Collectio Casinensis

The collection in the Ms Montecassino, Archivio e Biblioteca dell’Abbazia 216 was compiled at and for the abbey in the second decade of the 12th century. The manuscript was copied in Beneventan script. The canons in the collection are not numbered. Roger Reynolds, who published an analysis of the collection numbered the texts, and the present analysis is based on his analysis (RO). Reynolds points to the use of papal bulls pertaining to the abbey itself (canons 312–315). Roughly the first half of the collection (to canon 192) consists of canons taken from the Collectio V librorum and the Liber decretorum of Burchard. The rest of the collection alternates between canons from these two sources and extracts from later material. There are numerous canons also found in the Ivonian Decretum and/or Collectio B of the Tripartita. An extract from a letter of pope Alexander II (canon 205) comes from one of the two. Canon 208, Presbiterorum filios (decree 14 of the council held at Melfi in 1089), is inscribed Decretum Gregorius septimus papa et Urbanus secundus, an inscription also used in the Ivonian collections. A similar inscription 216 is attached to a different canon in the collection in the Ms Vat. lat. 4977. This collection has much in common with the Casinensis. It, too, consists largely of canons from Burchard and the Collectio V librorum.

The Collectio Casinensis contains what is probably the earliest surviving copy of the Proprie auctoritates apostolice sedis (canon 299. 4). It also contains canons from the „Cassino“ version of the Diversorum patrum sententie (74T), the 14th decree of the council of Piacenza (1095), and the seventh decree of the Lateran council of 1110, which is inscribed here Paschalis papa omnibus orthodoxis (canon 327). It is the most recent text in the collection. The compiler used some of the same sources as the compiler of the Polycarpus, which was being compiled at Rome at the same time. Robert Somerville points out the similarity of the text of canon 208 to the transmission of that text in the Polycarpus.

Literature

For the analysis see Roger Reynolds, The Collectio canonum Casinensis duodecimi seculi (Codex terscriptus). A Derivative of the South-Italian Collection in Five Books. An Implicit Edition with Introductory Study (Monumenta Liturgica Beneventana III, Studies and Texts 137, Toronto 2001). – See Myron Wojtowytsch, Proprie auctoritates apostolice sedis: Bemerkungen zu einer bisher unbeachteten Überlieferung, DA 40 (1984), pp. 616–619. – For the canons of the council of Melfi (1089), see Somerville, Pope Urban II, pp. 187, 212 and 267. – For the councils of Paschal II see Blumenthal, The Early Councils, p. 120. – Kéry, Canonical Collections, pp. 279–280.