Statuta ecclesiae antiqua

Since no original copies of the Statuta ecclesiae antiqua have survived, the collections that have taken over at least parts are of interest. This includes the chronological collection Collectio Coloniensis , also created in Gaul in the second half of the 6th century , which contains excerpts from the Statuta ecclesiae antiqua on pages 19r to 26r , of which Folio 19v is shown here.

The Statuta ecclesiae antiqua (German: Old legal statutes of the church ) are a small systematic collection of canon law that was created in Gaul in the second half of the 5th century . The author is probably Gennadius of Marseilles .

Very early on, the Catholic Church required its clerics to have precise knowledge of canon law. For example, Celestine I demanded in a message to the bishops of Apulia and Calabria :

“Nulli sacerdotum suos licet canones ignorare.”

"No priest is allowed not to know his canons."

Accordingly, it was already common in early Christian times to collect papal decretals and council resolutions. This was initially done in chronological order until the abundance of material made this impractical. A solution to this problem was found in systematic collections that presented only a selection and systematically arranged them according to subject areas. The text of the Statuta ecclesiae antiqua is one of the earliest examples of a systematic collection.

There are several versions of this collection, which can be divided into a Gallic, an Italian and a Spanish family. The Spanish version traces the canons back to the fourth council in Carthage in 398. Thanks to the widespread use of the Spanish version, this was accepted for a long time, until in 1757 the brothers Pietro and Girolamo Ballerini were able to prove the origin of the statute from southern Gaul in a work on the early history of canon law. The brothers also managed to date the statute to the second half of the 5th century. The Statuta Caesarius of Arles was later attributed, and it was only through a work by Charles Munier that Gennadius of Marseilles was considered the most likely author.

The Statuta ecclesiae antiqua have only survived indirectly through their inclusion in later collections. This includes both chronological collections such as the Collectio Coloniensis and quite a few systematic collections. The latter include the Collectio Vetus Gallica , which originated in its original form around 600, and the Hibernensis from the beginning of the 8th century . In both the Vetus Gallica and the Hibernensis, the canons of the Statuta ecclesiae antiqua are cited as Canones Africanorum or Synodus Africana .

literature

• Charles Munier: Les statuta ecclesiae antiqua. Edition, études critiques . Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1960 (Bibliothèque de l'Institut de Droit Canonique de l'Université de Strasbourg; 5).
• Hubert Mordek : Canon Law and Reform in the Franconian Empire . Walter de Gruyter, 1975, ISBN 3-11-001826-8 .
• FL Cross and EA Livingstone (Eds.): The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church . Oxford University Press, 3rd edition, 1997, ISBN 0-19-211655-X .
• Lotte Kéry: Canonical Collections of the Early Middle Ages (approx. 400–1140) . The Catholic University of America Press, 1999, ISBN 0-8132-0918-8 .

Remarks

1. ^ Mordek, page 1. Mordek further refers to Jaffé-Kaltenbrunner, Regesta Pontificum Romanorum , 371 and Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologia cursus completus. Series Latina , PL. 50, col. 436 A.
2. ↑ Mordek and the Oxford Dictionary refer here to Charles Munier (ed.): Les Statuta ecclesiae antiqua . Paris 1960, page 209 ff.
3. ^ Kéry, page 7