Collectio Tarraconensis I

The Collectio Tarraconensis (also known as Liber Tarraconensis [Fournier] or Sammlung in sieben Büchern des Liber Tarraconensis [Beulertz]) is a unique direct transmitter of the policies of pope Gregory VII. It is the only collection to contain the whole of the Dictatus papae, it contains the decrees of the council held at Poitiers in 1078, which was presided over by the papal legate Hugo of Die and Lyon, and it contains almost the entire Diversorum patrum sententie (74T). The compiler was acquainted with the early version of the 74T, which had been used for the Burdegalensis. Occasionally he takes a reading from that early version. He prefered, however, the newer form of the collection, the form, I would argue, which Gregory sent with legates in Gallias. It is likely that Hugo of Die brought all of the above mentioned texts with him from Rome. The Diversorum patrum sententie did not reflect the policies of Gregory well. In fact, as Horst Fuhrmann has pointed out, it contains canons contrary to some of his positions. It was, however, apparently the best collection available to him at the time.

The compiler took canons in blocks from other collections and did not reorganize them systematically. The formal sources are the Liber decretorum of Burchard, the Diversorum patrum sententie, the Collectio quatuor librorum and the early core of anti-simoniacal texts now found in the Collectio Ambrosiana II. The most recent text in the collection is a decree of the synod held at Rome in the spring of 1080. The Collectio Tarraconensis does not contain a synodal ordo, which distinguishes it from the previous Poitevine collections.

The manuscript used for the present analysis is Paris, BnF, lat. 5517, fol. 46v–141r (TO). In this copy the canons are not divided into [134] books. This will have been the original form of the collection. The other two copies are in the Mss Tarragona, Biblioteca Pública (Provincial) 26, which was identified by Gérard Fransen, and Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana D. 59 sup., which was the only copy of the collection known to Fournier. The Ms Tarragona 26 contains a later, articulated form of the collection (TR). The capitulatio on fol. 13r– 24v is separated by several folios from the beginning of the text on fol. 29r. The capitulatio seems to be an adaptation of a capitulatio composed for the related Collectio VII librorum in the Ms Turin BNU D. IV. 33. Like the collection in the Ms Turin, this version of the Tarraconensis is divided into seven books, but since the contents of the collection remained essentially unchanged, this form of the Tarraconensis is no more systematic than the others.

The Tarragona manuscript has recently been examined as a whole by Uta-Renate Blumenthal and in anticipation of the publication of the proceedings of the 11th International Congress of Medieval Canon Law held at Catania on the 2–9 August 2000 she has allowed me to publish some of the results of her research: The manuscript as a whole was copied by several scribes between 1100 and 1120. Aside from the collection itself the manuscript contains texts of significance for the northern Spanish diocese of Roda/Barbastro. The most recent papal document is found on fol. 224v, a letter of 1110 (JL 6273) of Pope Paschal II (1099–1118) to Bishop Raimund Guillemi of Roda/Barbastro (1104–1126). These additions indicate conclusively that the codex was compiled at the cathedral of St. Vincent at Roda by a community of reformed canons who lived according to the ideals which were proposed by the archdeacon Hildebrand (later Gregory VII) at the Lateran council of 1059 and which were introduced at Roda by bishop Raimund Dalmatii (1076–1095). These ideals were in accord with the customs of Saint-Ruf at Avignon and were favored by King Sancho Ramírez of Aragon, a patron of Roda. The link between Sancho Ramírez, Raimund Dalmatii of Roda, Gregory VII and the canons of Saint-Ruf constitutes an essential key for the interpretation of the content of Ms Tarragona 26 with its particularly noteworthy texts from the reign of that pontiff. The canonical order of Saint-Ruf was founded in 1039 by clerics in the diocese of Avignon. It would free itself from judicial dependence on the church of Avignon and influence communities of canons in the south of France and from Catalonia to what is now Portugal. In 1085 Bérengar, a canon of Saint-Ruf and abbot of Saint-Victor of Marseilles, became bishop of Barcelona. [135]

The third copy of the first version of the Tarraconensis, in the Ms Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana D. 59 sup. from Bobbio (TM), retains a trace of a division of the canons into books which must have existed in the copy of the Tarraconensis used by the scribe. A rubric announces the beginning of the 4th book where the 5th book in the Ms Tarragona begins. The beginning of the collection is missing. The first canon corresponds to canon 138 of the Ms Paris 5517. In the present analysis the notation TM in the location column means that the canon is present in the Ms Milan. After the beginning of the 4th book of the Milan copy the presence of a canon is indicated with book and chapter number.

