Collectio XVII librorum

The Collectio XVII librorum (Collection in Seventeen Books, 17L), also known as Collection of the canonry Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand, is a collection from the second half of the eleventh largely modelled Burchard’s Liber decretorum. There is good evidence that the collection was reworked at Saint-Hilaire in Poitiers, but this does not mean the (lost) original version was compiled there too. The most recent material is an excerpt of a letter of Alexander II (1061–1073), and it is normall assumed that the collection was compiled during his pontificate or not much later.

The collection is rather primitive and the copies unreliable. The compiler often simplified the texts of the canons he used, and the scribes frequently assigned the inscriptions to the wrong canons. Interest in canon law may have been the result of a serious quarrel between the canons of Saint-Hilaire and the canons of the cathedral. The quarrel was so bitter that Gregory VII summoned a provincial synod in 1074 to end the affair. The collection of Saint-Hilaire contains a unique synodal ordo combining elements of a diocesan synod with elements of a provincial synod.

Sources other than the Liber decretorum were the Abbreviatio Ansegisi et Benedicti Levitae, the Dacheriana and the Collectio CCCXLII capitulorum, all of which are found in the Ms Montpellier, Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire H. 137. The excerpts from this manuscript were inserted into the collection as a block with the title Capitula ex sanctorum patrum decretis. The most recent formal source came from Milan. It was the older core of canons (170– 237) in what Giorgio Picasso calls the Collectio Ambrosiana II. The most recent canon in both collections is an anti-simonical text attributed to Alexander II, Ecclesia que per pactionem pretii (JE † 1948). A considerable number of the other texts taken from the Ambrosiana II deal with simony, too. The copy of the Liber decretorum of Burchard which was used was also from northern Italy. In other words, the canons in the collection of Saint-Hilaire all came from outside Aquitania.

This would seem to substantiate the judgment of Adémar de Chabannes (988–1034) that there was practically no literature available in Aquitaine in the first half of the 11th century and that Lombardy was a center of learning. Adémar was not referring specifically to canon law collections, but he was not unaware of what was available. It was he who copied the collection of Abbo in the Ms Paris, BnF, lat. 2400. 127

The compiler of the collection of Saint-Hilaire divided the first part of the collection into three books, each with its own capitulatio. The contents of these books corresponds to the contents of the first three books of the Liber decretorum of Burchard. The rubrics of the capitulatio are title rubrics and many of the rubrics refer to more than one canon. In the manuscripts the titles are numbered in the capitulatio, not the individual canons. In the present analysis the numbering in the manuscripts is used.

The canons which follow the end of the third book are not divided into books although many of them were taken from the Liber decretorum and appear in the same sequence. Paul Fournier divided these canons into books corresponding to the books of the Liber decretorum and he called the compilation a „Collection en dix-sept livres“. These divisions do not correspond to the appearance of the collection in the manuscripts, however. Not only is the last canon of his 4th book not separated from the first canon of his 5th and the last canon of his 7th book from the first canon of his 8th, but his plan does not account for the coherence of the Capitula ex sanctorum patrum decretis. The group of texts under this title are treated by Fournier as an appendix to his 15th book.

The copy used as the basis for the present analysis is Reims, BM 675 (HI). In the present analysis the Reims copy was compared with Berlin, SBPK Phillippicus 1778, fol. 18v–121v. There is a third complete copy in the Ms Hereford, Cathedral Library 0. 2. VII, fol. 49r– 153r. An abbreviated form is found in the Ms Bern, Burgerbibliothek 314, fol. 43v–88r, an excerpt in the Ms Paris, BnF, lat. 3454, fol. 37–38 and 41–42. I have tried to preserve the divisions the compiler intended when he left space empty between canons belonging to different books in the Liber decretorum and when he announced in the margin the beginning of books (never giving the number of the books, however): (Incipit liber … imus (sic!) de crapula et ebrietate et eorum penitentia and Liber …imus (sic!) de principibus et reliquis. As a result Fournier’s 4th and 5th books are my 4th book, his 6th my 5th, his 7th and 8th my 6th, his 9th through 17th my 7th through 12th, his 15th my 13th and 14th (the Capitula ex sanctorum patrum decretis), his 16th and 17th my 15th.

