicae (Greek text), Suerini, 1853; The Apostolical Canons, in Greek, Latin, and English, with notes, edited and translated by the Rev. Thos. MacNally, London, 1867; Bunsen, Analecta Aìitcnicoena, London, 1854, vol. ii.;.

In the 4th and 5th centuries collections which have not come down to us were made of the canons of the Eastern councils of Antioch, Ancyra, Neocaesarea, Nicaea, Sardica, Gangra, Laodicaea, Ephesus, Constantinople, and Chalcedon. (See the Codex Canonum Ecclesioe Universae of Justellus, Paris, 1610.) Joannes Scholasticus, patriarch of Constantinople in the reign of Justinian (564), reduced these and other canons into a systematic work divided into fifty books. A little later this was digested with corresponding fragments of the civil law relating to ecclesiastical affairs into a code called, from its combination of civil and ecclesiastical enactments, a Nomocanon. Of later compilations of the same description the most widely-known was the Nomocanon of the patriarch Photius (883). A most important consolidation of Greek canon law was effected in the year 692 by the labours of the Council in Trullo (Concilium Trullanum, from Trullus, the hall in the imperial palace at Constantinople in which they sat, also called Concilium Quinisextum, from its being considered supplementary to the 5th and 6th general councils). They drew up an authoritative list of the subsisting laws of the church, comprising the Apostolic Canons, the canons of the ten councils mentioned above, those of several synods held at Carthage, and one at Constantinople (394), and the decisions of twelve Eastern patriarchs and prelates from the 3d to the 5th century. They added 102 canons of their own, and this code, with the addition of 22 canons of the Seventh (Ecumenical Council held at Nicaea in 787, was the leading authority in the Greek Church till the middle of the 9th century. (For the later ecclesiastical literature of the East see Zachariae, Historoe Juris Groeco-lìomani Delineatio, Heidelberg, 1839; and Mortreuil, Histoire du Droit Byzantin, Paris, 1843-46).

Translations from the Greek collections gradually came into circulation among the Western clergy. The best known are two that date from the 5th century,—the Versio Iiidoriana, originating in Spain, and the so-called Prisca (sc. Canonum Translatio), which came from Italy. The Latin Church was thus enabled to add to the canons of African, Italian, French, and Spanish provincial councils those of the oecumenical councils of Nice, Constantinople, and Chalcedon, and of numerous Oriental synods. About the same time a new source of church law rose into importance in the letters addressed by the popes to the bishops of the various dioceses in answer to requests for advice on points of ecclesiastical management. Such letters were called epistolas decretales, or shortly decretales, sometimes constituta decretalia or decretalia. Being communicated by the bishops to whom they were addressed to the neighbouring dioceses they ruled similar cases occurring there. They were regarded as of equal authority with the canons of councils, and soon proved the most prolific source of canon law.

Both classes of material contributed to the collection formed (in two separate parts afterwards conjoined) about the beginning of the 6th century by a learned Scythian monk Dionysius, surnamed Exiguus from the epithet he modestly applies to himself in the preface. The first part contains a translation of the Apostolic Canons, and of the canons of the councils of Nice, Ancyra, Neocaesarea, Gangra, Antioch, Laodicaea, and Constantinople, those of Chalcedon and Sardica in the original Latin, and the acts of the synod of Carthage (419) and other African synods. The second part is made up of papal decretals from Pope Siricius (385) to Anastasius II. (498), arranged in chronological order. Though never formally authorized, this collection, from its clear arrangement, the fidelity of its translations from the Greek, and the general authenticity of its contents, obtained speedy acceptance, and long maintained its ground against later compilations.

It is printed in the Codex Canonum Fetus Ecclesioe Romance of Franc. Pithoeus, Paris, 1687, fol. A copy of it, containing some additional matter, and known as the Collectio Dionyso-Hadriana, was presented to Charlemagne during his first visit to Rome in 774 by Pope Hadrian I., and was sanctioned by the synod of Aix-la-Chapelle (8^02) as the codex canonum for the Frankish empire. A collection of 232 African canons may also be mentioned, called the Breviatio Canonum, published by the Carthaginian deacon, Fulgentius Ferrandus, about the year 547. It formed the basis of the Concordia Canonum, a more complete work, by the African bishop Cres-conius (690). A similar collection had been made about 580 by the Spanish bishop Martin of Braga (Martinus Bracarensis).

