CANON LAW. A body of ecclesiasti• cal law, which originated in the church of Rome, relating to matters of which that church has or claims jurisdiction.
2. A canon is a rule of doctrine or of discipline, apd is the term generally applied to designate the ordinances of councils and decrees of popes. The position which the canon law obtains beyond the papal dominions depends on the extent to which it is sanctioned or permitted by the government of each oountry ; and hence the system of canon law as it is administered in different countries varies somewhat.
Though this system of law ie of primary import ance in Catholio countries alone, it still maintains great influence and transmits many of its peculiar regulations down through the jurisprudence of Protestant countries whioh were formerly Catholic. Thus, the canon law has been a distinct branch of the profession in the ecclesiastical courts of Eng land for several centuries; • but the recent modifica tions of the jurisdiction of those courts have done much to reduce its independent importance.
3. The Corpus Junis Canonici is drawn from various sources,—the opinions of the ancient fathers of the church, the decrees of councils, and the de cretal epistles and bulls of the holy see, together with the maxims of the civil law and the teachings of the Scriptures. These sources were first drawn upon for a regular ecclesiastical system about the time of Pope Alexander III., in the middle of the twelfth century, when one Gratian, an Italian monk, animated by the discovery of Justinian's Pandects, colleoted the ecclesiastical constitutions also into some method in three hooks, which he en titled Concordia Discordantium Canonum. These
are generally known as Decretum Gratiani.
4. The subsequent papal decrees to the time of the pontificate of Gregory IX. were collected in mush the same method, under the auspices of that pope, about the year 1230, in five hooks, entitled Decretalia Gregorii Noni. A sixth hook was added by Boniface VIII., about the year 1298, which is called Sextus Decretaliunt. The Clementine Consti tution, or decrees of Clement V., were in like manner authenticated in 1317 by his successor, John XXII., who also published twenty eonstitutions of his own, called the Extravagances Jeannie, so called because they were in addition to, or beyond the boundary of, the former collections, as the additions to the civil law were called Novels. To these have since been added some decrees of later popes, down to the time of Sixtus IV., in five hooks, called Extrava gantes communes. And all these together—Gratian's Decrees, Gregory's Decretals, the Sixth Decretals, the Clementine Constitutions, and the Extravagants of John and his successors—form the Corpus Jurie Canonici, or body of the Roman canonlaw. 1 Blaek stone, Comm. 82; Encyclopedia, Broil Canonigue, Drat Public Ecclesiaxtigue • Diet. de Jur. Drat Canonigue; Erskine, Inst. b. 1. t. 1. s. 10. See, in general, Ayliffe, Par. Jur. Can. Ang. ; Shelford. M arr. & D. 19; Preface to Burn, Eccl. Law, Tyrwhitt ed. 22 ; Hale, Civ. L. 26-29; Bell'a Case of a Putative Marriage, 203; Diot. du Droit Canonique ; Stair, Inst. b. 1. t. 1. 7.