Collectio canonum in Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, 721

The collection in the Ms Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 721, fol. 165r–258r (AS), according to Uta-Renate Blumenthal, was compiled after 1110. The most recent text is a letter written by pope Paschal II to the bishops of Constance and Passau (JL 5971), but instead of Passau the scribe substituted Poitiers. The manuscript was in the possession of the Parisian canonry Saint-Victor in 1200, and Paul Fournier speculated that the collection was inspired by William of Champeaux, who was at Saint-Victor at the beginning of the 12th century. The collection is favorable to pope Gregory VII. It contains a warning to the emperor Henry IV, the Scriptum ad Henricum imperatorem, which Blumenthal dates April 1084–May 1085. The compiler used pseudoisidorian decretals together with excerpts from the Liber decretorum of Burchard and he used the Codex Udalrici. The collection begins with two ordines sinodales and the beginning of a capitulatio. 238 The first eight rubrics refer to the ordines, the ninth and the tenth to the first canons of the collection. The collection may not have been completed, judging from the limited range of subjects treated.

Literature:

See Fournier – Le Bras, Histoire 2.261–265. See now Uta-Renate Blumenthal, The Collection of St Victor ( = V), Paris: Liturgy, Canon law and Polemical Literature, in: Ritual, Text and Law: Studies in Medieval Canon Law and Liturgy presented to Roger E. Reynolds, ed. by Kathleen G. Cushing and Richard F. Gyug, Ashgate 2004, pp. 293–308. Blumenthal edits the Scriptum ad Henricum imperatorem: Eine Mahnung an Kaiser Heinrich IV., in: Scientia veritatis: Festschrift für Hubert Mordek zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Oliver Münsch and Thomas Zotz, Ostfildern 2004, pp. 292–294. – For the synodal ordines see Schneider, Die Konzilsordines, pp. 85–87, 131 f and 470. – Kéry, Canonical Collections, p. 288.