Collectio Anselmo dedicata

This extraordinarily rich and well organized collection with over 2000 canons divided into twelve parts was dedicated to the archbishop Anselm II of Milan (882–896). It is the first major collection to contain the Pseudo-Isidorian forgeries and has unusually rich Roman law contents.

Manuscripts

Paul Fournier divided the copies into an Italian and a cisalpine group, and although some of his assumptions turned out to be wrong, a modified version of his model is still retained..

• Pal. lat. 580 and the closely related Pal. lat. 581, both incomplete, were placed in the 'cisalpine group' by Fournier but today are referred to as 'second Italian group' (Kèry) since Bernhard Bischoff argued that both are from ninth-century Italy. Pal. lat. 580, which according to Bischoff may have been copied at Milan, is incomplete at the beginning and breaks off in the capitulatio of the fourth part. Vat. Pal. lat. 581 begins with the last words of chapter 18 of the first book and ends with chapter 18 of part 3. Pal. lat. 581 almost certainly is a direct copy of Pal. lat. 580.
• The manuscripts Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitola Eusebiana, XV and Modena, Biblioteca Capitolare, O.II.2 (Fournier's 'Italian group') are closely related. The manuscript Vercelli was at Vercelli in the 10th century. Texts were added to it there during the pontificate of Atto of Vercelli (924–960). The Modena manuscript in all probability is a copy of the Vercelli manuscript.
• The „cisalpine“ group consists of Bamberg, StB, Msc.Can.5 (written in northern Italy around the year 1000, brought to Bamberg by Henry II in 1007 or not much later) and Paris, BnF, lat. 15392 (written at Verdun for Bishop Haimo of Verdun, completed March 21, 1009). The 11th century Ms Metz, BM, 100, which also was said to belong to the cisalpine group, was destroyed in 1944. The manuscripts, while not directly related, share a number of common features.
• There are a number of fragments: Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Aug. CXLII is a large fragment containing books 5-10 (according to Hartmut Hoffmann from Reichenau, first half of the 10th century). In addition, there are other fragments of one to three leaves in the BC at Vercelli, in the Archivio di Stato at Pavia, in the Archives du Bas-Rhin in Strasbourg and in the Landeshauptarchiv in Koblenz (according to Hoffmann from Mainz). The Koblenz fragment shares some features with the Bamberg, Paris, and Metz copies.

Fournier (Histoire p. 243) also reported a Prague manuscript containing an abbreviated form of the collection, but according to Schulte, this is a series of excerpts in a 13th c. manuscript: Friedrich von Schulte, Über drei in Prager Handschriften enthaltenen Canonen-Sammlungen, in: Sitzungsberichte der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse 57 (1868), 171–221, here at 171.

See Category:Manuscript of DE (10 manuscripts).

Editions

There is no complete edition of the Anselmo dedicata. Using the Ms Paris, BnF, lat. 15392, Jean-Claude Besse edited the prologue and first part of the collection; he printed incipit and explicit of all canons. Giuseppe 71 Russo edited the Roman law texts using the Modena copy (late 10th century). Irene Scaravelli in 2002 announced she planned a new edition, but this plan seems to have been abandoned.

Schröder edited the prologue from the Paris manuscript (MGH Epp. 9.163-166).

Present analysis

The present analysis (DE) is based on the Bamberg manuscript, which may be the archetype for Paris, BnF, lat. 15392. Where folios are missing in that manuscript (between 14/15, 248/249 and 258/259) the analysis was completed using the Paris manuscript. In both manuscripts the texts of the last six canons in part 8 (all in the section containing excerpts from the Register of Gregory) are missing although rubrics for these canons are found in the capitulatio. I supplied the missing texts from the Karlsruhe manuscript. Some of the missing canons are found in the 11th century Freising Collectio XII partium with exactly the same rubrics. In the second half of the collection in the Mss Bamberg and Paris the inscriptions of the canons 72 excerpted from the Register of Gregory and the inscriptions of the texts of Roman law are often incomplete or non-existent. This resulted from the fact that the inscriptions were originally copied on the outer margins of the folios – so in the copy in the Pal. lat. 580, in which the margins are unusually broad. In the data base the inscriptions were completed using the Ms Vercelli.

The Ms Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, A. 46 inf., fol. 144r –150r, contains the earliest series of excerpts from the collection. This manuscript, originally from Reims, contains 28 chapters of Roman law excerpted from the first five parts of the Anselmo dedicata.

Structure of the collection

The collection is divided into twelve partes; their titles are as follows:

– Prima itaque pars huius quod Deo iuvante aggredior, operis continet de primatu et dignitate romanae sedis aliorumque primatuum, patriarcharum, archiepiscoporum atque metropolitanorum.

– Secunda pars continet de honore competenti ac diverso negotio episcoporum et corepiscoporum.

– Tertia pars continet de synodo celebranda et vocatione ad synodum, de accusatoribus et accusationibus, de testibus et testimoniis, de expoliatis iniuste, de iudicibus et iudiciis ecclesiasticis vel saecularibus.

– Quarta pars continet de congruenti dignitate et diverso negotio presbiterorum et diaconorum seu reliquorum ordinum ecclesiasticorum.

– Quinta pars continet de clericorum institutione ac nutrimento vel qualitate vitae.

– Sexta pars continet de proposito monachorum et professione sanctimonialium ac viduarum.

– Septima pars continet de laicis, imperatoribus scilicet principibus et reliquis saeculi ordinibus.

