CANON LAW is a collection of ecclesiastical constitutions for the government and regulation of the Roman Catholic church, although many of its regulations have been admitted into the ecclesiastical system of the church of England, and still influence other Protestant bodies. It was compiled from the opinions of the ancient Latin fathers, the decrees of general councils, and the deeretal epistles and bulls of the holy see. These, from a state of disorder and confusion, were gradually reduced into method, and may be briefly described in the following chronological order: 1. Gratian's Decree, which was a collection of ordinances, in three books, commenced by Ivo, bishop of Chartres, 1114 A. D., and subsequently corrected and arranged by Gratian. a Benedictine monk, in the year 1150, after the manner .of .Justinian's Pandects .of the Roman Law.
This work comprises ecclesiastical legislation, as it may be called, from the time of Constantine the great, at the beginning of the 4th, to that of pope Alexander III., at the end of the 12th century. 2. The Decretals. They are a collection of canonical epistles, in five books, written by popes alone, or assisted by some cardinals, to determine any controversy, and first published about the year 1230, by Raimundus Bareinus. They lay down rules respecting the lives and conversation of the clergy, matrimony and divorces, inquisition of criminal matters, purgation, penance, excommunication, and other matters deemed to be within the cognizance of the ecclesiastical courts. To these five hooks of Gregory, Boniface VIII. added a sixth, published 1298 A.D., called &dux Decretaliunt, or the Best, which is itself divided into five books, and forms a supplement to the work of Barcinus, of which it follows the arrangement. The Seat consists of decisions promulgated after the pontificate of Gregory IX. Then there came the Clem entines, which were constitutions of pope Clement V., published 1308 A.D. These decretals form the principal portion of the canon law. John Andreas, a celebrated
canonist in the 14th c., wrote a commentary on them, which he entitled Novella, from a very beautiful daughter he had of that name, whom he bred a scholar; the father being a professor of law at Bologna, had instructed his daughter so well in it, that she assisted him in reading lectures to his scholars, and therefore, to perpetuate her memory, he gave that book the title of Novella. 3. The Extravagants of John XXII. and other later popes, by which term is meant to be denoted documents which transcend the limits of a partic ular collection of regulations. These books, viz., Oration's Decree, the Decretals, and the Extravagants, together form the Corpus Arts Canonici, or great body of the C. L., as formerly received and administered by the church of Rome. There are, however, other publications of a later period, of more or less authority, but which do not appear to have received the formal sanction of the-holy see.
This C. L., borrowing from the Roman civil law many of its principles and rules of proceeding, has at different times undergone careful revision and the most learned and scientific treatment at the hands of its professors, and was very generally received in those Christian states which acknowledge the supremacy of the pope; and it still gives ecclesiastical law more or less to Roman Catholic Christendom, although its provisions have in many countries been considerably modified by the concordats (q.v.) which the popes now and then find it expedfent to enter into with Roman Catholic sovereigns and governments, whose municipal system does not admit of the application of the C. L. in its integrity. Indeed, the fact of its main object being to establish the supremacy of the ecclesiastical authority over the temporal power, is sufficient to explain why, in modern times, it is found to conflict with the views of public law and government, even in the case of the most absolute and despotic governments.