Collections of ancient canons contain collected bodies of canon law that originated in various documents, such as papal and synodal decisions, and that can be designated by the generic term of canons.
Canon law was not a finished product from the beginning, but rather a gradual growth. This is especially true of the earlier Christian centuries. Such written laws as existed were not originally universal laws, but local or provincial statutes. Hence arose the necessity of collecting or codifying them. Earlier collections are brief and contain few laws that are chronologically certain. Only with the increase of legislation did a methodical classification become necessary.
These collections may be genuine (e. g. the Versio Hispanica), or apocryphal, i.e. made with the help of documents forged, interpolated, wrongly attributed or otherwise defective (e. g. the Pseudo-Isidore collection). They may be official and authentic (i.e. promulgated by competent authority) or private, the work of individuals. The forged collections of the middle of the ninth century are treated in the article on False Decretals.Much of our knowledge of these matters is owing to the historical researches begun at the end of the sixteenth century, whence issued the critical editions of the Church Fathers, the councils, and the papal decretals. See: the dissertation (Patrologia Latina, LVI) of the Ballerini brothers of Verona (eighteenth century) "Concerning the ancient collection and collectors of Canons as far as Gratian"; and the history of the sources and literature of canon law by ; he stops at Pseudo-Isidore.
From the earliest to the apocryphal collections
Apostolic period
In the primitive Christian ages there were apocryphal collections attributed to the Apostles, which belong to the genre of the Church Orders. The most important of these are the Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles, the Apostolic Constitutions, and the Apostolic Canons.
The Apostolic Constitutions, though originally accepted throughout the Orient, were declared apocryphal in the Trullan Council of 692; they were never accepted as ecclesiastical law in the West. The Apostolic Canons (eighty-five) were, on the other hand, approved by the Trullan Council.
Dionysius Exiguus, a Western canonist of the first half of the sixth century, noted that "many accept with difficulty the so-called canons of the Apostles". Nevertheless, he admitted into his collection the first fifty of these canons. The so-called Decretum Gelasianum, de libris non recipiendis (about the sixth century), puts them among the apocrypha.
From the collection of Dionysius Exiguus they passed into many Western collections, though their authority was never on one level. They were admitted at Rome in the ninth century in ecclesiastical decisions but in the eleventh century Cardinal Humbert accepts only the first fifty. Only two of them (20, 29) found their way into the Decretals of Gregory IX.
Papal decretals In primitive Christian centuries, the popes carried on ecclesiastical government by means of an active and extensive correspondence. A synod of the year 370, under Pope Damasus, mentions that the minutes of their letters or decretals were kept in the papal archives; these Vatican Archives have perished up to the time of pope John VIII (died 882). In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries attempts were made to reconstruct them.The most successful is that of ; cf. the important revision of Jaffé by During the period under discussion (i. e. to the middle of the eleventh century) there was a constant use of the papal decretals by the compilers of canonical collections from the sixth century on.
Greek collections
In 451 there was quoted at the Council of Chalcedon a collection of councils no longer extant, nor has the name of the compiler ever transpired.It seems to have been based on the canons of Ancyra (314) and Neo-Cæsarea (314–25), to which were added later those of Gangra (36-70). At the beginning of the collection were then placed the decrees of Nicæa (325); subsequently the canons of Antioch (341) were included, in which shape it was known to the Fathers of Chalcedon. In the latter part of the fifth century the canons of Laodicæa (343–81), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451), were incorporated with this ecclesiastical code, and finally (after the canons of Neo-Cæsarea) the decrees of Sardica (343–44), in which form the collection was in use during the sixth century. Though unofficial in character, it represents (inclusive of sixty-eight canons taken from the "Canonical Epistles" of St. Basil, I, III) the conciliar discipline of the Greek Church between 500 and 600.
This collection was chronological in order. Towards 535 an unknown compiler classified its materials in a methodical way under sixty titles, and added to the canons twenty-one imperial constitutions relative to ecclesiastical matters taken from the Code of Justinian. This collection has been lost.
Some years later (540–550) Johannes Scholasticus, Patriarch of Constantinople, made use of this code to compile a new methodical collection, which he divided into fifty books.It is printed in the second volume of . After the emperor's death (565), the patriarch extracted from ten of the former's constitutions, known as Novellæ, some eighty-seven chapters and added them to the aforesaid collection.
In this way arose the mixed collections known as Nomocanons (Greek nomoi "laws", kanones "canons"), containing not only ecclesiastical laws but also imperial laws pertaining to the same matters. The first of these was published under Emperor Maurice (582–602); under each title were given, after the canons, the corresponding civil laws.This collection (wrongly attributed to the aforementioned patriarch) is also found in the second volume of .
