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St. Raymund and the Decretals
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2024
Extract
The present year marks two notable anniversaries associated with events which had wide spread importance, though very different results within the area of Law. The one was the publication of the famous Decretals of Gregory IX in 1234, a compilation of ecclesiastical law brought together by a Dominican friar, St. Raymund of Penafort, in the direction of centralization in Church government, which took its rise from the great Hildebrand, steadily but surely moved forward through the reigns of successive popes, and finally almost came to rest with Pope Gregory IX. Then there is that other most tragic event, three hundred years later, in 1534, the passing of the Act of Supremacy, whereby the death blow was struck at Canon Law, as far as England is concerned, and any lively influence that it might still have exerted on our own legal institutions was stifled at its source, though in shadowy forms it lingered on. But in the following year even the study of Canon Law was crushed out, when Cromwell as Henry VIII’s vicegerent visited the Universities and issued injunctions to the effect that lectures on the Decretals and the conferring of degrees in Canon Law should be abolished. The sequel was a notable depression also in the study of civil law in this country.
All but the prejudiced sectarian have come to acknowledge the Papacy as a wonderful piece of machinery and organization, not only within the sphere of religion and political prestige, but as a centre of law and government.
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- Copyright © 1934 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Even to-day we have the interesting survival among many others of the dual matters of Probate and Divorce pertaining to the same division of the High Court of Justice. cf. Richard O'Sullivan, Canon Law in Medieval England.
2 Holdsworth, Hist. of English Law, vol. IV, p. 128, vol. I, P 592.
3 P. Fournier, Hist. des Collections Canoniques, vol. I, p. 133.
4 The English Church and the Papacy, by Z. N. Brooke, p. 32
5 Church and State in the Middle Ages, by A. L. Smith, Lecture I, p. 39.
6 A. L. Smith, op. cit. p. 51.
7 During the early days of the University the doctors of Bologna depended for their livelihood on the fees of their students, who as we learn from Odofred, ‘volunt scire, sed nolunt solvere.’ (in Dig. Vet. (Lyons 1559) T. H. f. 102, quoted in Cambridge Medieval History, vol. VI.) This may perhaps explain St. Raymund's position.
8 Touron asserts that John of Abbeville in rendering an account to His Holiness of the success of the legation, delivered on the same occasion a eulogy of St. Raymund.
9 By German writers the movement is described as ‘hierarchische Tendenzen.’ The theory is founded, a n d seems first to have been propounded by Schulte, Geschite der Quellen und Literatur des canonischen Rechts, and transcribed by Friedberg in his Prologue to his critical edition of the Decretals of Gregory IX. The true scope of the collection is made clear in the Bull Rex pacificus which cannot be ignored.
10 W. E. Collins, The Study of Ecclesiastical History, p. 133.
11 Thus are designated five of the more important collections of decretals published in the interval between Gratian and Gregory IX.
12 The original source of this Carthaginian statute is a sixth century collection known as Statuta ecclesiae antiqua. As no council was held at Carthage in the year mentioned, the canons are held to be spurious.
13 cfr. Pollock & Maitland, History of English Law. Vol. I, p. 100.
14 F. de Zulueta, William of Drogheda, pp. 644, 654.
15 A lack of accuracy is shown in saying that every sentence, every rubric, contained in this compilation was law. cfr. Pollock & Maitland, History of English Law, vol. I, p. 93.