In Spain a large body of law had accumulated in the canons of the numerous councils which followed that of Elvira (305), the earliest known to us. A collection of native and foreign canons was in circulation there in the 6th century, and after being added to at various times was generally received towards the close of the next century. It was called the Hispana (sc. Collectio) from the country of its origin, and being erroneously attributed to Bishop Isidore of Seville, who died in 636, also acquired the name of Collectio Isidoriana. Like the Dionyso-Hadriana it is divided into two parts,—the first containing a classified series of Greek, African, French, and Spanish canons, and the second the decretals from Pope Damasus (366) to Gregory the Great (604).

The Frankish clergy used, besides the Dionyso-Hadriana, the original work of Dionysius Exiguus, as well as a collection of Greek and African canons, Papal decretals, imperial constitutions, <fcc., which was produced in Gaul about the beginning of the 6th century, and is known to us as QuesneΓs Codex Canonum from the name of its first editor (Paris, 1675). The different ecclesiastical provinces possessed in addition the canons of their own particular synods, and Papal decretals addressed to the bishops within their bounds; and many Frankish prelates were in the habit of drawing up fortheir subordinate clergy short compendiums of canon law, in which they inserted any particular regulations the local circumstances demanded. These so-called Capitula Episcoporum are printed in vols, xiii,-xv. of Mansi’s Sacrorum Conciliorum Collectio.

The Hispana got into circulation among the Franks in a more or less corrupt form. One edition, which appeared about the middle of the 9th century, has become celebrated in church history as the Collectio Pseudo-Isidoriαna or False Decretals. Everything connected with this collection, its date, its author, its subject-matter, its purpose, has formed the subject of controversy, giving rise to a con siderable literature. We must here confine ourselves to the results of the latest criticism.

The following particulars seem to be settled. The wo*∙k, which is divided into three parts, was compiled by a single author, a Frankish ecclesiastic, between the years 840 and 860. From his styling himself in the preface Isidorus Mercator, Bishop Isidore of Seville was mistakenly supposed to be the author, and hence the name Pseudo Isidore. After the preface, and some minor apocryphal documents, the first part contains fifty of the Apostolic Canons extracted from the Hispaηα, and sixty spurious decretals of the popes from Clement I (101) to Melchiades (314), chronologically arranged. The second part consists chiefly of canons taken from the Hispana. The author has also used the latter as the substratum of the third part, but has interpolated thirty five fictitious decretals. A supplement is appended to some of the manuscripts containing, with a few unimportant pieces, a series of brief regulations regarding processes against bishops. These are the so-called Capitula Angilramni (a bishop of Metz), which are now thought to be older than the main collection.

No suspicion attached to the Pseudo Isidore at the time of its appearance. On the contrary, it was everywhere accepted without question till Cardinal Nicolas of Cusa, in the 15th century, expressed doubts of the genuineness of some of its contents. During the next hundred years the untrustworthy nature of the book (printed by Merlin in his Concilia Generalia, Paris, 1523) was irrefragably demon, strated by the labours of Erasmus, the Magdeburg Centuriators, and especially the Calvinistic pastor, David Blondel. It was subjected to the fierce attacks of the Protestant Reformers, who approached the question less in a scientific spirit than with a desire to reveal the iniquities of the Church of Rome They maintained with much acrimony that the work was a deliberate forgery, undertaken by command, or at least with the connivance, of the Pope, to exalt his temporal and spiritual power. In modern times the controversy has been carried on chiefly by lawyers, and, the theological dust having subsided, it has become easier to define the limits within which lie the only probable views as to the sources and object of the work. It is to be regretted that some symptoms have recently appeared of a revival of the former bitter feeling in con nection with the Old Catholic movement in Germany. (The Pope and the Council, by Janus, 3d. ed., London, 1870).

