Decretal
Jus novum (c. 1140-1563) Jus novissimum (c. 1563-1918) Jus codicis (1918-present) Other Sacraments Sacramentals Sacred places Sacred times Supra-diocesan/eparchal structures Particular churches Juridic persons Philosophy, theology, and fundamental theory of Catholic canon law Clerics Office Juridic and physical persons Associations of the faithful Pars dynamica (trial procedure) Canonization Election of the Roman Pontiff Academic degrees Journals and Professional Societies Faculties of canon law Canonists Institute of consecrated life Society of apostolic life Decretals (Latin: litterae decretales) are letters of a pope that formulate decisions in ecclesiastical law of the Catholic Church.
However, Cardinal Pietro Gasparri led the papal commission for the revision of canon law and later on published a guide to the fontes (sources) used in the 1917 code.
[3] In the strictest sense of the word, it means a papal rescript (rescriptum), an answer of the pope when he has been appealed to or his advice has been sought on a matter of discipline.
It is generally stated that the most ancient decretal is the letter of Pope Siricius (384–398) to Himerius, Bishop of Tarragona in Spain, dating from 385; but it would seem that the document of the fourth century known as Canones Romanorum ad Gallos episcopos is simply an epistola decretalis of his predecessor, Pope Damasus (366–384), addressed to the bishops of Gaul.
From the Collectio Francofurtana (around 1180) onwards, collections get a more systematic character, and a school appears, the decretalists, who compile, organise and study the decretals as the basis of canon law.
[citation needed] Pope Gregory IX commissioned the Dominican Raymund of Peñafort to edit a comprehensive collection of papal decretals.
This collection of nearly 2,000 decretals appeared in 1234 as the Decretales Gregorii IX, also known as the Liber Extra, which was also immediately sent to the universities of Bologna and Paris.
[1] The Decretum of Gratian was considered in the middle of the 12th century as a corpus juris canonici, i. e. a code of the ecclesiastical laws then in force.
The "Compilatio tertia" is the oldest official collection of the legislation of the Roman Church; for it was composed by Cardinal Petrus Collivacinus of Benevento by order of Innocent III (1198–1216), by whom it was approved in the Bull "Devotioni vestræ" of 28 December 1210.
The first book treats of persons possessing jurisdiction (judex), the second of the civil legal processes (judicium), the third of clerics and regulars (clerus), the fourth of marriage (connubium), the fifth of delinquencies and of criminal procedure (crimen).
His collection was published by John XXII on 25 October 1317, under the title of "Liber Septimus Decretalium", but it is better known under the name of "Constitutiones Clementis V" or "Clementinæ".
[6] The term was first applied to those papal documents which Gratian had not inserted in his "Decree" (about 1140), but yet were obligatory upon the whole church, also to other decretals of a later date, and possessed of the same authority.
Bernardus Papiensis designated under the name of "Breviarium Extravagantium" or Digest of the "Extravagantes", the collection of papal documents which he compiled between 1187 and 1191.
Even the Decretals of Gregory IX (published 1234) were long known as the "Liber" or "Collectio Extra", i.e. the collection of the canonical laws not contained in the "Decree" of Gratian.
When Pope John XXII (1316–1334) published the decretals known as the Clementines, there already existed some pontifical documents, obligatory upon the whole church but not included in the "Corpus Juris".
Their number was increased by the inclusion of all the pontifical laws of later date, added to the manuscripts of the "Corpus Juris", or gathered into separate collections.
On the other hand, many of the decretals comprised in them contain legislation obligatory upon the whole church such as the Constitution of Paul II, "Ambitios", which forbade the alienation of ecclesiastical goods.
