Ivo of Chartres, Decretum

Title	Ivo of Chartres, Decretum
Key	ID
Wikidata Item no.	Q113382620
Size	Very large (more than 2000 canons)
Terminus post quem	1091
Terminus ante quem	1099
Century	saec. XI
Place of origin	Chartres
European region of origin	Northern France
General region of origin	Northwestern Europe
Specific region of origin	Chartres
Main author	Christof Rolker
No. of manuscripts	many (10 to 99)

There are three systematic collections associated with Bishop Ivo of Chartres: the Tripartita, the Decretum, and the Panormia. Only the Decretum can be linked with certainty to Ivo, who began to collect material when still at Saint-Quentin and had a mature version of the collection at hand in 1095.

Structure and content

The Decretum is one of the most comprehensive systematic collections of canon law of the Middle Ages. The material (approximately 3760 canons) is organised thematically into seventeen books of varying length. The first two books are devoted to the sacraments, followed by individual books, for example on the ecclesiastical hierarchy (Book 5), marriage law (Book 8) and a book ‘on lay matters’ (Book 16: De officiis laicorum); the last book is devoted to speculative theology. In general, canon law and theology are inseparable in Ivo's work; the Decretum contains an extraordinary amount of theological material (above all, from the writings of St Augustine).

Ivo wrote a prologue to the Decretum that is found with all copies of his collection but also a number of other collections; most Panormia copies, the Panormia-derivative Collection X partium, one Tripartita copy, an abbreviation of Gratian's Decertum, and other works all begin with Ivo's prologue (which also was copied as part of his epistolary and enjoyed a separate circulation).

Formal sources

The Decretum contains almost all material found in the Liber decretorum of Burchard of Worms, and the division of the books is clearly inspired by Burchard. Ivo and his collaborators presumably used two different versions of the Liber decretorum; Chartres, BM, 161 is closely related to one of the copies they used. While Burchard's collection is comprehensive, it contributed only about half of the material that Ivo included in his own collection. The most important major sources are part A of the Tripartita and the Collectio Britannica. The first of the two so-called Arsenal collections is the best witness of the working materials Ivo and his team must have produced in the course of compiling the Decretum. It served as a preparatory collection to the Decretum in that it contained most non-Burchardian materials that ultimately were included in the Decretum. Another preparatory collection was a florilegium on the Eucharist Ivo had compiled when still canon at Saint-Quentin. Among the smaller sources, Ivo used Nicholas' Responsa perhaps from a manuscript related to Vat. lat. 3827, the collection of Chartres, BM, 193, and the Collectio canonum in Paris, BnF, lat. 13368.

Editions

The first edition was published by Jean van der Meulen (Molinaeus) in 1561 at Louvain. His edition was based on two copies, a „codex regius“ and a Cologne manuscript which no one has been able to identify. The surviving manuscript closest to the edition is Vat. Pal. lat. 587. Jean Fronteau published in Paris in 1647 a second, inferior edition as the first volume of the Opera omnia of Ivo. This second edition was reprinted in Migne PL 161. 47–1036. At present Martin Brett is preparing an edition he makes available at https://ivo-of-chartres.github.io/decretum.html

The Decretum in the Clavis Database

The present analysis (ID) is based on Paris, BnF, lat. 14315. Landau has established that the „French“ version was used in compiling Collectio B of the Tripartita, the Panormia, the Collectio S. Genoveve and a collection on fol. 314r–393v of the Ms Paris, BnF, lat. 4809.

Extant Manuscripts

Only a relatively small number of complete copies have survived, but as several fragments make clear, the impact of Ivo's collection was wide and rapid; already in his lifetime, it was read, used, and copied well outside his diocese.

Sigla of the edition

The sigla for the major manuscripts in the following table are those of the edition by Martin Brett.

