Collectio Britannica
| Title | Collectio Britannica |
|---|---|
| Key | LO |
| Wikidata Item no. | Q113760145 |
| Size | Large (1000 to 2000 canons) |
| Terminus post quem | 1091 |
| Terminus ante quem | 1099 |
| Century | saec. XI |
| European region of origin | Northern France |
| General region of origin | Northwestern Europe |
| Main author | Linda Fowler-Magerl |
The canonistic material in the Ms London, BL Additional 8873 (LO) is entitled Collectio Britannica because the only known copy is preserved in Britain. The collection is now thought to have been put into its final form in northern France, however; the content is essentially Roman. The quality of the present analysis suffers from the fact that the outer margin of the folios has been cut off, resulting in the loss of some of the inscriptions and, especially, in the latter part of the manuscript, of rubrics copied in the outer margin.
The material has traditionally been divided into eleven sections. On fol. 1r –8v is a capitulatio with rubrics for the part of the collection, which is found on fol. 9r–136v. The last of these rubrics refers to an excerpt from the fifth letter of pope John VIII. These rubrics are not found in the text nor do they correspond well to the canons. Martin Brett notes that the capitulatio „ends at the verso of the last leaf of a quire, and where that breaks off the numbering in the main text also stops, at fol. 121“.
The uniqueness of the Britannica lies in part in its transmission of genuine papal decretals, many of which are not found in any of the earlier collections. Decretals of popes Gelasius I and Pelagius I are found on fol. 9r–38v, decretals of pope Alexander II on fol. 38v–52r, decretals of pope John VIII on fol. 120r–136v, correspondence of Saint Boniface on fol. 136v–142r, decretals of pope Urban II on fol. 142v–153r, decretals of pope Stephen V on fol. 153r–159v and decretals of pope Leo IV on fol. 159v–171r. Much of this decretal material was apparently taken from papal registers. Some of the decretals were taken from the collection of Deusdedit and others from much older [185] collections like the 6th century Liber auctoritatum ecclesiae Arelatensis. Two parts of the collection contain mixtures of papal decretals, patristic texts and Roman law; they have been entitled Varia I (fol. 52r–120r) and Varia II (fol. 171r–210v).
The collection could have been put together shortly after 1090. The most recent datable text is a canon from the council of Melfi (1089). Martin Brett warns against a hasty decision, however. He points to the fact that the letters of popes Alexander II, John VIII and Stephen V in the Britannica are taken from certain parts, rather than from the whole, of their pontificates. He suggests that this could be true, too, of the extracts from letters of pope Urban II. This would mean that the collection could have been completed considerably later than the council of Melfi.
It was Martin Brett and Robert Somerville who demonstrated that the form of the collection in the British Library was put together in northern France. Brett bases his argument on the contents of the Varia II, which uses sources from west Francia. A specific scriptorium has not been identified because a number of scribes were at work and, as Somerville remarks, one must take into account „the imponderables of scribal travel“. Perhaps the whole ensemble was prepared specially for use at Chartres although the one manuscript known to us was not used by Ivo. As Stephan Kuttner points out, a passage from the prologue of the Panormia of Ivo is interpolated into the text of one of the decretals of Urban II in the Britannica.
The second outstanding feature of the collection is that it is the first canon law collection to use the Digest of Justinian. The Digest had not been cited directly by anyone since pope Gregory I although, according to Stephan Kuttner, it was cited indirectly by pope Agatho (678–681). Almost all of the texts in the Britannica are from the first part of the Digest, the Digestum Vetus, but there is one text from the middle part (the Infortiatum) and one from the last part (the Digestum Novum) as well as glosses to those texts.
Antonia Fiori has determined that neither of the two surviving versions of the Digest, neither the Florentine nor the Bolognese, was the direct source, instead an autonomous version which has apparently not survived was used. Fiori systematizes the content of the Digest texts under the categories: marriage, judicial procedure, contractual law, delicts (lex Aquilia de damno), free status and slavery. Fiori characterizes the Digest texts cited as reflecting the spirit of the Gregorian reform. I would relate them to the changing social and [186] economic situation affecting both ecclesiastical and secular society in the late 11th century.
The Britannica was used directly for both the Tripartita and the Ivonian Decretum although, as Jasper describes in detail, the compiler of the Decretum relied to a great extent on the selection already made by the compiler of the Tripartita. Martin Brett points out that many, if not all, extracts from letters of popes Gelasius, Pelagius, Bonifacius, Leo IV, John VIII and Stephen V in the Britannica are also found in the Tripartita. From the letters of pope Alexander II (represented by 87 extracts), however, only two found their way into the Tripartita. Similarly, from the letters of pope Urban II (represented by 47 extracts) only two found their way into that collection. This means that the compiler of the Tripartita used a form of the Britannica in which the decretals of Alexander II and Urban II were missing. Gratian learned of the material in the Britannica by way of the Tripartita.
Manuscript
Literature
The manuscript is described in detail in Somerville, Pope Urban II, pp. 8–21. Somerville edited and translated into English the letters of Urban II found in the Britannica. From another point of view: Antonia Fiori, La „Collectio Britannica“ e la riemersione del Digesto, RIDC 9 (1998), pp. 81–121, here pp. 84–90. See also Robert Somerville, The letters of Pope Urban II in the Collectio Britannica, in: Proceedings of the 7th ICMCL, pp. 103–114. Also Blumenthal, Conciliar Canons and Manuscripts, p. 373. For a description of the manuscript, a listing of the northern French sources in the Varia II and a description of the extracts from pope Alexander II and Urban II see Brett, Urban II, pp. 33–39, and for the description of the capitulatio, p. 33. Idem, The sources, pp. 149–167. – For the papal decretals in the Britannica see Jasper, The Beginning of the Decretal Tradition, p. 64 (Gelasius I); p. 65 (Pelagius I); p. 100 (for the correspondence of Boniface with popes Gregory II and III and Zacharias); p. 107 (Hadrian I); p. 108 (Leo IV); p. 90 and 122 f (for the letters of Honorius I and Nicholas I [by way of Deusdedit]). On the possible use of the Liber auctoritatum ecclesiae Arelatensis for the Britannica, p. 87. A list of the papal decretals in the Britannica is found in the article of Peter Landau, Wandel und Kontinuität im kanonischen Recht bei Gratian, in: Sozialer Wandel im Mittelalter, ed. by Jürgen Miethke and Klaus Schreiner, Sigmaringen 1994, pp. 215–233. – On the excerpt from the Ivonian prologue interpolated into a letter of Urban see Stephan Kuttner, Urban II and the Doctrine of Interpretation: A Turning Point?, Studia Gratiana 15 (1972), pp. 58–59; reproduced in his selected studies: The History of Ideas and Doctrines of Canon Law in the Middle Ages (London 1980; a second edition with new retractations appeared in 1991), [187] nr. IV. – For interpolations and forgeries see Landau, Gefälsches Recht, pp. 40– 42. – Kéry, Collections p. 237–238.
Categories
- key is LO
- large (1000 to 2000 canons) collection
- from Northern France
- saec. XI
- Collection
