Collectio Dacheriana

The two major systematic collections compiled in Gaul before the year 1000 are the Vetus Gallica and the early ninth-century Collectio Dacheriana. The compiler of the former made use of the Dionysiana and the compiler of the latter used the Hispana systematica. Both were compiled at Lyon. Hubert Mordek suggests Agobard of Lyon as author of the latter.

Title, Contents, Structure

The Dacheriana was named after Luc d’Achery, who edited the collection in 1672. It is divided into three books and begins with a preface intended for the first book. Each book has its own title and its own capitulatio. The titles are

1. De penitentia et penitentibus, criminibus atque iudicibus
2. De accusatis et accusatoribus, iudicibus et testibus, cum ceteris ad hec pertinentibus ecclesiasticis regulis
3. De sacris ordinibus … et de regulis ac privilegiis clericorum et presulum.

Tendencies

The Dacheriana is not polemic and has nothing on metropolitan bishops or monks. The penitential canons, which form a major part of the collection, apply to the laity. Consistent with the reform concept of the Carolingian period it is intended to help bishops run their dioceses. Like the forgers of northern France, however, the compiler devotes considerable attention to judicial procedure, and the administration of penance is described in juridical rather than pastoral terms. In the words of Abigail Firey – „the Dacheriana is evidence for the existence of a well-developed legal culture supported by the Frankish episcopate and anchored in the expectation that considerable judicial authority would be exercised over both lay and clerical populations by bishops.“

Versions

Copies of the Dacheriana vary to a considerbable degree. The most important model to distinguish different versions of the collection is still that proposed by Gabriel Le Bras in several articles published in 1929 and 1930 and modified by later scholars. He distinguished „la Dacheriana primitive (forme A)“ and a later „B“ version, the latter augmented with pseudoisidorian decretals. He also described a version in four (instead of three) books as the "Dacheriana augmentée". While Haenni and Mordek have largely followed Le Bras (even if they modified his model in some aspects), Firey, Ghostly recensions has warned that the Dacheriana as a living text may be too unstable to apply traditional recensional analysis. She concluded her analysis (p. 82) as follows:

[...] the collections themselves are so receptive to alteration, as well as influence from other collections, that their history cannot readily be resolved by recourse to recensional paradigms of text transmission. When neither an ‘original’ version of a collection nor a definitively altered text can be established, and at intermediate stages there may occur any combination of the processes of corruption, correction and contamination on a canon by canon

basis, as well as addition, subtraction, and reintroduction of canons, arguments about the collection’s form can only be on an ad codicem basis.

Version A

Most known copies of the Dacheriana belong to the A version as defined by Le Bras. However, Le Bras and Mordek observed that some A manuscripts have apparently been corrected from the B version. Mordek, Dacheriana pp. 581-583 cited the erasure of A readings and replacement with B readings in Reg. lat. 446, Reg. lat. 849, and Reg. lat. 1000 A as an example. Firey has called the A version "as hypothetical as the ‘B-recension’" and "chimerical", and warned that Maassen, Le Bras, and Haenni all used different criteria to classify Dacheriana manuscripts: Maassen, who did not intent to establish any Dacheriana recension, contrasted four manuscripts of the Dacheriana with d'Achery's edition to demonastrate that the latter was contamined by Pseudoisidore; he wrongly suspected that d'Achery had relied on Merlin's edition for part of his edition of the Dacheriana. Le Bras, who defended d'Achery's edition against this suspicious by identifying manuscript containing the Pseudoisidorian additions, and used first 12 and later nine canons as textual markers distinguishing what he called the A and B versions; only six of these nine canons overlap with the canons Maassen described as characteristic. Haenni, she warned, used yet other criteria to distinguish the A and B recensions.