Sigla	Manuscript
A	Paris, Arsenal, 713 (Northern France, saec. XII)
C	Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 19 (Christ Church, Canterbury, ca. 1125)
P	Paris, BnF, lat. 14315 (written perhaps in the Chartres area, saec. XII)
R	London, British Library, Royal 11.D.VII (from Lincoln, saec. XII/XIII)
S	Sigüenza, Biblioteca del Archivo de la Catedral de Sigüenza, 61 (incomplete; saec. XIII)
V	Città del Vaticano, BAV, Vat. lat. 1357 (French, saec. XII)

English vs. French manuscripts

Landau divided the surviving copies of the Decretum into a French (P and V) and an English group, (C and R). As Brett has shown, P and V share many readings against C and R (and vice versa). There are also some texts found in group but not the other. While there is some evidence that the exemplars behind PV and CR were reworked independently (when eliminating doublets, they made different choices), the workshops producing these two versions were apparently in contact with each other. An appendix of three folia at the end of the French Vat. lat. 1357 (fol. 244va–247rb), written in the main hand, contains the canons found in the „English“ copies.

Manuscript descriptions on this wiki

For manuscripts, see Category:Manuscript of ID (number of entries: 25).

Influence on other collections

The Decretum was used widely in northern France and England in the first half of the twelfth century, and copied well beyond that date. Several compilers took the massive Decretum as the starting point for their own, shorter collections. The most famous abbreviations of this kind are part B of the Tripartita and the extremely influential Panormia (which took additional material from the Collectio IV librorum) Another short version is the Harly Abbreviation named after London, British Library, Harley 3090.

Literature

For the manuscripts, the editions and the classification of the copies and some of the excerpts see Landau, Das Dekret, pp. 1–44; reprinted in his: Kanones und Dekretalen, pp. 117*–160* and 473*f. He also lists the canons peculiar to each version. For the manuscripts, the sources and the use of the Britannica see Brett, Urban II, pp. 41–44. – For the prologue see Bruce Brasington, The Prologue of Ivo of Chartres: A fresh consideration of the manuscripts, in : Proceedings of the 8th ICMCL, pp. 3–22. Idem, Studies in the Nachleben of Ivo of Chartres: The Influence of his Prologue on Several Panormia-Derivate Collections, in: Proceedings of the 9th ICMCL, pp. 63–85. –For the translation of the prologue into English, see Somerville and Brasington, Prefaces, pp. 132–158. Jean Werckmeister has published the Latin text, a translation into French together with an introduction: Yves de Chartres, Prologue, texte latin et traduction française (Sources canoniques 1, Paris 1997). See also from Werckmeister, Le premier „canoniste“: Yves de Chartres, RDC 47/1 (1997), pp. 53–70. – For the use of two copies of Burchard see Fowler-Magerl, Fine Distinctions, pp. 146–152. – For the papal decretals see Jasper, The Beginning of the Decretal Tradition, passim. Jasper has established the use of the Britannica for letters of popes Honorius (see p. 90 n. 5) and Leo IV (p. 109) and the use of both the Tripartita and the Britannica for some of the letters of pope Nicholas I (p. 124). Most of the letters of popes John VIII and Stephen V were also taken from the Britannica. For the letters of pope Leo I, see p. 57 n. 237, for the letters of pope John VIII, p. 129 f, for the letters of pope Stephen V, p. 131. – For the use of a synodal ordo taken from an Italian copy of the Liber decretorum of Burchard see Schneider, Die Konzilsordines, pp. 36 f [198] and 89. – For the excerpt in the Ms Lincoln see Paul Fournier, Notes sur les anciennes collections, RHD 12 (1933), pp. 130–132. – I would like to express my gratitude to Martin Brett who lent me his analyse of the excerpt in the Ms Antwerp, Musaeum Plantin-Moretus M. 144 and to Hans Van de Wouw who lent me his analyse of the Ms Leiden, BPL 184. Landau, Neue Forschungen, pp. 25–27; reprinted in his: Kanones und Deketalen, p. 201*–203*. Idem, Quellen und Bedeutung des Gratianischen Dekrets, Studia et Documenta Historiae et Iuris 52 (1986), p. 223; reprinted in his: Kanones und Dekretalen, p. 212*.

See now Martin Brett, Editions, Manuscripts and Readers in Some Pre-Gratian Collections, in: Ritual, Text and Law: Studies in Medieval Canon Law and Liturgy presented to Roger E. Reynolds, ed. K. G. Cushing and R. F. Gyug (Ashgate 2004), p. 212. – Kéry, Collections p. 250–253 – Rolker, Canon law pp. 329-357.