Rubrics in the Ms Paris 5517 are comparatively simple and many are missing. The inscriptions are often missing as well. Luckily the rubrics of the Milan copy are almost identical to those in the Ms Paris and the inscriptions are more complete. When the two copies have the same rubric, the notation is made in the analysis: TM RUB TO. When a rubric is missing in the Ms Paris, the rubric in the Ms Milan has been used, and to show that it is not found in the Ms Paris it is given between asterisks. The rubrics in the capitulatio of the Ms Tarragona, completely different from those in the other two copies, are in parentheses. The Tarragona copy also has retained some of the original rubrics in textu. In this case the rubric of the capitulatio comes first and then, preceeded by a plus sign, the rubric from the text of the collection.

All three copies end with the decrees of the councils of Nicaea, Constantinople and Chalcedon in the version Dionysio-Hadriana. In the Ms Tarragona these decrees are called the 7th and last book. The compiler undoubtedly had in mind the conciliar decrees in the Collectio quatuor librorum although in that case the decrees are from the Hispana. In the Mss Paris and Milan an additional 10 canons follow the conciliar decrees, in the Ms Tarragona an additional 38.

Texts excerpted from the first version of the Collectio Tarraconensis appear in both of the manuscripts containing the Collectio Burdegalensis. The version of the Tarraconensis in the Ms Paris 5517 was used by the compiler of the collection in the Ms Turin, BNU D. IV. 33. The compiler of the second version of the Tarraconensis used a copy of the first version similar to that in the Ms Tarragona. [136]

Literature

See Gérard Fransen, Autour de la Collection en 74 Titres, RDC 25 (1975), p. 62. See also his commentary to Joseph Ryan, Observations on the pre-Gratian canonical collections: Some recent work and present problems, in: Congrès de Droit Canonique Médiéval, Louvain et Bruxelles 22–26 Juillet 1958 (Bibliothèque de la RHE 33, 1959), p. 102. – For the Ms Paris 5517 see Fowler-Magerl, Vier französische und spanische Kanonessammlungen, pp. 139 f and John Gilchrist, Die Epistola Widonis oder Pseudo-Paschalis, DA 37 (1981), pp. 588 f. – For the version of the Diversorum patrum sententie in the Ms Paris BN n. a. l. 326 see Fowler-Magerl, Fine Distinctions, pp. 156 ff and 178 f. – For the Ms Milan see Paul Fournier, Le Liber Tarraconensis. Étude sur une collection canonique du xie siècle, in: Mélanges Julien Havet, Paris 1895, p. 262; also Fournier – Le Bras, Histoire 2.243. Fournier knew the first version only in the form of the fragmentary copy in the Ms Milan. – For the Dictatus papae see the entry to Proprie Auctoritates Papae below. See also Blumenthal, Gregor VII, passim. – For the order of Saint-Ruf see Ursula Vones-Liebenstein, Les débuts de l’abbaye de Saint-Ruf. Contexte politique et religieux à Avignon au XIe siècle, in: Crises et réformes dans l’église de la Réforme Grégorienne à la Préréforme (Actes du 115e Congrès national des Sociétés savantes, Avignon 1990, Paris 1991), pp. 9–25. – Kéry, Collections p. 214–215.

Categories (semi-automatic)

• Might need to be split because of multiple keys
• belongs to: Tarraconensis Group
• medium (500 to 1000 canons) collection
• saec. XI

DEFAULTSORT "Collectio Tarraconensis 01"