– Octava pars continet de norma fidei christianae et gratia Christi ac divinorum mandatorum executione.

– Nona pars continet de sacramento baptismatis et baptizandis ac baptizatis.

– Decima pars continet de templorum divinorum institutione et cultu ac prediis, de sacrificiis, oblationibus ac decimis.

– Undecima pars continet de solemnitate paschali et reliquis festivitatibus ac feriis.

– Duodecima pars continet de hereticis, scismaticis, iudeis atque paganis. 73

Each of the parts has two or three sections.

• The first section contains excerpts from papal decretals, conciliar decrees, and patristic texts. The principle sources are the Dionysio-Hadriana, the Collectio Novariensis and the short version of the pseudoisidorian decretals (A2). Peter Landau, who has examined the canonistic material available in Lombardy prior to the Decretum of Gratian describes these sources as among the most authoritative collections in Lombardy in the 9th century. The shorter form of the pseudoisidorian forgery circulated in the 9th and 10th centuries primarily in northern Italy. The compiler had access to the letter of pope Zosimus to Hesychius of Salona (JK 339) and the short form of the Roman synods of 743 and 826.
• All twelve parts have a second section containing excerpts from the letters of pope Gregory I taken from the Register, of which a very peculiar version seems to have been used. Older sholarship assumed that two more letters were taken from the Collectio Pauli but both letters may have been found in the Register version used for CAD (Kaiser).
• Parts 1–3, 5–7 and 11–12 have a third section with texts from secular law, principally from the Codex, Institutes and Epitome Iuliani by way of the Lex Romana canonice compta. Those texts which are not in the one surviving copy of the Lex Romana canonice compta (in Paris, BnF, lat. 12448) may simply derive from a better copy of that collection.

In the first half of the collection the canons are numbered from the beginning of the part to the end. In parts 7–12 the canons of each section are numbered separately. Following the manner used by Besse, I have numbered the second and third sections in books 7–12: DE …. G.001 …. and DE …. R.001.

Reception

In the 10th and early 11th centuries the collection was copied and presumably used in northern Italy and at Mainz, Verdun, and Reichenau. It did not penetrate into southern or central Italy, which had a legal culture of its own based heavily on patristic texts. The collection was used extensively by Burchard of Worms and by the compilers of the Freising Collectio duodecim partium. Friedrich Maassen recognized that Anselmo dedicata was still being used in the 12th century. Bernard of Pavia referred to a text from the Epitome Iuliani in the fifth part of a collection, and he was obviously referring to the fifth part of Anselmo dedicata. Peter Landau suspects that Bernard used the Modena manuscript. The amount of space devoted to monastic affairs suggests that Anselmo dedicata originated in a monastery, but, judging from the use made of it, it was valued principally as a source for canons dealing with diocesan administration. 74

Literature

Editions

For an edition of the prologue and the first book see Jean-Claude Besse, Collectionis „Anselmo dedicata“ liber primus, RDC 9 (1959), pp. 207–296. For the edition of the Roman law texts and a description of the manuscripts, see Giuseppe Russo, Tradizione manoscritta di Leges Romanae nei codici dei secoli IX e X della Biblioteca Capitolare di Modena (Modena 1980). The preface is translated into English by Somerville and Brasington, Prefaces, pp. 94–97.

Studies

For the most recent description of the manuscripts see Irene Scaravalli, La collezione canonica Anselmo dedicata: lo status quaestionis nella prospettiva di un’edizione critica, in: Le storie e la memoria. In onore di Arnold Esch, ed. by Roberto Delle Donne and Andrea Zorzi, Florence 2003, pp. 33–52 and Kaiser, Epitome Iuliani, 550–561.

Philip Levine, Historical evidence for calligraphic activity in Vercelli from St. Eusebius to Atto, Speculum 30 (1955), pp. 573–581, has argued that the collection was compiled at Vercelli. In the Annali di Vercelli composed by a certain G. B. Modena (1557–1637) the notice for the year 904 states that „canonici studenti“ of the abbot Giovanni compiled a volume of canons in the form of the Decretum of Gratian. I find it more likely that Modena was constructing a colorful local legend based on the mere presence of an obviously important manuscript at Vercelli. For the sources available in Lombardy see Landau, Kanonessammlungen in der Lombardei, pp. 439–443. Landau examines the arguments for Milan and Bobbio as the place of origin of Anselmo dedicata. For the use of capitularies, see Valesca Koal, Studien zur Nachwirkung der Kapitularien, pp. 27–32. For the use of JK 339 from pope Zosimus to Hesychius of Salona and the decrees of the Roman synod of 826 see Jasper, The Beginning of the Decretal Tradition, pp. 40 and 103 f. For the use by Burchard see Kerner – Kerff –Pokorny – Schon – Tills, Textidentifikation, pp. 23–24 and 33. For the use in the Collectio XII partium see Müller, Untersuchung zur Collectio Duodecim Partium, pp. 316–325. For the use by Bernard of Pavia see Landau, Vorgratianische Kanonessammlungen bei den Dekretisten, in: Proceedings of the 8th ICMCL, pp. 94 and 100–104. Kaiser, Epitome Iuliani, esp. 550-561. – Kéry, Canonical Collections, pp. 124–128.

Categories

• key is DE
• very large (more than 2000 canons) collection
• from Northern Italy
• saec. IX
• entries based on ms