Fulgentius Ferrandus, Breviatio canonum

The first major systematically ordered canon law collection in the West, the Breviatio canonum, was compiled between 523 and 546 by a deacon of the church at Carthage, Fulgentius Ferrandus. Fulgentius, who was acting on the instructions of his bishop, did not provide the texts of the canons, but rather a list of 232 rubrics together with indications of which canons were meant. The inscriptions of the individual canons use the expression titulus for the chapters of the sources. Judging from the sequence in which Fulgentius listed the references, he used a chronologically ordered collection containing the Greek councils in the following order: Nicaea, Sardica, Ancyra, Neocaesaria, Gangra, Antioch, Laodicea and Constantinople. It seems he used a [S. 28] version similar to that of the early 5th century translation of Atticus of Constantinople and to the Versio Isidori antiqua. Fulgentius also referred to numerous African councils. He apparently had a collection containing the canons of the numerous councils held at Carthage and the canons of the council of Mileve. A number of the African councils to which Fulgentius referred are not found in other collections: the council of Telepte or Zella (Zelensis) (418) and the Byzachene councils of Suffetula (416–417), Thusdrus (417?), Septimunicia, Macriana, Marazana, Thenae and Junca (523). References to papal decretals follow those to the conciliar texts.

Later in the century Cresconius would criticize the Breviatio for lacking the texts of the canons. The usefulness of the collection was limited certainly by the fact that the full texts of many of the canons would not have been available at all outside northern Africa. Only three medieval copies have survived: in Mss Paris, BN lat. 12094, fol. 144v–158r (southern France, Arles or Lyon shortly after 524); Montpellier, Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire H. 233 (beginning of the 9th century in Rhaetia) and Vercelli, BCap CLXV (second quarter of the 9th century, northern Italy). The Montpellier and Vercelli manuscripts also contain the collection of Cresconius. The present analysis (FR) is taken from the edition of Charles Munier (CCL 149).

This would not be the last time that rubrics would circulate without their texts. Abigail Firey has recently brought attention to a supplement to the 9th century southern Gallic Dacheriana in several manuscript copies. In three of these manuscripts (Albi, Bibliothèque Rochgude 43, fol. 38r–39v; Lyon, BM 571, fol. 15v–17v and Paris, BN lat. 3879, fol. 8v–9r) the supplement takes the form of a tabula titulorum without texts. Firey argues that this was the original form of the supplement, and that it was the transcriber of the copy in the Ms Paris, BN lat. 1927 who would add the texts much later. Perhaps another example of the same phenomenon is the Dictatus papae in the Register of pope Gregory VII. The sentences in the Dictatus may represent the rubrics of a collection which would support the claims of Gregory VII and which that pope expected canonists to complete by providing the appropriate texts.

Literature:

The most recent edition of the Breviatio of Fulgentius is that of Charles Munier, Concilia Africae A. 345–A. 525 (CCL 149, Turnhout 1974), pp. 287–306. A first edition was made in 1661 by G. Voellius and H. Justellius, Bibliotheca iuris canonici [S. 29] 1 (Paris 1661) 448–445. This edition was reprinted in Migne PL 67.949–962 and Migne PL 88.817–830. – For the content of the collection see Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, pp. 799–802. See also Hubert Mordek, „Ferrandus“, Lex.MA 4 (1989), p. 385. – For Fulgentius and Cresconius see Zechiel-Eckes, Concordia canonum, pp. 72 and 172–184. – For the supplement to the Dacheriana see A. Firey, Carolingian Ecclesiology and Heresy. A Southern Gallic Juridical Tract against Adoptionism, Sacris Erudiri 39 (2000), pp. 253–316, here 257 and n. 8 and 263 n. 23. – Kéry, Canonical Collections, pp. 23–24.