Collectio Dionysiana II

Title	Collectio Dionysiana II
Key	DY
Alternative title	Zweite Redaction der Conciliensammlung (Maassen)
Alternative title	Sammlungen des Dionysius Exiguus (Maassen)
Alternative title	Dionysiana altera (Schwartz)
Alternative title	Codex canonum ecclesiasticorum Dionysii Exigui
Size	Small (100 to 500 canons)
Terminus post quem	496
Terminus ante quem	523
Century	saec. VI
Place of origin	Rome
European region of origin	Central Italy
General region of origin	Southern Europe and Mediterranean
Main author	User:Christof Rolker

General

Dionysius Exiguus soon after he had compiled the Collectio Dionysiana I felt the need to improve on his first translation. Doing so, he added more material, renumbered the canons, and wrote a new preface. In three manuscripts, this conciliar material is combined with a decretal collection containing a total of 38 decretals (of popes Siricius, Innocent I, Zosimus, Bonifacius I, Celestinus I, Leo I, Gelasius I, and Anastasius II) and one imperial rescript.

The revised version is known as the Dionysiana II (DY in the database). The decretal collection (the Liber decretorum Dionysii) has the key DX.

Content and Structure

Prefatory Matter and Canon Numbering

In the copy of this second version of the Dionysiana in Oxford, Bodleian Library, e Mus. 103 (9th century, northeastern France) and in separate copies of the prologue in the Mss Paris, BnF, lat. 1451, Paris, BnF, lat. 3846, and Köln, Dombibliothek, Cod. 212 the introductory letter is directed to a bishop Stephan of Salona on the Dalmatian coast.

In the Bodleian copy the letter is followed by a capitulatio with rubrics for all of the canons in the collection. The Greek canons from the councils of Nicaea through Constantinople are numbered without interruption from 1 to 165. Dionysius says that the collection he was using as his source also numbered them so. The canons of Chalcedon are numbered separately and so are the canons of Sardica. Following Sardica is a group of canons from three brief African collections: the Brevarium Hipponense of 397, the Codex Apiarii Causae of 419 and the Registri Ecclesiae Carthaginensis Excerpta. Dionysius referred to this group of canons as Synodus apud Carthaginem Africanorum quae constituit canones CXXXVIII and numbered the individual canons accordingly from 1 to 138. The compilers of the Collectio Hispana would take these texts from the Dionysiana.

Copies similar to that in the Bodleian manuscript are found in Paris, BnF, lat. 1536 (10th century) and Paris, BnF, lat. 3848 (13th century) and in Sankt Petersburg, Publičnaja Biblioteka im. M. E. Saltykova-Ščedrina, F.v.II.3 (7th century, Burgundy).

Addition of the Decretals?

Modern scholarship often describes (or at least treats) the Dionysiana II as containing the reworked conciliar canons and papal decretals, just as the 1661 edition presented the work. However, many scholars have articulated doubts about this. For discussion, see the separate article on the Liber decretorum Dionysii.

The manuscripts

For manuscripts, see Category:Manuscript of DY (number of entries: 2).

• Paris, BnF, lat. 3837
• Città del Vaticano, BAV, Vat. lat. 5845
• Modena, Archivio Capitolare, O.I.12

In addition, there are two manuscripts containing excerpts:

• Paris, BnF, lat. 3847, excerpt
• Paris, BnF, lat. 10399, excerpt

For its possible use by the so-called Leiden glosses, see Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. lat. qu. 69.

The editions

The editio princeps of the Dionysiana II was published by Christophe Justel in 1628, using the Bodleian manuscript. As Brett, Theodore points out, Justel for the 1643 edition added "capitula of the decretals as far as Anastasius II from an unknown source" (p. 138), but only the 1661 edition contained the decretals themselves, perhaps from a Hadriana manuscript (see the Liber decretorum Dionysii article for details). In any case the 1661 edition was reprinted in Migne PL 67.137–230 (councils) and 230–316 (decretals). This edition was, and still is, widely used in scholarship.

The present analysis is based on Migne PL 67. For the conciliar canons, only the material not in the first version has been entered in the database with the key DY. For the conciliar canons which were rearranged, no separate entry was created; insted, the numbering of Juret (as found in PL 67) is given in the location column of the decretal part of the fist version (search DY in the "Location" like here). The „African canons“ are listed separately with the same key. The decretal part of the second version was entered into the databased from Migne PL 67. The decretals of each pope are divided into paragraphs and these are numbered separately for each pope, not separately for each letter. The key is DX.

• Codex canonum ecclesiasticorum Dionysii Exigui, ed. Christophe Justel (Paris 1628). Online: https://digi.bib.uni-mannheim.de/urn/urn:nbn:de:bsz:180-digad-25043
• Codex canonum ecclesiasticorum Dionysii Exigui [...] editio altera, ed. Christophe Justel (Paris 1643). Online: https://books.google.de/books?id=YJYUAAAAQAAJ
• Bibliotheca iuris canonici veteris [...] vol. 1, ed. Guillaume Voel and Henri Justel (Paris 1661), 97–180. Online at https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_dozp_JFtZCgC/page/n6/mode/1up
• PL 67, col. 137–316. Online at https://archive.org/details/patrologiaecurs108unkngoog/page/n76/mode/1up

Literature

See Dionysiana I. - The Brevarium Hipponense of 397, the Codex Apiarii Causae of 419 and the Registri Ecclesiae Carthaginensis Excerpta after 419 were edited by Charles Munier, Concilia Africae A. 345 – A. 525 (CCL 149, Turnhout 1974), pp. 22–53, 98–148 and 173–247 respectively. For a description of these texts see F. L. Cross, History and Fiction in the African Canons, Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 12 (1961), pp. 227–247. – On the editions, see Brett, Theodore, Appendix. - For the source of the decretals used by Dionysius Exiguus see Wurm, Studien und Texte, pp. 108 ff. Also Jasper, Beginning pp. 28 n. 111, 35-36, 50-51, 53, and 60 n. 249. – Kéry, Collections pp. 11-21; for the Quesnelliana pp. 27–29. - Firey, The Collectio Dionysina (2008), https://ccl.rch.uky.edu/dionysiana-article.