Collectio IV librorum

The Collectio IV librorum (= 4L) was compiled not long after the 74T. It is a reworking and enlargement of that collection and contains all but 10 of the 315 canons. The compiler used the same sources, improved the readings of the canons and added others, many from the Liber decretorum of Burchard, but none from a later date. Because the compiler made use of the same uncommon collection of the letters of Gregory I (C + P, see above) as the compiler of the 74T, the collection was probably compiled in the same general area, that is, not far from Cologne.

The collection is divided arbitrarily into four books, the first three of which are divided into titles. There is a capitulatio in most manuscripts in the same form as the capitulatio in the 74T, divided into two columns, one with the inscriptions and the other with the incipits of the canons. In almost all copies of the original version of the collection each of the books contains 137 or 138 canons. In the copy in the Ms Canterbury, Cathedral Library B 7, fol. 1–55r, which was used as the basis of the present analysis (VO), the 4th book has only 63 canons in common with the other copies. The 4th book contains decrees of what the compiler calls the four principal councils (Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon) in the Dionysio-Hadriana version, followed by a single decretal of Gregory I (Omnino miramur; JE 1744, Reg. 9. 215). The transmission of chronologically ordered conciliar decrees together with, but separated from, the other canons of a systematically ordered collection was to influence a number of other collections in the late 11th century: the collection in the Ms Celle, Bibliothek des Oberlandesgerichts C 8, the Collectio Tarraconensis and the Collectio VII librorum in the Ms Turin, BNU D. IV. 33. The Canterbury manuscript was chosen, even though the canons of the 4th book do not amount to 138, because of the quality of the text and because of additions not found in the other copies. The additions are also listed with the key VR. Following the canons of the 120 four principal councils in the other manuscripts are the decrees of Ancyra through Vaison followed by Omnino miramur (JE 1744).

John Gilchrist published an analysis of the 4L based on the Ms Paris, BnF, lat. 4281A. Gilchrist numbered the canons in each book from 1–137/138. In the manuscripts, however, the canons are numbered according to their place in the titles. I numbered the canons in the present analysis accordingly and put the numbering according to Gilchrist (VP) in the location column.

In 1991 Gilchrist published a comparison of the 74T and the 4L and concluded that the person responsible for the 4L demonstrated „unsurpassed abilities among canonists of this period“ and that the alterations were of „such a high order and executed with such accuracy“ that he must have had a definite plan for the whole. Gilchrist sees the 4L as an example of a collection concerned with reform on a regional level and he distances himself from the attitude that all ecclesiastical reform in the 11th century was „papal, linear and progressive“. The collection, he said, is concerned with the lower clergy and with questions of liturgy.

This improved version of the 74T found no great acceptance in Lotharingia, although the first known use of it was probably that of the compiler of a further collection in four books. The collection of Celle contains no canons later than those in its prototype. It used the form of the 4L with 138 canons in the fourth book. The reason for the lack of acceptance in Lotharingia may have been the result of the arrival of copies of the version of the 74T sanctioned by the pope.

The 4L was a great success in Poitiers, however, where it existed alongside the 74T. Most surviving copies of the 4L have some connection with Poitiers. The collection was used there by the compiler of the first version of the Collectio Tarraconensis and by the compiler of the Collectio VII librorum in the Ms Turin, BNU D. IV. 33.

Several copies of the 4L were augmented: London BL Arundel 173, Madrid BN 267 and St. Petersburg Publichnaja Biblioteka F.v. II.13. In some canons were merely inserted into the first three books. In others, numerous canons were added to the beginning and to the end; in these copies the collection was no longer divided into books. Because there are such differences between the augmented versions only those canons are found in the data bank which were inserted into the first three books in the London manuscript (VS). 121

Detlev Jasper brought attention to the first ten folios of the copy of the original version of the 4L in the Ms Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica 244. These folios contain a series of excerpts from letters of pope Gregory I and from writings of saint Augustine. These excerpts were later to be used for the augmented version of the collection. He argues that the Ms Bergamo, which is a French manuscript, represents a link between the earliest version of the 4L and the augmented version. He points out that the Bergamo manuscript also contains the original version of the election decree of pope Nicholas II. All other transmissions of that version of that decree are French as well. The series of canons on the first folios of the Ms Bergamo occurs are also found in the collection in the Mss Florence, BML Ashburnham 1554 and Paris, BnF, lat. 3858C. See below pp. 148–149.

Ivo of Chartres used the 4L for his Panormia. Both the 4L and the 74T were used by the compiler of the early 12th century collection in the Ms Vat. lat. 3829. This historically ordered collection was probably compiled in northwest Italy, perhaps at Verona or Padua.

Literature

For the manuscripts see John Gilchrist, The Manuscripts of the Canonical Collection in Four Books, ZRG Kan. 69 (1983), pp. 65 f and 74 f. For the Mss Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica MA 244 und Vat. Reg. lat. 276 see also Jasper, Das Papstwahldekret, pp. 19–33. Idem, Ein Brief Papst Alexanders II. an Abt Ivo I. von Saint-Denis, in: Grundlagen des Rechts. Festschrift für Peter Landau zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Richard H. Helmholz, Paderborn 2000, pp. 131–139. – For the intentions of the compiler see John Gilchrist, Changing the Structure of a Canonical Collection, in: In Iure Veritas. Studies in Memory of Schafer Williams, ed. by Steven B. Bowman and Blanche E. Cody, Cincinnati 1991, pp. 98 ff. – For the influence of the collection on Poitiers see Fowler-Magerl, Fine Distinctions, ZRG Kan. 83 (1997), pp. 176 ff. – Kéry, Canonical Collections, pp. 210–213.

Categories

• key is VO (plus VP in location column)
• belongs to: 74T and derivatives
• medium (500 to 1000 canons) collection
• place?
• saec. XI (?)
• Collection

DEFAULTSORT "Collectio 004 librorum"