Collectio Remensis

This chronologically arranged collection mostly consists of synodal acts and papal letters/decretals. The collection is solely preserved in Berlin, SBPK, Phillippicus 1743. The Collectio Remensis contains Greek (Ancyra, Neocesarea, Gangra, Antioch, Laodicea, Constantinople I [in two versions], Sardica, Ephesus, Chalcedon), African (Carthage 419, Registri ecclesiae Carthaginensis excerpta), Roman (the three synods held under Pope Symmachus) and twenty-two Gallican synods (earliest: Arles 314, latest: Paris 614), as well as twenty-seven papal letters (by Pseudo-Clement, Siricius, Innocent I, Zosimus, Celestine I, Leo I, Gelasius I, Symmachus, Hormisda, John II, Vigilius). In addition, the Collectio Remensis contains a couple of various pieces not fitting into either category, e.g. the Liber ecclesiasticorum dogmatum, the Decretum Gelasianum, a letter by the Milanese clergy to Frankish envoys (pertaining to the Three-Chapter Controversy), and the Paris edict of the Frankish king Chlothar II (from 614) – the latter two documents are preserved solely in Phill. 1743.

From the ninth century at the latest, the ms. was preserved at St-Remi-de-Reims, hence the misleading name of the collection, which has nothing to do with the place of its composition. As can be shown from the contents and a couple of editorial amendments, the collection was originally composed in south-eastern Gaul, its earliest recension not written long after 550. The original collection then underwent a number of editorial changes sometime in the second half of the sixth century and was finally – not earlier than the 620s – supplemented by several documents belonging to the time of Chlothar II (d. 629/30). The collection draws from different sources, such as the so-called Corpus Africano-Romanum (H. Mordek, Karthago oder Rom? Zu den Anfängen der kirchlichen Rechtsquellen im Abendland, in: Studia in Honorem A. M. Stickler [1992], 359-374), the Collectio Teatina, the Collectio Dionysiana prima and the Canones urbicani (Wurm, Studien 116-118).

In its different recensions, the Collectio Remensis served as a source (fons formalis) to other Gallican canonical collections, viz. the Collectio Diessensis, Collectio Pithouensis, Collectio Sancti Amandi, and, via the latter, the Collectio Bellovacensis. It was also one of the sources of the fourth part of the Quadripartitus.

A digitized version of the codex unicus is planned to be made available online on https://digital.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de

Literature

Older literature is listed in Kéry, Collections 50, see additionally Klaus Zechiel-Eckes, Die erste Dekretale. Der Brief Papst Siricius’ an Bischof Himerius von Tarragona vom Jahr 385 (JK 255). Aus dem Nachlass mit Ergänzungen hg. von D. Jasper (2013), p. 46f. On the links to the Collectio Sancti Amandi, see Michael Eber, Stefan Esders, David Ganz and Till Stüber, Selection and Presentation of Texts in Early Medieval Canon Law Collections. Approaching the Codex Remensis (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Phill. 1743), in: Creative Selection between Emending and Forming Medieval Memory, ed. Sebastian Scholz and Gerald Schwedler (Millennium-Studien 96, 2022), 105–136. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110757279-008 On its reception in the Quadripartitus, see Kerff, Quadripartitus 61f. On the collection’s relation to the Three-Chapters Controversy, see Michael Eber, Christologie und Kanonistik. Der Dreikapitelstreit in merowingischen libri canonum (MGH Schriften, forthcoming), on its genesis and reception in other canonical collections, see the monograph of Till Stüber, forthcoming.

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