Towards 535 an unknown compiler classified its materials in a methodical way under sixty titles, and added to the canons twenty-one imperial constitutions relative to ecclesiastical matters taken from the Code of Justinian.
[1] The former council (325) was held in repute throughout the West, where its canons were in vigour together with those of Sardica, the complement of the anti-Arian legislation of Nicæa, and whose decrees had been drawn up originally in both Latin and Greek.
[1] This too seems to have grown up gradually in the course of the fifth century, and in its present shape exhibits the aforementioned canons of Ancyra, Neo-Cæsarea, Nicæa, Sardica, Gangra, Antioch, Chalcedon and Constantinople.
It came to be known as "Itala" from the place of its origin, and as "Prisca" because of an overhasty conclusion that Dionysius Exiguus referred to it in the preface of his first collection when he wrote: "Laurentius offended by the confusion that reigned in the ancient version [priscœ versionis]".
The Quesnelliana played a particularly important role in the spread of Leo's letters in Western canonistic literature, and was notably instrumental in the compilations of pseudo-Isidore for just this reason.
By the mid-eighth century, the "Quesnelliana" had secured its place as an important lawbook within the Frankish episcopate, for whom it served as the primary source during the influential council of Verneuil in 755.
By order of Pope Hormisdas (514–23), Dionysius made a third collection, in which he included the original text of all the canons of the Greek councils, together with a Latin version of the same; but the preface alone has survived.
The second part of the collection opens likewise with a preface, in the shape of a letter to the priest Julian, and a table of titles; then follow one decretal of Siricius, twenty-one of Innocent I, one of Zozimus, four of Boniface I, three of Celestine I, seven of pope Leo I, one of Gelasius I and one of Anastasius II.
[Note 8][1] It is so called because its oldest known manuscript was bought for the abbey of Santa Croce Avellana by St. Peter Damian (died 1073), probably dates from the middle of the sixth century.
The best edition is Otto Günther: Epistvlae imperatorvm pontificvm aliorvm inde ab a. CCCLXVII vsqve ad a. DLIII datae Avellana qvae dicitvr collectio.
[1] Compiled c. 546 by Fulgentius Ferrandus, it is a methodical collection and under its seven titles disposes 230 abridged canons of Greek ("Hispana" text) and African councils.
[1] It is divided into two parts, one dealing with the bishop and his clergy, the other relative to the laity; in both the author classifies methodically the canons of the councils in eighty-four chapters.
He says himself in the preface that he does not pretend to reproduce the text literally, but with set purpose breaks up, abridges, or glosses the same, in order to make it more intelligible to "simple people"; possibly he has occasionally modified it to suit the Spanish discipline of his time.
Their text was incorporated with the "Isidoriana", from which they were taken and edited apart by Merlin and by Gaspar Loaisa, and in the first volume of the oft-quoted work by Voel and Justel, after collation of the variants in the best manuscripts.
It has two parts: one includes the canons of Greek, African, Gallican and Spanish councils; the other divers papal decretals from Siricius to Pope Vigilius (384–555), with two apocryphal texts of St. Clement and an extract from St. Jerome.
[Note 13][1] The "Codex Carolinus" is a collection of papal decretals addressed to the Frankish rulers Charles Martel, Pippin the Younger and Charlemagne, compiled by the latter's order in 791 (Patrologia Latina XCVIII), not to be confounded with the "Libri Carolini" in which were set forth for Pope Adrian I various points concerning the veneration of images.
Beginning in the seventh and eighth centuries, and fuelled by the early Anglo-Saxon church’s strong ties to Roman models, one sees in England the considerable influence of Italian canon law collections, most notably the collectiones Dionysiana, Sanblasiana and Quesnelliana.
In the eighth century, imbued with the legal teachings of these collections, reform-minded Anglo-Saxon personnel descended on the Low Countries and the lands east of the Rhine, bringing with them the institutional framework and disciplinary models they had inherited from their Roman and Celtic mentors.
In England, interest in and the manuscript resources necessary to carry out the study of Continental canonical sources would never again under the Anglo-Saxons reach the level they had attained in the first two hundred years of the English church's existence.
Following the eighth century, the Anglo-Saxon church seems to have developed an increasingly strong tradition of operating juridically within the pre-existing secular legal framework.
In this tradition―which lasted from at least the end of the ninth century until the Conquest and beyond―the legal and disciplinary spirit of the English church stood close to and drew support from the emerging strength of West Saxon kingship.
By the beginning of the eleventh century, especially with the activities of Abbot Ælfric and Archbishop Wulfstan, study of canon law collections had once again attained a degree of sophistication in England.
The most celebrated of the Celtic canonical productions is the Collectio Hibernensis, of the early part of the eighth century, whose compiler put together previous ecclesiastical legislation in sixty-four to sixty-nine chapters, preceded by extracts from the "Etymologiæ" of St. Isidore of Seville concerning synodal regulations.
Being compiled, however, for the most part not directly from the original canonical sources, but from immediately preceding collections, which in turn often depend on apocryphal productions of the ninth century, they appear tainted to the extent in which they make use of these forgeries.
[1] The collection was made about 906 and seems to depend on an earlier one edited by Richter entitled "Antiqua Canonum collectio qua in libris de synodalibus causis compilandis usus est Regino Prumiensis" (Marburg, 1844).
The nineteenth book was familiarly known as Medicus or Corrector, because it dealt with the spiritual ailments of different classes of the faithful; it has been edited by Wasserschleben in Bussordnungen der abendländischen Kirche (Leipzig, 1851).
[1] The Collection in Seventy-four Books, or "Diversorum sententia Patrum", known to the Ballerini brothers and Augustin Theiner, is the subject of a study by Paul Fournier.
[Note 16][1] It has no preface; from the beginning (Incipit) of a Vatican manuscript it is clear that Anselm of Lucca compiled the work during the pontificate and by order of Pope Gregory VII (died 1085).
[Note 18][1] Bonizo, Bishop of Sutri near Piacenza, published, apparently a little later than 1089, a collection in ten books preceded by a brief preface which treats successively the catechism and baptism, then the duties of divers classes of the faithful: ecclesiastical rulers and inferior clergy, temporal authorities and their subjects, finally of the cure of souls and the penitential canons.
The fourth book only (De excellentiâ Ecclesiæ Romanæ) has found an editor, Cardinal Mai, in the seventh volume of his "Nova Bibliotheca Patrum" (Rome, 1854).