Collectio LXXIV titulorum

Title	Collectio LXXIV titulorum
Key	MO
Alternative title	Diversorum patrum sententiae
Wikidata Item no.	Q112980280
Size	Small (100 to 500 canons)
Terminus post quem	1050
Terminus ante quem	1073
Century	saec. XI
General region of origin	Northwestern Europe
Main author	Christof Rolker

Title

The collection is best known as the Collectio LXXIV titulorum / Collection in 74 Titles, or 74T for short; in the manuscripts, it is called Diversorum patrum sententie.

Origin

The authorship of 74T, and both time and place of origin, of 74T have been subject to considerable debate in the 20th century. Partly, these discussions were linked to the question of the tendency of 74T, which Fournier famously had labelled it the 'first canon law manual of the reform'. Even after John Gilchrist had completed his critical edition of 74T, fundamental questions were still unsolved. In the following decades, views on 74T as a reform collection changed, if only because views on church reform and the reform papacy changed. For the older contributions to the dabate (Fournier, Michel, Fransen, Gilchrist), see the literature listed by Kéry and Fowler-Magerl.

Time of origin

Internal evidence for the date is scare.

Fowler-Magerl, quoting Jasper, argued that the collection must have been compiled before 1073/74 because in this year Bernold of Konstanz quoted from it.

Scholars have sometimes argued that the sole copy of the Collectio Sandionysiana was written in 1068; if so, this would provide a terminus ante quem for 74T as the Saint-Denis collection draws on a mature version of 74T. However, while it is clear the manuscript of the Sandionysiana was written not before 1065, there is no cogent evidence it was written in or before 1068. Hence, there is no secure terminus ante quem for the Sandionysiana, and the date of 74T cannot be established this way.

Place of origin

74T does not contain any material that would link it to a specific place of origin.

According to the title Bernold of Konstanz gave the Swabian version, the collection had been sent in Gallias by way of papal legates, and there have been several attempts to identify either the legates in question or the region they were sent to. However, as there were many papal legates sent to many areas in modern Germany, France, and Italy which may be referred to as 'Gallia', no consensus was reached.

The idea of 74T as a reform manual was the main reason the collection was thought to have been compiled by Humbert of Silva Candida (esp. Michel). John Gilchrist was not convinced of Humbert's authorship but reaffirmed the traditional view that the collection was Italian, even if he also highlighted some arguments for an origin north of the Alps. Linda Fowler-Magerl argued that 74T used rare formal sources known in the regions north of the Loire but with no known Italian transmission. In the past 25 years, scholarship has largely followed her argument, but there is still some uncertainty where exactely it was compiled. The region most frequently mentioned is Lotharingia (Fowler-Magerl, Kéry, Strupp), which is also home of some of the earliest copies of 74T. In addition, the earliest collections known to have drawn on 74T (the Collection of Saint-Denis, the collection in Paris, BnF, lat. 13658, and the Collection in Four Books) are all from modern France, suggesting that 74T was available in these regions.

Background

Older scholarship has mainly stressed that 74T addressed papal primacy in its opening title and contained a relatively large number of canons against simony. As the False Decretals were also thought to have been valued by the Gregorians, and 74T was linked to Gregory VII and his legated, scholarship well into the 1970s mainly followed Fournier's idea of 74T as a reform collection. Other scholars pointed out that 74T contains considerable materials on monastic liberty, but this was normally seen as another aspect of the reform character of 74T. Following Fowler-Magerl, modern scholarship has reversed this: the emphasis on monastic property and its protection from episcopal interference is seen as the prime concern of 74T, and papal privileges are introduced not least as safeguards of monastic freedom. This, however, does not change the fact that 74T already in medieval times was seen as a collection

Formal sources

The vast majority of canons is taken from the False Decretals. In addition, 74T contain excerpts from the letters of Gregors the Great (specifically the collection known as C+P), from Hincmar of Reims, and Abbo of Fleury.

As Fowler-Magerl was the first to point out, the formal source provide the most secure basis to establish where 74T was compiled. Specifically, given that C+P was apparently unknown south of the Alps, an Italian origin of 74T seems very unlikely. Not only were the known manuscripts of C+P written in northern France and neighbouring regions, the same also holds for the reception (Hincmar of Reims, Sinemuriensis, etc.). She also pointed out other formal sources of 74T which point to a genesis in northern Europe:

1. Canon 39 of the 74T, Quam sit necessarium, is a forgery (JE †1366) created by combining two genuine letters of Gregory I: JE 1504 and 1362. The first known form of this combination is in the chartulary of the monastery Prüm (between Trier and Cologne), the Liber aureus Prumiensis, on fol. 75–77 of the Ms Trier, Stadtbibliothek, 1709. The forgery is said there to date from the year 863.