The idea is exploded that the False Decretals were the invention of their author’s brain, fabricated for purposes of Papal aggrandizement. Many of the apocryphal portions (the Apostolic Canons, &c.) had been for centuries in circulation as genuine. Of the decretals a considerable number are authentic, though antedated and ascribed to early popes to give them the authority of antiquity, while others embody the traditional contents of actual but lost decretals. The sources from which the compiler principally borrowed his materials were the Bible, the fathers, genuine canons and decretals, Roman law from the West Gothic Breviary of Alaric, the works of Rufinus and Cassiodorus on ecclesiastici 1 history, and the biographies of popes in the Liber Pont>ficahs. It is now admitted by Protestant writers that the compilation was produced in the interest not of the Pope but of the bishops, in order, by protecting them from the oppression of temporal princes on the one hand and ecclesiastical councils on the other, to correct some abuses prevailing among the Franks. The tendency of the authorities collected, was to support a right of appeal to the Pope in every causa major, i.e., process where a bishop was concerned, and to make the permission of the Pope a necessary preliminary to the assembling of a provincial council. This arrangement did not really secure the independence of the episcopate. It merely shifted the supreme control from a body of men to a single individual, in accordance with the constitutional ideas of the Middle Ages.

It is still a matter of controversy how far the course of ecclesiastical history has been influenced by the False Decretals. On the one hand it is maintained, chiefly by Roman Catholic writers, that they effected no essential alteration on the previous constitution or discipline of the church, that they merely gave the form of enactment to the prevailing ideas of the time on church government, and that the latter would have developed in the same direction had no such compilation ever appeared. It is argued reasonably enough that if any great innovation had been introduced the genuineness of the work would not have remained so long unchallenged. Some Protestant writers on the other hand assert that the Papal claim to absolute supremacy, over councils and hierarchy within the church and the laity without, was a pretension unknown till the 9th century, and entirely based upon the False Decretals. The truth probably lies between the two views. The influence of the Pseudo-Isidore has been greatly overrated. But it cannot be denied that the embodiment in a definite shape of the indistinct but yet perceptible tendency of church development in the 9th century was of considerable service to the popes during the struggle of the Hildebrandine era. (The latest and best edition of the False Decretals is Decretales Pseudo-1 sidor lance et Capitula Angilramni, by Hinschius, Leipsic, 1863.)

Other sources of church law prior to the Decretum of Gratian may be mentioned. Many laws on the rights and duties of the clergy were contained in the different compilations of Roman law (Theodosian and Justinian codes, Julian’s Epitome of the Novels, and the Breviary of Alaric) and the Leges Barbarorum (especially the Lex Ripuaria Bajuvariorum and Alamannorum). Of a similar character were some of the capitularies of the Frankish kings, a collection of which in four books was made by the Abbot Ansegisus of Fontanella in 827, and officially promulgated. A more important collection from an ecclesiastical point of view was that of Benedict, a deacon of Mainz (Benedictus Levita), who, by order of Bishop Otgar of Mainz compiled a supplement to Ansegisus in three books about the year 850. In addition to capitularies the work comprises extracts from the above-named Roman and German sources, from the Bible, penitential-books, the fathers, and other ecclesiastical writers, as well as canons copied apparently from the Hispana and Dicηyso-Hadriana It resembles the Pseudo-Isidore in containing much apocryphal matter in the form of false capitularies directed to ths removal of certain grievances of the Frankish episcopate. Being circulated as a supplement to Ansegisus it gained a considerable reputation, but was never officially recognized. The libri poenitentiales, or manuals of penance, are of importance as the foundation of the criminal branch of the canon law. The earliest ones of any note in the Western Church originated in England and Ireland, as for instance the Liber Davidis (Irish) of the 4th century, the penitential of Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, in the 7th century, and in the 8th those of the Venerable Bede and of Egbert, archbishop of York. The Irish church-discipline was introduced among the Franks, by whom the Poenitentiale Columbani and the Canones and Judicia Cummeani (two Irish missionaries) were extensively used. (Consult Jacobson in Herzog’s Real - Encyclopädie, art. “Bussbücher.”) The development of church-law was further influenced by the Ordines Romani, or books of ritual, the Ordines Judiciorum, or rules of procedure in the ecclesiastical courts, and the collections of formula; or precedents used in the preparation of formal or official documents, notably the Liber Diurnus, a pontifical collection of the 8th century.