The Quinisext Council (695) of Constantinople, called Trullan from the hall of the palace (in trullo) where it was held, issued 102 disciplinary canons; it included also the canons of the former councils and certain patristic regulations, all of which it considered constitutive elements of the ecclesiastical law of the East. This collection contains, therefore, an official enumeration of the canons which then governed the Eastern Church, but no official approbation of a given collection or particular text of these canons. The Apostolic See never fully approved this council. In 787 a similar recapitulation of the ancient canons was made by the Second Council of Nicæa.
Italo-Latin collections
Latin Version of the Canons of Nicæa and Sardica
The former council (325) was held in repute throughout the West, where its canons were in vigour together with those of Sardica, the complement of the anti-Arian legislation of Nicæa, and whose decrees had been drawn up originally in both Latin and Greek. The canons of the two councils were numbered in running order, as though they were the work of but one council (a trait met with in divers Latin collections), which explains why the Council of Sardica is sometimes called œcumenical by earlier writers, and its canons attributed to the Council of Nicæa.For the text of the version as found in the various collections see . The oldest versions of these canons quoted in the papal decretals are no longer extant.
The "Hispana" or "Isidoriana" Version
Towards the middle of the fifth century, perhaps earlier, there appeared a Latin version of the aforesaid canons of Nicæa, Ancyra, Neo-Cæsarea and Gangra, to which were added a little later those of Antioch, Laodicea and Constantinople; the canons of Sardica were inserted about the same time after those of Gangra. Bickell considers it possible that this version was made in Northern Africa, while Walter inclines to Spain; it is now generally believed that the version was made in Italy. It was long believed, however, that it came from Spain, hence the name of "Hispana" or "Isidoriana", the latter term derived from its insertion in the collection attributed to St. Isidore of Seville (see below, Spanish Collections), in which it was edited, of course according to the text followed by the Spanish compiler.
The "Prisca" or "Itala" Version
This too seems to have grown up gradually in the course of the fifth century, and in its present shape exhibits the aforementioned canons of Ancyra, Neo-Cæsarea, Nicæa, Sardica, Gangra, Antioch, Chalcedon and Constantinople. It came to be known as "Itala" from the place of its origin, and as "Prisca" because of an overhasty conclusion that Dionysius Exiguus referred to it in the preface of his first collection when he wrote: "Laurentius offended by the confusion that reigned in the ancient version [priscœ versionis]".It was edited by Voel and Henri Justel in the first volume of their above-quoted "Bibliotheca juris canonici veteris"; a better text is that of the Ballerini brothers in the third volume of their edition of the works of St. Leo. Patrologia Latina LVI, 746.
"Collectio canonum Quesnelliana"
At the beginning of the sixth century there arose in Italy an extensive collection, based apparently on the "Antiqua Isidoriana" and the African collections, and which, besides the earliest Eastern and the African councils, includes papal decretals (especially Leonine), letters of Gallican bishops and other documents. Older scholarship, beginning with the Ballerinis, argued that the "Quesnelliana" was a Gallic collection, though one with an admittedly "Roman colour". More recent scholarship has argued for an Italian, possibly even Roman origin. Its name is derived from the Oratorian P. Quesnel, its first editor. With its focus on Chalcedon and the letters of Leo, the "Quesnelliana" is quite obviously meant as a manifesto against the Acacian schism, in which eastern Bishops led by Acacius, patriarch of Constantinople, challenged the decisions of the council of Chalcedon and the Christology set down in Pope Leo's "Tomus". The compiler's principal of selection thus seems to have been any and all documents that support doctrinal unity in general and Leonine Christology in particular. Of the large chronological canon collections to have come out of the early Middle Ages, the "Quesnelliana" is perhaps the oldest surviving collection and, after the "Collectio Dionysiana" and "Collectio Hispana", probably the most influential. It remained a popular work well into the ninth century, particularly in Francia. Most likely this was because of the numerous papal letters it contained that dealt with disciplinary matters that retained ecclesiastical importance throughout the Middle Ages. The Quesnelliana played a particularly important role in the spread of Leo's letters in Western canonistic literature, and was notably instrumental in the compilations of pseudo-Isidore for just this reason. Manuscript evidence alone indicates that the Quesnelliana had a fairly wide dissemination in Gaul during the eighth and ninth centuries; though it had perhaps already found a welcome audience with Gallo-Frankish bishops in the sixth century, when it may have been used as a source (along with the "Sanblasiana") for the "Collectio Colbertina" and the "Collectio Sancti Mauri". By the mid-eighth century, the "Quesnelliana" had secured its place as an important lawbook within the Frankish episcopate, for whom it served as the primary source during the influential council of Verneuil in 755.
Collections of Dionysius Exiguus
Further collections were called for by the increasing canonical material of the Latin West in the course of the fifth century. They were far from satisfactory.