CAPITULARY, a series of legislative or administrative acts emanating from the Merovingian and Carolingian kings, so called as being divided into sections or chapters (capitula). At the pres ent day we do not possess a single capitulary in its original form; but very frequently copies of these isolated capitularies were included in various scattered manuscripts, among pieces of a very different nature, ecclesiastical or secular.
These capitularies make provisions of a most varied nature; it was therefore found necessary at quite an early date to classify them into chapters according to the subject. In 827 Ansegisus, abbot of St. Wandrille at Fontenelle, made such a collection, which soon gained an official authority.
After 827 new capitularies were naturally promulgated, and before 858 there appeared a second collection, quite unreliable, in three books, by an author calling himself Benedictus Levita. In 1677 Baluze issued the Capitularia regum francorum, in two folio volumes, in which he published first the capitularies of the Merovingian kings, then those of Pippin, of Charles and of Louis the Pious, which he had found complete in various manuscripts. After the date of 84o, he published as supplements the unreliable collection of Ansegisus and Benedictus Levita, with the warning that the latter was quite untrustworthy. He then gave the capitu laries of Charles the Bald, and of other Carolingian kings, either contemporaries or successors of Charles, which he had discovered in various places.
An edition of the capitularies was made in 1835 by George Pertz, in the Monumenta Germaniae (folio edition, vol. i., of the Leges). In 1883 Boretius published his first volume, containing all the detached capitularies up to 827, together with various appen dices bearing on them, and the collection of Ansegisus. This work was continued by Victor Krause, who collected in vol. ii., the scat tered capitularies of a date posterior to 828. Karl Zeumer and Albrecht Werminghoff drew up a detailed index of both volumes, in which all the essential words are noted.
Among the capitularies are to be found documents of a very varied kind. Boretius divided them into several classes: (a) The Capitula legibus addenda.—There are additions made by the king of the Franks to the barbarian laws promulgated under the Merovingians, the Salic law, the Ripuarian or the Ba varian. Like the laws, they consist chiefly of scales of compensa tion, rules of procedure and points of civil law. They were solemnly promulgated in the local assemblies where the consent of the people was asked. Charlemagne and Louis the Pious seem to have made efforts to bring the other laws into harmony with the Salic law.
(b) The Capitula ecclesiastica.—These capitularies were elabo rated in the councils of the bishops; the kings of the Franks sanc tioned the canon of the councils, and made them obligatory on all the Christians in the kingdom.
(c) The Capitula per se scribenda.—These embodied political decrees which all subjects of the kingdom were bound to observe. They often bore the name of edictum or of constitutio, and the provisions made in them were permanent.
(e) With the capitularies have been incorporated various docu ments; for instance, the rules to be observed in administering the king's private domain (the celebrated capitulary de villis, which is doubtless a collection of the instructions sent at various times to the agents of these domains) ; the partitions of the kingdom among the king's sons, as, the Divisio regnorum of 8o6, or the Ordinatio imperil of 817; the oath of peace and brotherhood which was taken on various occasions by the sons of Louis the Pious, etc.
After the reign of Louis the Pious the capitularies became long and diffuse. Soon, from the loth century onwards, no provision of general application emanates from the kings. Henceforth the kings only regulated private interests by charters; it was not until the reign of Philip Augustus that general provisions again ap peared ; but when they did so, they bore the name of ordinances (ordonnances).
There were also capitularies of the Lombards. These capitu laries formed a continuation of the Lombard laws, and are printed as an appendix to these laws by Boretius in the folio edition of the Monumenta Germaniae, Leges, vol. iv.