The Pseudo-Isidore continued to be the chief repertory of canon law till the time of Gratian; but many other collections more or less corrupt, differing from the earlier ones in their arrangement according to systematic instead of chronological order, were made during these three centuries. It will be sufficient to name the following, as they seem to have been used by Gratian in compiling his great work :—1. A collection of the 9th century, dedicated to Archbishop Anselm (II.) of Milan (Collectio Anselmo Dedicata), based mostly on the Hispana, and interesting as the first work of authority containing extracts from the Pseudo-Isidore ; 2. The Libri Duo de Synodalibus Causis et Disciplinis Ecclesiasticis of the 10th century, by Regino, abbot of the monastery of Prüm in the Eiffel, drawn from Frankish and German sources; 3. The Collectarium or Decretum of Bishop Burchard of Worms, in twenty books, compiled in the 11th century;. The Pannormia of Bishop Ivo of Chartres, dating from the 12th century, and another work by the same author known as the Decretum; 5. The Liber de Misericordia et Justitia of Algerus of Liège, composed between 1120 and 1128.

II. The Corpus Juris Canonici. —The manuals of church law above referred to had not only become embarrassing by their number but laboured under defects that seriously impaired their practical utility. They contained much that was obsolete and much that was contradictory, many of them mixed up civil with church law, and their arrangement was unmethodical and cumbrous. These faults were to some extent remedied in the great collection that was formed between the middle of the 12th and the end of the 16th centuries, and became the recognized canon law code. The Corpus Juris CanoΛici, as it was called, consists of six portions, which may be classed under two heads, the Decretum and the Decretals.

1. The Decretum Gratiani. Up to this time canon law was regarded as a branch of theology, and was studied only in the seminaries attached to cathedrals or monasteries. Gratian, a Camaldolensian monk of Bologna, first taught it as a separate science towards the middle of the 12th century. The school of Roman law founded in that city thirty or forty years before by Irnerius was then flourishing, and Gratian, living within the sphere of the new movement, became ambitious of introducing a similar scientific cultivation of canon law. He selected the whole subsisting law of the church from among the mass of canons, decretals, writings of the fathers, and ecclesiastical historians, ⅛c., and digested it into the systematic work since called after him the Decretum Gratiani, which soon superseded all preceding compilations. It was early known by the name of the Concordia Discordantium Canonum, from an expression in one of the author’s notes (“auctoritatum dissonantia ad concordiam revocari ”); but whether Gratian himself made use of either name is uncertain. The work consists of three parts (partes). The first, treating of the sources of canon, law and of ecclesiastical persons and offices, is divided according to the method of Paucapalea, Gratian’s pupil, into 101 distinctiones, which are subdivided into canones. The second part consists of 36 causoe (cases proposed for solution), subdivided into quaestiones (the several questions raised by the case), under each of which are arranged the various canones (canons, decretals, <fcc.) bearing on the question. But causa xxxiii. quoestio 3, headed Tractatus de Poenitentia, is divided like the main part into seven distinctiones, containing each several canones. The third part, which is entitled De Consecratione, gives, in five distinctiones, the law bearing on church ritual and the sacraments. The following is the method of citation. A reference to the first part indicates the, initial words or number of the canon and the number of the distinctio, e.g., can. Propter ecclesiasticas, dist. xviii. or c. 15, d. xviii. The second part is cited by the canon, causa, and quaestio, e.^.,can. Si quis suadente, C. 17, qu. 4, orc. 29, C. xvii,qu. 4. The treatise De Poenitentia, forming the 3d quoestio of the 33d causa of the second part, is referred to as if it were a separate work, e.g., c. Principium, D. ii. de poenit. or c. 45, D. ii. de poenit. In quoting a passage from the third part the canon and distinctio are given, e.g., c. Missar....