Canon Law

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Canon Law

Defining “Canon Law.” Beginning in the second century and particularly after Christianity became legal in the Roman Empire (313), Christian leaders strove to define what it meant to be a Christian (theology and doctrine), how Christianity should be practiced (piety), and how Christians should think and behave (morality). The result was the production of a large number of provisions, or canons, by synods and Popes whose intentions were to resolve emerging difficulties in defining and living a Christian life. The body of documents and precedents that evolved became known as canon law, a term that did not come into use until the beginning of the twelfth century, when effective attempts were made to develop a clear collection of these laws. Medieval canon law was an evolving series of texts incorporating Greek, Germanic, and Roman legal principles. Canon law has been systematized since the Middle Ages, and it remains the law code of the Roman Catholic Church.

Canon Law and Eleventh-Century Reform. For centuries in the Middle Ages, little attempt was made to extract the general principles underlying canon law or to regularize the laws currently in effect. Decrees from ancient and medieval Church councils, papal letters, and episcopal statutes were collected so they could be consulted for guidance when similar situations recurred. By the eleventh century, however, the number of texts had grown unwieldy, and there was a need for a clear set of directives. Reformers of that time, such as Pope Gregory VII and his followers, faced an heterogeneous mass of precedents as they tried to deal with fundamental questions about the structuring of Christian society and the discipline that was to be observed within the Church. One of their pressing tasks was to increase this mass of precedents, so as to have at their disposal all possible solutions to the problems that faced them and to try to discern coherence among them. At the same time, the University of Bologna had just revived the study of Roman law, which was far more structured than Church law because of Emperor Justinian’s sixth-century systematization, the Corpus juris civilis. Roman law provided an example of what could be done, and circumstances in the eleventh and twelfth centuries provided the necessity for doing it.

Gratian’s Decretum . Gratian was a Benedictine monk who taught canon law at the University of Bologna in the 1130s. Apparently frustrated by the lack of a synthetic reference for canon law, he set out to compile one himself. The result was the Concordia Discordantium Canonum (The Harmonizing of Discordant Canons), which became commonly known as Gratian’s Decretum (Decrees), published around 1140. The Decretum was designed to be a general treatise on canon law with insertions of authoritative texts relevant to various topics. From the mass of earlier canons, he selected only those then in force, ignoring those that were no longer commonly used, had been revoked, or were not generally applicable. He also expanded on the principles underlying the law. Although it was not an official compilation, it was for all practical purposes accepted as the fundamental text of Church law and taught as such in the universities throughout the Middle Ages. There were several reasons for its appeal and influence. While the Decretum was incomplete, it was far more systematic than any preceding collection. It provided a starting point for the generations of canon lawyers who later developed more comprehensive and better organized codes. Finally, Gratian’s work made plausible the view that there was, in Christian society, a supreme court to which everyone might appeal for justice. This court, of course, was the papacy, a view that supported the claims of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Church leaders.

Building on Gratian: Later Canonists. The papacy took up with enthusiasm the function that Gratian and other canonists outlined for it. From the 1160s to the end of the Middle Ages and beyond, the papal court functioned as the supreme court of Christendom and, in doing so, provided the most influential model of what came to be regarded as

the rule of law. In its efforts to Christianize all aspects of society, the papacy also produced the bulk of what is still European family, testamentary, and corporation law. Later influential additions were made by St. Raymond of Pennafort and promulgated by Pope Gregory IX in 1234 as the Liber Extravagantium (Book of Outside or Additional Materials), more commonly known as Gregory’s Decretals. Although Gregory did not wish to supplant Gratian, his Decretals eventually did. According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, the Decretals were “composed in great part of specific decisions, represented in fact a more advanced state of law; furthermore, the collection was sufficiently extensive to touch almost every matter, and could serve as a basis for a complete course of instruction.”

The Fourth Lateran Council. Probably the most influential Church council during the Middle Ages was the Fourth Lateran Council, called by Pope Innocent III in November 1215. In canon law texts the council is known simply as “the Great Council,” suggesting its influence on medieval canon law. The Fourth Lateran passed eighty decrees (canons) clarifying and codifying key aspects of theology, Church management, and Church reform. Its ordinances on marriage continue to guide some Christian churches.

Other Decretals. Most medieval popes after Gregory published updates of the Decretals, and Boniface VIII in 1298 and John XXII in 1317 produced other collections of canon law. In 1500 canonist John Chapuis edited the previous collections and added to them subsequent papal decretals. These works together are what came to be called the Corpus Juris Canonici or Body of Canon Law.

Methods of Interpretation (Commentaries). Medieval scholars working with canon law relied on precedents that they analyzed following a set system. The written product of these analyses were books known as commentaries. Essentially commentaries are notes between the lines or in the margins of texts. These notes cite the responses of other authorities to the claims made in the text. Sometimes medieval scholars produced commentaries on commentaries, with the actual text taking perhaps a quarter of the page and the layers of commentaries filling the remaining space. By the thirteenth century, canon law was divided into a series of categories—for example, universal law, particular law, common law, and special law. Each law in each of the many categories was analyzed according to a triple method of exposition: historical, philosophical, and practical. The historical commentary focused on the source and evolution of customs suggested by the law; the philosophical interpretation explained the law in light of its legal and theological principles; and the practical analysis considered the ways the law could be applied. Through development of codes of canon law, especially the commentaries on them, canon law became a subject of study that could take decades to master.

THE FOURTH LATERAN COUNCIL

I he breadth of the topics covered at the Fourth Lat-eran Council in 1215 is suggested in the following summary of some of the canons it issued:

Canon 1: Statement of the basic doctrines of the Catholic faith and the dogma of Transubstantiation.

Canon 3: Procedures and penalties to be used against heretics and their protectors.

Canon 5: Proclamation of papal primacy as recognized since antiquity. The order of primacy after the Pope is the bishops of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.

Canon 8: Procedures to be used in accusations against churchmen.

Canons 14–17: Legislation against inappropriate behavior of the clergy.

Canon 21: Requirement that every parishioner make a yearly confession to his or her parish priest.

Canons 23–30: Regulation of ecclesiastical elections and the provision of benefices and other ecclesiastical properties.

Canons 78–79: Requirements that Jews and Moslems wear a special dress to distinguish themselves from Christians and that Christian princes must take strict measures to prevent blasphemies against Jesus Christ.

Universities and Canon Law . Because years of training were necessary to comprehend canon law and the elaborate methods of interpreting it, the growth of canon law and the medieval universities toward the end of the twelfth century went hand in hand. In the fledgling universities, the faculty of canon law was to become an important fixture and shaped itself around the study of Gratian and Gregory’s works. This process produced the new figure of the canon lawyer, who made it his task to define the procedures and legal doctrines by which the bishops’ and papal courts were to operate and become a model for the ubiquitous ecclesiastical tribunals that were called into being across Europe. The canon lawyer’s job was to train people in the necessary grammatical, logical, and juridical techniques to resolve contradictions in sources and to isolate general principles that, after imposing a certain coherence on the records of past legislative activity in the Church, also set out the conditions under which such an activity might occur henceforth. Universities such as Paris and Bologna gained reputations for their canon law faculties that endured long after the Middle Ages.