Anselm of Lucca, Collectio canonum (A Aucta version)

Title	Anselm of Lucca, Collectio canonum (A Aucta version)
Key	AD
Size	Large (1000 to 2000 canons)
Terminus post quem	1080
Terminus ante quem	1086
Century	saec. XI
Place of origin	Polirone
European region of origin	Northern Italy
General region of origin	Southern Europe and Mediterranean
Specific region of origin	Polirone
Main author	Fowler-Magerl, Linda

General

One of the earliest revisions of the collection compiled by Anselm of Lucca is that which Thaner called A Ven after the copy in the Ms Venice, BN di San Marco Class. IV. LV (2243). This manuscript belonged for a time to the bishop of Padua, Niccolà Ormaneto. It was therefore assumed from the beginning that the revision was made in northern Italy. Peter Landau discovered a second copy of the same version in Mantova, Biblioteca Comunale Teresiana, C.II.23 (318) and Giuseppe Motta renamed the version „A Aucta“. This copy once belonged to the Benedictine monastery San Benedetto at Polirone, which is near Mantua. The Mantua copy is less orderly than the Venice copy. Many additions are in the margin. Some of these additions are integrated into the body of the text in the Ms Venice. Motta analysed the version in both manuscripts, using as his starting point the more legible Venice manuscript. It is not advisable to order microfilm of the Mantua copy to read the additions in the margins; they must be examined [146] at Mantua.

The present analysis (AD) is based on that of Motta. Only those texts not in version A of the collection of Anselm are recorded. Texts found only in the manuscript Mantua have the key: ADMantua. Note that you can search for this additional material by limiting your search for ADMantua to the "key" field (or simply click here; 77 results). Canons which are found in a different location in the two manuscripts will have this information in the location field; if you want to search for these canons, limit your search to the "location" field (or use this search which should produce 101 hits). There is a capitulatio for all thirteen books at the beginning of the Venice manuscript. The Ms Mantua does not have one.

The A Aucta version is closely related to the B version. They have the same rubrics. Especially close are the Mantua copy and the copy of the B version in the Ms Vat. lat. 1364. Canons which do not have rubrics in version A have almost identical rubrics in A Aucta and B, and a considerable number of the rubrics in A are reworded in the same way in A Aucta and B. The rewording of rubrics in revisions of a collection was not a common practice. Two examples of rewording: 1.) The title of the first book in version A is De primatu sancte Romane ecclesie; the title in the Ms Mantua is De primatu et excellentia Romane ecclesie; the titel in the Ms Vat. lat. 1364 is De primatu et excellentia sancte Romane ecclesie; the title of the first book in the Ms Venice is De dignitate Romane ecclesie. 2.) The title of the 7th book in version A is De communi vita clericorum; the title in A Aucta is De vita et ordinatione clericorum; the title in the Ms Vat. lat. 1364 is De vita et ordinatione presbiterorum, diaconorum et reliquorum ordinum.

The versions A Aucta and B also have far too many additions in common for coincidence. Of particular significance are the additions which are seldom found in other canon law collections. Nullus umquam laicorum and Oportebat ut hec are from the Roman synod held by pope Stephan III in 769 (JE post 2376) and Monasterium vel oratorium is from the Roman synod held by pope Eugene II in 826 and repeated with additions by pope Leo IV (JE ante 2562). De decimis iusto ordine and De libellis et commentariis are from the letter of pope Leo IV to the bishops of Brittanny (JE 2599). Obviously both versions make use of a slightly enlarged form of the A version which has not survived. The canons in the A Aucta version are, in general, shorter than in the B version, and the inscriptions are less complete. The same texts from the synods of 769 and 826 which are common to the versions A Aucta and B are also found in the Tuscan Collectio III librorum and its abbreviated form in nine books.

Klaus Zechiel-Eckes has argued convincingly that the B version originated in or near Milan, and the copy of the B version in the Ms Vat. lat. 1364 comes from Pontida, near Bergamo. More on this below. [147] There is good reason to assume that the revision of the A version behind both the A Aucta and B versions was compiled at Polirone. Some of the additions to the two versions are found in a florilegium on fol. 2r–3v of the same Mantua manuscript (BC 318) (PM) that contains A Aucta. Furthermore, canon 12 of the florilegium is found in version B and nowhere else.

The latest of the additions shared by both copies date from the papacy of Gregory VII. I suspect that the early enlarged form common to both versions was finished during the lifetime of Anselm, perhaps it was revised by Anselm himself. The version A Aucta was used, as Peter Landau has shown, for the Collectio XIII librorum of the Ms Berlin, SBPK Savigny 3, completed circa 1089. Motta has shown that the text in the Venice copy is closer to that in the Collectio XIII librorum than the text in the Mantua copy.

Each of the copies has texts peculiar to it. A number of the additions to the copy in the Ms Mantua involve the rights of monasteries, which is not surprising since it was copied at a Benedictine monastery. That copy contains the forgery attributed to Gregory I: Quam sit necessarium (JE † 1366) no less than three times (on folios 51v–52r, 173v–174r and 184rv). Each copy of the forgery is in a different hand, and the texts differ, too. For the copy on fol. 51v–52r there is no rubric and the signatures are missing. On fol. 173v there is one rubric in the text (Privilegium beati Gregorii pape de libertate monachorum. Gregorius papa) and another in the margin (De monachorum et monasteriorum libertate in decretis Gregorii). The rubric in the text is accentuated in red. On fol. 184rv the text has the rubric De libertate monachorum et monasteriorum and the inscription Gregorius episcopus episcopis omnibus. No room was left in the body of the collection for the signatures. They were squeezed at a later date into the margin. The copies on fol. 173v–174r and 184rv follow the text of the corresponding canon in the Diversorum patrum sententie (74T). The text on fol. 52r follows the text in the early version of that collection in the Ms Paris, BN n. a. l. 326, see above.

Literature

For the analysis of the version A Aucta and a description of the contents of the two manuscripts see Giuseppe Motta, La redazione A „aucta“ della Collectio Anselmi episcopi Lucensis, in: Studia in honorem ementissimi cardinalis Alphonsi M. Stickler, ed. by Rosalio Iosepho Card. Castillo Lara (Studia et textus historiae iuris canonici 7, Rome 1992), pp. 375–449. – For the versions of Anselm’s [148] collection see Landau, Erweiterte Fassungen, pp. 328–330. – For the origin of version B in Milan see Zechiel-Eckes, Eine Mailänder Redaktion, pp. 130–147. – For the transmission of the synods of 769 and 826 see Jasper, The Beginning of the Decretal Tradition, p. 103f, for the letter of pope Leo IV to the bishops of Brittanny, pp. 108 f. – For the situation at Mantua in the late 1080s and early 1090s see Alberto Montecchio, Cenni storici sulla canonica cattedrale di Mantova nei secoli XI e XII, in: La Vita comune del clero nei secoli XI e XII. Vol. 2: Comunicazioni e Indici (Miscellanea del Centro di Studi Medioevali 3, Milan 1959), pp. 163–180, esp. 171-172. - For the florilegium in the Ms Mantua, BC 318 see Motta, I codici canonistici di Polirone, pp. 361 f. – Kéry, Collections p. 219.

Defaultsort "Anselm, A aucta"