Collectio Tripartita

The Tripartita combines two collections, both associated with the region of Chartres. Collectio A, the earlier of the two, is divided in two parts, each chronologically arranged. Collectio B is systematically arranged, an abbreviated form of the Decretum. This gives the collection as a whole the tripartite appearance. The first part of Collectio A contains extracts from papal letters and the second part conciliar canons. The compiler explains in his prologue that the decretals come first because there were decretals before there were councils. Most of the papal letters are ultimately from the pseudoisidorian forgery, but the compiler of the Tripartita did not begin compiling the Collectio A using that forgery directly, instead he apparently used the [Brugensis]. He made use of the prologue to that collection and it was there, too, that he found reference to the pope Crisogenus whom he would include in his own chronological presentation of papal decrees. He used the version of that collection which included those texts appended to it which are found in the Ms London BL Cotton Cleopatra C.VIII.

Many of the genuine decretals in the Collectio A are from the Britannica, the compiler of which had access directly or indirectly to papal archives. Robert Somerville has pointed out that the version of the canons of the Roman synod of November 1078 in the Tripartita is that of the earliest form in the Register and not that of the Registrum Vaticanum, which contained corrections and alterations. Almost all the extracts from the letters of popes Gelasius I, Pelagius I, Boniface, Leo IV, John VIII and Stephen V found in the Britannica were used for the Collectio A. The texts attributed to pope Gregory I were taken in part directly from his Register and in part from collections compiled in or near Reims. The Collectio Sinemuriensis was used as well as the older core of texts in the collection of the Ms Paris, BN lat. 13368. To ward off objections in advance, it must be said that the Ms Paris 13368 is a rather poor copy and was not the copy used by the compiler of the Tripartita (but the copy we have of the Britannica was also not the copy used by the compiler of the Tripartita). Some of the texts of pope Nicholas I come from the Britannica, but most 188 do not. The decretals of Alexander II and Urban II in the Britannica are missing in the Tripartita.

The second part of Collectio A contains conciliar decrees ending with those of the 7th council of Toledo. Extracts from the 8th council follow, a profession of faith from the Liber Diurnus, decrees of the Quinisexte (council in Trullo) and 7th and 8th universal councils. Between the Greek and African councils (from canon 2. 17 onwards) are Sententie Grecorum doctorum taken from the Varia of the Britannica and from the 4th book of the Quadripartitus. At the end of the African councils (from canon 2. 56 onwards) are Sententie … orthodoxorum patrum aut leges catholicorum regum aut synodice sententie Gallicanorum aut Germanorum pontificum. These sententie were taken from the Varia of the Britannica and from the Quadripartitus.

Collectio B was compiled considerably later. Although they were compiled several years apart, Collectio A and Collectio B are always transmitted together with one exception: the copy in the Ms Berkeley, Law Library Robbins Collection 102. Martin Brett established in 1992 that the Collectio B used a copy of the Decretum more complete than any of those which survive. The closest to Collectio B is the incomplete copy of the Decretum in the Ms Paris, BN lat. 3874.

Brett, who is preparing an edition of the Tripartita with the help of Peter Landau, Robert Somerville and Roger Reynolds, distinguishes two groups of manuscripts. The earlier version has no capitulatio and almost no rubrics in textu. The later version is fully articulated. The present analysis is based on a copy of the later version, that in the Ms Paris, BN lat. 3858B (IT). The earlier version of the Tripartita is contained in the following Mss: Alençon, BM 135; Berlin, SBPK Hamilton 345; Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College 393; Copenhagen, Kongelike Bibliotek Thott 555 in quarto; Krakow, Archiwum Kapitulny Metropolitalnej Krakowskiej sine numero; Oxford, Bodleian Library d’Orville 46 in quarto; Paris, BN lat. 3858, 4282 and 13656. The later version is in the following Mss: Admont, Stiftsbibliothek 162; Berkeley, Law Library Robbins Collection 102 (which Martin Brett suspects to be the manuscript which disappeared from Stift Lambach in the Steiermark in the course of the 20th century); Berlin, SPKB 197; Gniezno, Bibliotheka Kapitulna 25; Munich, StB Clm 12603; Olomouc, Státní vědecká Knihovna C. O. 205; Paris, BN lat. 3858A and 3858B; Vat. Reg. lat. 973; Vorau, Stiftsbibliothek 350; Wolfenbüttel, Herzog-August-Bibliothek Helmstedt 180 and Zurich, Zentralbibliothek Car. C 42. 189

The numbering of the canons differs from manuscript to manuscript, and there is no consistency in recent literature. The numbering of the canons in the edition in preparation is noted in the location column with IU. For technical reasons it was not possible to use the numbering of the future edition as the key for the present analysis.

Collectio A would be used for Ivo's Decretum. The complete Tripartita was used to produce many collections including the Collectio X partium in the Ms Cologne, Historisches Archiv W. Kl. fol. 199 and the two Collectiones Catalaunenses. In England Collectio B would be used together with the Collectio Lanfranci for the systematic collection in the Ms Oxford, Bodleian Library Bodley 561. Collectio B would also be used in the region of Salzburg for the Collectio Admontensis (Admont, Stiftsbibliothek 43 and 48) and for the collection of the Ms Vienna, ÖNB Cod. 982.

