Collectio Farfensis

The manuscript Vat. lat. 8487 contains the chartulary (regestum) of the monastery of Farfa. The final entry is from the year 1099 and the compiler is Gregory of Catino. The chartulary is followed by four groups of canons from fol. 59r to fol. 84v. Theo Kölzer edited the canonistic part of the manuscript. He treated these groups of canons as books of a collection, all the while acknowledging that the groups were not compiled at the same time. This edition is the basis for the present analysis (FA).

On fol. 84 is a capitulation for the canons on fol. 69v–76v. This group of canons, which deals with a wide range of matters concerning the clergy, is designated Liber primus in the capitulation. The capitulation for a Liber secundus follows on fol. 84v. For lack of space the 123 final rubrics of this capitulation were copied on fol. 69r. The texts of this „book“ are found on fol. 59r–64v, directly after the chartulary. It is entitled De rebus et substantiis et fidelium oblationibus. According to Kölzer this group of texts was compiled as a supplement to the chartulary. On fol. 77 begins a new group of canons with the title De magna ecclesie libertate vel monachorum seu clericorum optima honestaque securitate. It has a capitulation but is nowhere called a book. The final group of canons, with the title Iura legalia venerabilibus locis eorumque ministeriis pertinentia, is devoted to secular law. It is, in my opinion, the second section of the third group of canons just as the texts from Roman law in the Collectio Anselmo dedicata (see above) are sections of the partes into which that collection is divided. The compiler of the collection in the Ms Vat. lat. 8487 may have seen the Collectio Anselmo dedicata, but did not have it before him when he was assembling his collection. The capitulation for the third group of canons in the Ms Vat. lat. 8487 is different in form from that of the first two groups. The rubrics for the texts deriving from letters of pope Gregory I appear first and then the rubrics for the others. Again it may have been the Collectio Anselmo dedicata that inspired this separate treatment.

Kölzer dates the first two groups of canons circa 1099 and the latter two slightly later although none of the material or formal sources are that late. The compiler had at his disposal the shorter form of the pseudoisidorian decretals, the Beneventan Collectio V librorum and the Liber decretorum of Burchard. He also had access to the Epitome Iuliani and Frankish capitularies. He does not seem to have had direct access to the 74T. Instead, he probably used for the first canons in the third group a florilegium similar to the florilegium in the Ms Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana 3006, fol. 203r–205v (FB). The Riccardiana manuscript also contains the Liber canonum diversorum sanctorum patrum (Collection of S. Maria Novella). The first six canons (seven according to Picasso, because he treats Quam sit necessarium as two separate canons), are found in the same form at the beginning of book 3 of the Farfensis. The texts in the Ms Riccardiana are taken from the form of the 74T which served the copy in the Ms Paris, BN n. a. l. 326 as prototype (see above p. 114). This explains why Kölzer found the same form of canon six in the Ms Paris, BN lat. 13658 and in the 4L, both of which are taken from this form. In the Riccardiana manuscript there is neither capitulation nor rubrics and the texts are not numbered. Canon eight is represented only by 124 the incipit and Require retro, which refers to the presence of the canon in the Collection of S. Maria Novella in the same manuscript. Canons 16–18 are repetitions of canons 10, 13, 11 and 12.

Kölzer refuses rightly to judge this collection in terms of its „reform“ tendencies and characterizes it as an attempt to confirm monastic rights. He associates it with other collections which are found together with monastic chartularies like the collection in the Ms Paris BN n. a. l. 326 from Saint-Denis and the Beneventana, which is found together with the Chronicon S. Sophiae (see below).

Literature:

For the edition of the Collectio Farfensis see Theo Kölzer, Collectio canonum Regesto Farfensi inserta (MIC Series B: Corpus collectionum 5, Vatican City 1982). See also the review by Martin Bertram, Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia 38 (1983), pp. 217–221. – For the use of the version of the Diversorum patrum sententie in the Ms Paris, BN n. a. l. 326 see Fowler-Magerl, Fine Distinctions, pp. 156–163. –The collection in the Ms Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana 3006, fol. 203r–205v, was analysed by Giorgio Picasso, Ancora un florilegio patristico sulle prerogative dei monaci (Firenze, Riccardiana 3006, fol. 203r–205v), in: Nobiltà e Chiese nel Medioevo e altri saggi. Scritti in onore di Gerd Tellenbach, ed. by Cinzio Violante, Rome 1993, pp. 223–232. For a description of the Ms Florence, Riccardiana 3006 as a whole see Giuseppe Motta, Liber canonum diversorum sanctorum patrum sive Collectio in CLXXXIII titulos digesta (MIC Series B: Corpus collectionium 7, Vatican City 1988), pp. xxi–xxii. – Kéry, Canonical Collections, pp. 264–265.