Collectio CCCXLII capitulorum

The Collectio CCCXLII capitulorum survives in three manuscripts, none of them earlier than the 11th century. The collection is part of an 11th century compendium in these manuscripts. The Collectio CCCXLII capitulorum itself is earlier, however. None of the canons in the collection can be dated later than the 9th century. The manuscripts are: Paris, BnF, lat. 3839A (11th century, from Saint-Aubin at Angers), fol. 110r–134r; Montpellier, Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire. Section de Médecine, H 137 (11th century, France), fol. 272v–306v; Palermo, Archivio Storico Diocesano, 14 (sometimes cited as „2 Qq E 17“, 12th century, France), fol. 118r–128r. The present analysis is based on Paris 3839A (TH). The copy in the Palermo manuscript (TI) is less complete; when canons in the Paris manuscript are also found in the Palermo copy, this is noted in the location column. [62]

In the Ms Paris, BnF, lat. 3839A the collection is preceded by the confirmation of the 12th council of Toledo (681). The rubric of the first canon in the capitulatio (De agnita et confirmata prelectione fastigii principalis) is followed by the text of the first canon of the same council. The capitulatio for the rest of the collection occupies folios 110r–115rb. It provides not only the rubrics but also the inscriptions of each canon and can easily be mistaken for a separate collection.

There are reasons to believe that the collection was compiled in Burgundy, perhaps at Lyon. More than two thirds of its canons are taken from the ten books of the Collectio Hispana Systematica, which apparently was known outside Spain only at Lyon. The compiler presents the canons in the order in which he found them until he had reached the end of the Hispana systematica and then he began excerpting again from the first five books. Following these canons are excerpts from the Collectio Dionysiana and, as Hubert Mordek points out, from the Collectio Vetus Gallica (not, as Fournier once thought, from the Collectio Herovalliana). In all three manuscripts the Collectio Dacheriana is present, too. The use of the Vetus Gallica and Dacheriana also point to Lyon. If the collection was in fact compiled in Burgundy it was taken to Aquitaine by the 11th century. The Montpellier manuscript, as Gerhard Schmitz has shown, would be used for the mid 11th century Collectio XVII librorum.

All three manuscripts containing the Collectio CCCXLII capitulorum have, in addition to the collection, a compendium which Jacqueline Rambaud-Bûhot describes as the product of the Gregorian reform. She points to the fact that all three manuscripts contain the forged letter de libertate monachorum attributed to pope Gregory I (JE † 1366) which is also found in the Diversorum patrum sententiae (74T). Furthermore, the Paris manuscript contains the letter which pope Gregory VII wrote in 1078 to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, king, princes, clerics and laymen of the provinces of Narbonne, Gaul, Gascogne and Spain telling them that he was sending envoys to reform their regions (JL 5042).

Other elements in the compendium are prior to the late 11th century, however, and there are connections in all of the manuscripts to Fulbert of Chartres and the vicinity of Paris. A selection of 26 canons from the council of Meaux-Paris (845/46) is found in all three manuscripts and nowhere else. The Ms Montpellier contains a penitential which has been attributed to Fulbert of Chartres, and Franz Kerff is [63] not adverse to the attribution. The other two manuscripts contain letters of Fulbert. Four of these letters, all sent to sees in the northeast of France, are the same in both manuscripts: one to the archbishop Leothericus of Sens, one to bishop Fulk of Orléans, one to abbot Gauzelin of Fleury and one to abbot Richard of Saint-Medard of Soisson. The Ms Paris, BnF, lat. 17526, which contains the compendium without the Collectio CCCXLII capitulorum, also contains the Panormia of Ivo of Chartres.

Could it have been Fulbert who brought the Collectio CCCXLII capitulorum from Aquitaine to the Paris region? It has recently be suggested that the reform ideas which would later be found in Lorraine would be developed at the school of Chartres under bishop Fulbert and that it was students of Fulbert who brought the pseudoisidorian material and the writings of Hincmar of Reims to Liège.

Literature

See Paul Fournier, Notice sur le manuscrit H.137 de l’Ecole de Médecine de Montpellier, Annales de l’Université de Grenoble 9 (1897), pp. 357–389. –Emil Besta, Di una collezione canonistica palermitana, Il Circolo Giuridico 40 (1909), pp. 8–21. Rambaud-Buhot, Un corpus inédit, pp. 271–281. – Mordek, Kirchenrecht und Reform, pp. 180–182. – Kéry, Collections p. 180–182.

For the penitential attributed to Fulbert see Franz Kerff, Das sogenannte Paenitentiale Fulberti. Überlieferung, Verfasserfrage, Edition, ZRG Kan. 73 (1987), pp. 1–40. – For the letters of Fulbert, see Frederick Behrends, The Letters and Poems of Fulbert of Chartres (Oxford 1976). I am grateful also to Christof Rolker for help in regard to the letters of Fulbert. For Fulbert as the person responsible for teaching at Chartres the reformers at Lorraine see William Zielzulewicz, The School of Chartres and Reform Influences before the Pontificate of Leo IX, The Catholic Historical Review 77 (1991), pp. 383–402 (see the review of Detlev Jasper, DA 48, 1992, pp. 273–274). Also Idem, Sources of Reform in the Episcopate of Airard of Nantes, 1050–1054, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 47 (1996), pp. 432–445, here p. 444 f.