In Milan the Tripartita would be used to modernize older Milanese collections, the results being the surviving forms of the Collectio Ambrosiana I and Ambrosiana II. In the second quarter of the 12th century the Tripartita was taken to Poland from southern Germany or the Steiermark. The texts on sacraments and matters of monastic concern would also be used for the third collection in the Ms Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana F. 54 (on fol. 170r–226r, once a separate collection). The Tripartita was not used for the collection in nine volumina in the Ms Wolfenbüttel, Herzog- August-Bibliothek Gud. lat. 212, although Fournier and others (including myself) have maintained the opposite. Finally, the Tripartita was among the relatively small number of collections used to produce the Decretum Gratiani. Peter landau called it the 'Initialzündung' for Gratian's work, and as Anders Winroth has established, it was used both for the first recension (Gratian 1) and the later vulgate version (Gratian 2).

Christof Rolker has examined the letters of Ivo and established that the material in the Collectio A was available to Ivo from the beginning of his episcopate.

Literature:

For the manuscripts and the relationship to the Brugensis see Brett, Urban II, pp. 27–46. Idem, The sources, pp. 149–167. – The prologue was edited by Augustin Theiner, Disquisitiones criticae in praecipuas canonum et decretalium collectiones seu sylloges Gallandianae dissertationum de vetustis canonum collectionibus continuatio, Rome 1836, pp. 154–155 n. 25. For the translation of the prologue into English see Somerville and Brasington, Prefaces, pp. 131–132. – For the use of the uncorrected Register for the canons of the Roman synod of 1078 see Robert Somerville, The Councils of Gregory VII, Studi Gregoriani 13 (1989), pp. 46– 48. – For the Admont collections see Winfried Stelzer, Gelehrtes Recht in Österreich. 190 Von den Anfängen bis zum frühen 14. Jahrhundert (MIÖG Ergänzungsband 26, Vienna 1982), pp. 25–34. – For the transfer of a southern German copy to Poland see Jan Bistricky, Studien zum Urkunden-, Brief- und Handschriftenwesen des Bischofs Heinrich Zdík von Olmütz, Archiv für Diplomatik 26 (1980), pp. 201–210. – For the collection in the Bodleian see Brett, The sources, pp. 149– 168. – For the Ambrosiana collections see Landau, Kanonessammlungen in der Lombardei, pp. 451 f; (reprinted in his Kanones und Dekretalen, p. 464*). – For the Ms Vallicelliana F 54 see Blumenthal, An Episcopal Handbook, pp. 13–24. Also Kuttner, Some Roman manuscripts, pp. 24 f. – For the Tripartita and Gratian see Peter Landau, Gratians Arbeitsplan, in: Iuri Canonico Promovendo. Festschrift für Heribert Schmitz zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Winfried Aymans and Karl-Theodor Geringer, Regensburg 1994, pp. 691–707. See Titus Lenherr, Die Exkommunikations- und Depositionsgewalt der Häretiker bei Gratian und den Dekretisten bis zur Glossa Ordinaria des Johannes Teutonikus (St. Ottilien 1987), pp. 106–114. Also Anders Winroth, The Two Recensions of Gratian’s Decretum, ZRG Kan. 83 (1997), p. 26. – See Bruce Brasington, Glossing Strategies in Two Manuscripts of Pre-Gratian Canonical Collections, in: Grundlagen des Rechts. Festschrift für Peter Landau zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Richard H. Helmholz, Paderborn 2000, pp. 155–162. One of the manuscripts he deals with is Berlin, SPKB lat. fol. 197 (12th century, Maria Laach). Martin Brett assigns this copy to a circle of reform-minded clerics associated with Ivo. – For the reliance on the Britannica see Jasper, The Beginning of the Decretal Tradition, p. 124. Jasper notes that Ivo used more canons from pope Leo than any other pre-Gratian canonist. For the letters of Gelasius I, see p. 64 f, for the letters of Pelagius, p. 65, for the letters of Leo IV, p. 108. – For the use of the Sinemuriensis for the first 17 excerpts attributed to Gregory I (the first of which should have been attributed to Gregory II) see Fowler-Magerl, Fine Distinctions, p. 172 and n. 126. For the use of the older core of the Ms Paris 13368 for the excerpts 44–81 in the Tripartita, see the same article, p. 173 and n. 136. – On the canons of the Quinisextum in the Tripartita see Peter Landau, Überlieferung und Bedeutung der Kanones des Trullanischen Konzils im westlichen kanonischen Recht, in: The Council in Trullo Revisited, ed. by George Nedungatt and Michael Featherstone (Kanonika 6, Rome 1995), pp. 215–227. 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. Kathleen G. Cushing and Richard F. Gyug, Ashgate 2004, pp. 206, 211–212. – Kéry, Canonical Collections, pp. 244–250. 191