2. The first canon in the 74T, Si difficile et ambiguum, which derives ultimately from the book of Deuteronomy, was probably taken from De institutione laicali of Jonas of Orléans. The few copies which have survived from the 9th and 10th centuries are, insofar as a provenance can be determined, from the northeastern France and Lotharingia.

3. The choice of excerpts from letters of pope Gregory I in the 74T seems to have been influenced by Epistola XIV of Abbo of Fleury, and the only complete transmission of the letters is in the Ms London, BL Additional 10972, one of the manuscripts belonging to Pierre Pithou (1539–1596). The uniqueness of Abbo’s selection is that he took letters from at least three different sources: from the Register (74T 28), from the Vita Gregorii of Iohannes Diaconus (74T 29, 41, 42 and 314) and from the excerpt from the Register known as Collectio CC epistolarum or „C“ (74T canon 30). In the letter and in the version C, the text inrogari … [114] sanctita sunt (MGH Epp. 2. 204, 7–8) is missing. Canon 40 of 74T was taken from the excerpt of the letters of Gregory that Ewald calls Collectio Pauli or „P“. It is probable that C was combined with P not far from Cologne; the surviving copies of this combination are almost always found near or somewhat to the west of Cologne. A hitherto unknown copy of C (early 9th c.) was identified by J. Vennebusch in 1986 in Köln, Historisches Archiv, W 29.

4. Canons taken from the Vita Gregorii or the Register were renumbered in the 74T using the numbering in the combination C + P, which circulated primarily in the vicinity of Cologne. Hildebrand, later pope Gregory VII, spent years in the company of pope Gregory VI at Cologne. His contacts were certainly still intact when he complained as pope of the lack of a canon law collection which could be used as an instrument of reform.

5. Roman law texts in the 74T were taken from writings of Hincmar of Reims rather than directly from the Theodosian Code.

Manuscripts, Versions, and Influence

74T survives in a number of copies, and in addition to different versions, there a derivative collections; it is not always easy to distinguish between copies, versions, and separate collectio. For manuscripts, see Category:Manuscript of MO (number of entries: 14); for collections of the 74T group, see Category:Collection belonging to 74T and derivatives (number of entries: 10).

The copies belonging to the Cassino group are those in the Mss Montecassino 522, pp. 70–179 (in Beneventan script); El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Escorial L. III. 19, fol. 1r–40v (in Carolingian script to fol. 38r and then in Beneventan script); Florence, BML Plut. XVI. 15, fol. 49r–98r; Namur, Musée archéologique 5, fol. 85ra– 104rb (probably from Saint-Hubert in the Ardennes in the diocese of Liège) and New Haven, Yale University Law Library 31, fol. 1r–59r (from northeast France or Belgium). An exemplar of a subgroup of the Cassino version represented by the Mss Florence BML Conv. Soppr. 91, fol. 21v–106v (from the abbey of Santa Maria e Benedetto in Albarese) and Vienna, ÖNB Cod. 2206, fol. 2ra–13rb, was used by Anselm of Lucca, by the compiler of the Collectio II librorum/VIII partium and by the compiler of the Codex San Daniele del Friuli, Biblioteca Civica Guarneriana, 203.

The copies of the Liège group differ minimally from those of the Cassino group. Whereas manuscripts of the Cassino group are associated with Montecassino and Lothringia, these are associated with Rome and Lothringia. These copies are in the Mss Bruxelles, KBR, 9706-25, fol. 30r–60r (probably from the abbey of Saint-Laurent in Liège); Roma, Biblioteca Casanatense, 2010, fol. 1r– 62v (from the vicinity of Rome); Roma, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, F.54, fol. 1r–62v. Excerpts of this version are found in Vat. lat. 4977, fol. 6v–23v, and in Firenze, BML, Ashburnham 1554 and the closely related Paris, BnF, lat. 3858C. [113]

74T in the Clavis database

The entries are based on Montecassino 522, which Gilchrist called one of the best surviving complete copies of 74T (MO). The canons are numbered from 1–315, but in the location column is an alternative numbering which makes the division into 74 titles apparent.

Editions and Translations

Gilchrist (ed.) Diuersorum patrum sententie siue Collectio in LXXIV titulos digesta (1973); online; Gilchrist (tr.), The Collection in Seventy-Four Titles (1980)

Literature

Fowler-Magerl, Clavis pp. 110-119.