1.) De ordinatione et electione episcoporum, de simoniacis et ab eis ordinatis, de sinodo celebranda et que in decretis romanorum continentur pontificum, de accusatoribus scilicet et accusatis, de iudicis et de dignitate et diverso negotio episcoporum; 2.) De ordinatione episcoporum 128 et reliquorum ordinum; 3.) De institutione ecclesie, de decimis et oblationibus et qui libri recipiantur; 4.) De baptismi sacramento; 5.) De incesta copulatione; 6.) De viris ac feminis deo dicata et sacrum propositum transgredientibus; 7.) De incantatoribus et sortilegis; 8.) De excommunicatis, de furibus, de predatoribus; 9.) De periurio et penitentia eius; 10.) De observatione sacri ieiunii; 11.) De crapula et ebrietate et eorum penitentia; 12.) De principibus et reliquis laicis; 13.) De fornicatione et incestu et eorum penitentia; 14.) Capitula ex sanctorum patrum decretis; 15.) Incipit liber qui Corrector dicitur et Medicus.

Following the collection in the Ms Reims 675 are the decrees of Nicaea, Antioch, Chalcedon, Constantinople and Ephesus taken from the Hispana tradition. Preceeding the collection in the Ms Berlin 1778 are the decrees of the same councils, also from the Hispana. The scribes may have been inspired by the 4th book of the Collectio IV librorum, which also consists of conciliar decrees. That collection apparently arrived after the collection of Saint-Hilaire was finished. The Ms Bern 314 contains excerpts from the Collectio IV librorum. Excerpts from the collection of Saint-Hilaire are found together with some copies of that collection.

Robert Somerville describes a series of canons which follow the conciliar texts, on fol. 17r–18v of the Ms Berlin. They are entitled sententie ex decretis. Four of the texts are forgeries attributed to popes Symmachus and Celestine. They are also found in the collection in the Ms Paris, BnF, lat. 3858C (canons 1. 425–427) and in the appendix to the copy of the Sinemuriensis in the Ms Orléans 306 (canons 604–607). From there they were used for the second version of the Tarraconensis (1. 202, 204, 203). They are also found in the Milanese Ambrosiana I and in the Liber de Vita Christiana of Bonizo of Sutri. See those entries below pp. 167, 178, 175.

Literature

Roger Reynolds, The Turin Collection. A Poitevin Canonical Collection, Traditio 25 (1969), p. 511 n. 33 recognized that the collection should not be called a Collection en Dix-Sept Livres. – For the background of the quarrel between canonry and cathedral chapter see Ovidio Capitani, Episcopato ed ecclesiologia nell’età gregoriana, in: Le Istituzioni ecclesiastiche della „Societas Christiana“ dei secoli XI–XII: Papato, cardinalato ed episcopato (Atti della quinta Settimana internazionale di studio. Mendola, 26–31 agosto 1971, Milan 1974), pp. 327–331. For the quarrel between the canons of Saint-Hilaire and the canons of the cathedral 129 see Blumenthal, Gregor VII, pp. 157 f. – The Ms Hereford contains two other excerpts of the Liber decretorum of Burchard. The readings in the Ms Hereford are better than those in the other copies, may, however, be the result of later collation with a copy of the Liber decretorum. For the texts found on fol. 17–18 of the Berlin manuscript see Robert Somerville, JL 5729 and its Surroundings in Berlin MS Phillipps 1778, in: Life, Law and Letters. Historical Studies in honour of Antonio García y García, ed, by Peter Linehan (Studia Gratiana 29, 1998), pp. 815–824. There has been doubt about the scriptorium in which the Ms Reims was copied. It probably arrived in Reims by the end of the 11th century, however. Detlev Jasper has shown that the version of Erga simoniacos of pope Nicholas II (JL 4431a) found in Ms Reims 675 is closely related to the transmission in the Atrebatensis, in the Collectio X voluminorum, in the collection in the Ms Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 713 and in Ivonian collections. – For the Ms Bern 314 see Fowler-Magerl, Vier französische und spanische Kanonessammlungen, p. 143. This copy begins with four canons corresponding to canons 1. 135, 136, 139 and 142 of the complete versions. All four are pseudoisidorian texts attributed to pope Clement. The scribe had apparently begun to reorder the canons chronologically. This rearranging chronologically of a systematic collection was also the case in the Schlettstadt copy of the Sinemuriensis. – Michael Hynes, who discovered the excerpt in the Ms Paris, BnF, lat. 3454, informs me that the manuscript comes from Saint-Martial in Limoges. – For the use of the Italian form of Burchard and for the early core in the Ambrosiana II see Fowler-Magerl, Fine distinctions, pp. 148f and 175f. For the use of the Abbreviatio Ansegisi et Benedicti Levitae see Schmitz, Die Überlieferung der sog. „Abbreviatio Ansegisi et Benedicti Levitae“, pp. 176–199. – For the manuscripts containing the collection of Saint-Hilaire and their synodal ordines see Schneider, Die Konzilsordines, pp. 43–44 and 288–289. – Kéry, Canonical Collections, pp. 213–214.

Categories

• Is a Burchard derivative
• from Poitiers (?)
• Collection
• Key is HI

• DEFAULTSORT Collectio 017 librorum