CANON LAW, a collection of ecclesi astical constitutions for the regulation of the Church of Rome, consisting for the most part of ordinances of general and provincial councils, decrees promulgated by the popes with the sanction of the car dinals, and decretal epistles and bulls of the popes. The origin of the canon law is said to be coeval with the establishment of Christianity under the apostles and their immediate successors, who are sup posed to have framed certain rules or canons for the government of the church. These are called the apostolical canons ; and though the fact of their being the work of the apostles does not admit of proof, there is no doubt that they belong to a very early period of ecclesiastical history. These rules were subsequently enlarged and explained by general councils of the church. The canons of the four councils of Nice, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Macedon (which were held at different times in the fourth and fifth centuries), received the sanction of the Emperor Justinian, A.D. 545. (Novel. 131, cap. 1.) The chapter referred to, after con firming the decrees of the four councils, adds, " we receive the doctrines of the aforesaid holy synods (i. e. councils) as the divine Scriptures, and their canons we observe as laws." Collections of these canons were made at an early period. The most remarkable of these collections, and that which seems to have been most generally received, is the Codex Canonum, which was compiled by Dionysins Ex iguns, a Roman monk, A.D. 520. This body of constitutions, together with the capitularies of Charlemagne and the decrees of the popes from Siricins (A.n. 398) to Anastasms IV. (A.D. 1154), formed the principal part of the canon law until the twelfth century. The power of the popes was then rapidly increasing, and a uniform system of law was required for the regulation of ecclesiastical mat ters This necessity excited the activity of the ecclesiastic lawyers. After some minor compilations had appeared, a col lection of the decrees made by the popes and cardinals was began by Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, A.D. 1114, and perfected by Gratian, a Benedictine monk, in the year 1150, who first reduced these ecclesiastical constitutions into method. The work of Gratian is in three books, arranged and digested into titles and chapters in imita tion of the Pandects of Justinian, and is entitled Concordia discordantium Cano num,' but is commonly known by the name ' of Decretum Gratiani.' It com
prises a series of canons and other eccle siastical constitutions from the time of Constantine the Great, at the beginning of the fourth, to that of Pope Alexander III., at the end of the twelfth century. The decretals, which were rescripts or letters of the popes in answer to questions of ecclesiastical matters submitted to them by private persons, and which had obtained the authority of laws, were first published A.D. 1234, in five books, by Raimond de Renafort, chaplain to Pope Gregory IX. This work, which consists almost entirely of rescripts issued by the later popes. especially Alexander III., Innocent Ill., Honor= III., and Gre.
gory IX. himself, forms the most essential wt of the canon law, the Decretum of Gratian being comparatively obsolete. These decretals comprise all the subjects which were in that age within the cogni zance of the ecclesiastical courts, as the lives and conversation of the clergy, ma trimony and divorces, inquisition of cri minal matters, purgation, penance, ex communication, and the like. To these five books of Gregory, Boniface VIII. added a sixth (A.D. 1298), called ` Sextus Decretalium,' or the Seat,' which is itself divided into five books, and forms a sup plement to the first five books, of which it follows the arrangement. The Seat consists of decisions promulgated after the pontificate of Gregory IX. The Cle mentines, or Constitutions of Clement V., were published by him in the council of Vienna (A.D. 1308), and were followed (A.D. 1317) by those of his successor, John XXII., called Extravagantes Johan rile. To these have since been added some aecrees of later popes, arranged in five books after the manner of the Seat, and called Extravagantes Communes. AU these together, viz. Gratian's Decree, the Decretals of Gregory IX., the Seat, the Clementines, and the Extravagants of John XXII. and his successors, from what is called the Corpus Juris Canonici, or body of canon law. Besides these, the institutes of the canon law were compiled by Jolin Launcelot, by order of Paul IV., in in sixteenth century; but it appears from the author's preface that they were never publicly acknowledged by the popes. In 1661 there was published a collection of the decretals of different councils, which is in some editions of the Corpus Juris Canonici, but this likewise Lau never received the sanction of the Holy See.