Version AB

Mordek, Dacheriana pp. 583-591 called Reg. Ottobon. 261 an "AB version" of the Dacheriana, because it goes back to an intermediary version. The contents are that of A (Ottobon. lat. 261 lacks the characteristic B additions), but the text is sometimes that of A, sometimes that of B, and sometimes a mixed version. The A version used was an ancient form silmilar to Reg. lat. 446, but the B text according to Mordek was not taken from a mature B version but an early revision influenced by Pseudoisidore.

Version B

Mordek confirmed the findings of Le Bras that the copies of the Pseudoisidorian additions to the Dacheriana can be traced to northern France. Firey, who is preparing a new edition of the Dacheriana, points specifically to [56] the province of Reims. Copies with pseudoisidorian additions are by no means identical, however, and Mordek warns against treating the enrichment of the original versions as a unique and limited action. Firey describes the situation as follows: „there was apparently considerable variation in manuscripts of the same supposed recension, readings from one recension might agree with those of a witness from the other recension and the quality and significance of the readings remains indeterminate and undetermined“.

The Dacheriana augmentée

In 1929, Le Bras described Albi, BM, 43 as "Dacheriana augmentée". Haenni and Mordek identified a number of manuscripts with additions similar or identical to those Le Bras described as significant additions after book three. According to Mordek, Dacheriana p. 594 n. 45 there are five such manuscripts with a four-book-version of the Dacheriana:

• Lyon, BM, 571
• Paris, BnF, lat. 1927
• Paris, BnF, lat. 3879
• Paris, BnF, lat. 10741 (Maassen: "Cod. Paris. suppl. lat. 205")
• Sion, Archives du Chapitre, Ms. 120

Manuscripts

For manuscripts, see Category:Manuscript of DC (number of entries: 8).

The Dacheriana in the Clavis database

The present analysis (DC) is based on copies of the version in Ivrea, BC, XXXVII bis (9th century, Rhône valley?) and Paris, BnF, lat. 3839A.

Reception

The Dacheriana was used for a number of collections in the region of Reims from the early 9th through the 11th century. Its penitential texts influenced Halitgar of Cambrai, the compiler of the 4th book of the Quadripartitus and Hrabanus Maurus. Firey: „The northward journey of the Dacheriana retraces the trails of earlier collections from Lyon up the Rhône to Autun, Corbie, Rheims, a route whose repetition increases the plausibility of the suggestion that before the midninth century, Frankish canon law collections were often composed in the southern centres, where Roman traditions were the foundation of a strong and developed legal culture, whence they then migrated northward to the newer centres of political power.“

Literature

The Dacheriana was edited by Luc d’Achery († 1685), Spicilegium veterum aliquot scriptorum qui in Galliae Bibliothecis, maxime Benedictinorum latuerant 11, Paris 1672, pp. 1–200 (second edition by Louis-F.-J. de la Barre, Spicilegium 1, Paris 1723, pp. 509–564). Gabriel Le Bras, Les deux formes de la Dacheriana, in: Mélanges Paul Fournier, Paris 1929, pp. 395–414, identified the manuscript used by d’Achery for his edition as Paris, BnF, lat. 4287 and the manuscript used for the capitulatio as Paris, BnF, lat. 3839A. See Hubert Mordek, Zur handschriftlichen Überlieferung der Dacheriana, QFIAB 47 (1967), pp. 574–595. Idem, Kirchenrecht und Reform, pp. 250–263. Friedrich Maassen, Pseudoisidor-Studien II, SB Vienna 108 (1885), pp. 1089–1096, identified pseudoisidorian elements in the edition. This lead to belief in an original version and a recension influenced by the pseudoisidorian circle. See most recently Abigail Firey, Ghostly Recensions in Early Medieval Law Law: The Problem of the Collectio Dacheriana and its Shades, Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis 68 (2000), pp. 63–82. I am very grateful for the permission to use the doctoral thesis that she submitted to the University of Toronto in 1995: Toward a History of Carolingian Legal Culture: Canon Law Collections of Early Medieval Southern Gaul (not all parts of which have yet been published). – Kéry, Collections p. 87–92. [57]