Registri Ecclesiae Carthaginensis Excerpta

Title	Registri Ecclesiae Carthaginensis Excerpta
Key	?
Alternative title	Collectio Concilii Carthaginensis XVII
Alternative title	Codex canonum ecclesiae Africanae (Pithou)
Wikidata Item no.	Q113240962
Century	saec. V
European region of origin	Northern Africa
Author	Christof Rolker

The Registri Ecclesiae Carthaginensis Excerpta are a small collection of canons from fifth-century North Africa. It has not survived independently, but was confirmed at the 17th Council of Carthage in 419. Only a small portion of the 100 canons were newly adopted in Carthage; the vast majority confirm the decisions of other African councils from 393 to 418. The designation as Excerpta goes back to Cross and refers to a source of the collection (the Registrum) that is now lost.

The Excerpta were widely received not only in North Africa, but also in Spain, Gaul, Italy and the eastern Mediterranean. Dionysius Exiguus took many canons from the Excerpta for the second version of his Collectio Dionysiana, and through this, the African council decisions were preserved in many Latin law collections. In the East, it was John Scholasticus who translated the Excerpta into Greek, incorporated them into his own Synagoge, and thus ensured their reception in further collections.

In the Collectio Dionysiana and many other collections that followed, the canons from this collection are collectively referred to as decisions of a council of the African Church. The outdated designation Codex canonum ecclesiae Africanae goes back to the editio princeps by Pierre Pithou.