Collectio III librorum

One of the major formal sources used by Gratian is a collection divided into three books and compiled sometime after 1111. These books are divided into titles as was the case in the Polycarpus and the Collectio VII librorum. In all three collections there are few rubrics attached to individual canons. The Collectio III librorum survives in two manuscripts: Pistoia, Archivio Capitolare del Duomo C. 135 and Vat. lat. 3831. The collection uses the Liber de honore Ecclesiae of Placidus of Nonantola manuscript which means that it was compiled after 1111. The copy in the Vatican manuscript belonged for a time to the church of Sidon in Syria. The Ms Pistoia contains texts not found in the Vatican manuscript, among which are the decrees of the Lateran council of 1123. It also contains the Proprie auctoritates apostolice sedis. 235

According to Giuseppe Motta the collection was compiled at Pistoia. The compiler used the collection of S. Maria Novella, a collection which has survived only in Tuscan manuscripts. He also used the A Aucta or B version of the collection of Anselm of Lucca and/or the collection in the Mss Vat. lat. 3832/Assisi, BCom 227 (2L/8P). Only these three collections contain the longer form of the text on heresy which begins: Donatiste … The Collectio III librorum contains it in a shorter version. Many of the rubrics are identical to those in the 2L/8P. For example the rubric to the canon 2. 4. 3 in the 3L and 2. 362 in the 2L/8P are the same: Ut presbiteri a pseudoepiscopis consecrentur. The compiler also used the Codex and Epitome Iuliani.

Giorgio Motta published books 1 and 2 in 2005 in: Monumenta iuris Canonici B/8 (2005) Vatican City. His edition of the 3rd book is not yet complete. I then analysed the 3rd book myself using the Vatican manuscript so that the numbering of the 3rd book in the present analysis (DR) may differ slightly from that of the completed edition.

Literature:

See Giuseppe Motta, Osservazioni intorno alla collezione canonica in tre libri (MSS C.135 Archivio Capitolare di Pistoia e Vat. lat. 3831), in: Proceedings of the 5th ICMCL, pp. 51–65. Idem, Testi di sant’Ambrogio nella collezione canonica in Tre Libri e nel Decreto di Graziano, in: Ambrosius episcopus. Atti del Congresso internazionale di studi ambrosiani nel XVI centenario della elevazione di sant’Ambrogio al la cattedra episcopale, Milano 2–7 dicembre 1974, ed. by Giuseppe Lazzati (Studia patristica Mediolanensia 2, Milan 1976), pp. 82–93. – For the manuscripts of Sidon see Anneliese Maier, Die Handschriften der „Ecclesia Sidonensis“, Manuscripta 11 (1967) pp. 39–45. Also John Erickson, The Collection in Three Books and Gratian’s Decretum, BMCL 2 (1972), pp. 67–75. – For Placidus of Nonantola see Detlev Jasper, Eine neue Handschrift des Liber de honore ecclesiae des Placidus von Nonantola, DA 48 (1992), pp. 537–550 esp. 547–550. – Kéry, Canonical Collections, pp. 269–271.