THE CANON LAW A descriplion oj the Frontispiece will he found on page 167. Both the Jllustyations in this Book are taken frotn the famous MS. of Gratian in the Library of Madrid. C : fc sr ;3 < 5 fc-H'r (y t ? iJ :5 r- § K ^:§^i-fa'ii.i^S': THE CANON LAW BY THE REVEREND R. S. MYLNE B.C.L. OxON ; F.S.A. London; F.R.S. Edin. MSMEER AND MEDALLIST OF THE ARCH,COLOGICAL SOCIETY OF FRANCE FELIOW OF THE ACADEMY OF S. LUKE, ROME WITH A PREFACE BY J. MAITLAND THOMSON, LL.D. SOMETIME CURATOR OF THE HISTORICAL MSS. OF SCOTLAND MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED 1912 Table of Contents FAGK Preface ix-xxiv CHAPTER I The Origin of the Canon Law CHAPTER n Decretum Gratiani . 32 CHAPTER III DeCRETALIA GREGORII IX. 34 (Books I., II., III.) CHAPTER IV DECRETALIA GREGORII IX. 76 (Books IV., V.) VIU TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER V The Canon Law of England CHAPTER VI The Ecclesiastical Courts . "5 CHAPTER VII Patronage 144 APPENDIX The Distribution of Ancient MSS. of the Canon Law . 161 Index • I 199 The Distribution of 250 Copies of this Book 306 PREFACE It has come to be an accepted maxim in our day that history is a science, of which, as of other sciences, sound and satisfactory knowledge cannot be obtained from text-books alone ; as the facts of physiology, so the sources of history, must be studied at first hand. That English history must be read in the Statute Book has grown to be a truism. The Corpus Juris Canonici is not history it is only the statute book of medieval Church ; also a primary document for social history. " There can be very little doubt that the Canon Law was one of the great factors of European civilisation in the Middle Ages," so Lord Eraser wrote two generations ago ; the modern man's difficulty would be to see where the " " little doubt comes in. I think, therefore, that Mr. Mylne does the State good service in imparting to " us others " a litde of his own learning on this subject, and (in his Appendix) bringing before us the very form and colour of the tomes in which our ancestors studied it. And I am very sensible of the honour he has done me in inviting me to contribute a short preface to his book. h IX X PREFACE What I shall say refers chiefly to the history of Canon Law in my own country, Scotland. With regard to the authority of Canon Law in England and Scotland, it is certain that in neither country was it administered in its entirety ; it could hardly be so in any State not under the direct rule of the Pope. Another truism is that, in the main, the reason for this was the action of the State courts limiting the scope of the jurisdiction of the courts of the Church. In the controversy which has arisen as to the function ot the National Church in this matter, our author has, I think, done well to point out how narrow the limits are within which difference of opinion is possible, when we find Professor F. W. Maitland admitting the existence of special customs having the force of law within the national area, and Bishop Stubbs writing in his Constitutional History, after specifying the sources of general and local Canon Law, "all these were regarded as binding on the faithful within their sphere of operation, and, except where they came into collision with the rights of the Crown, common law, or statute, they were recognised as authoritative in ecclesiastical pro- cedure." For Scotland, Bishop Dowden, in his monu- mental work, speaking of provincial synods and legatine " councils, writes thus : The laws and constitutions enacted at such synods or councils are sometimes no more than promulgations of canons already recognised, but more often they are of the nature of working bye- laws, adapting general principles to the requirements of PREFACE xi the time and place." Set this alongside of the doctrine stated in our standard authorities, that the synodal statutes are the Canon Law of Scotland, and the contrast is startling. But as a deduction from modern decisions, the latter statement is accurate. One is reminded of " Professor Maitland's dictum : A lawyer must be orthodox, otherwise he is no lawyer ; an orthodox history seems to me a contradiction in terms." But even had the local legislation been much more intrinsically import- ant than it was, we should still have to recognise that when we think of Canon Law as a force making for civilisation, it is not of local regulations we are thinking, but of the jus coiiwnme, extra-national and endeavouring to be extra-mundane. It was not diS jus cleri that it was so potent a force, but a.sjuspoli (see p. 131 of this book). And its force was both greater and more beneficent in Scotland than in England. For in the south at an early date justice was centralised and the municipal law taught and studied as a system ; north of the Tweed that was not so. The conditions there resembled more those which prevailed in Germany, and paved the way there for the " reception " of the civil law. In England the influence of Canon Law upon common law is admitted to have been considerable in early times. " Again, to quote Professor Maitland : A class of professional canonists is older than a class of men professionally expert in English temporal law, and the secular courts adopted many suggestions from with- out." Moreover, for a long time the king's justices were ; xii PREFACE churchmen and canonists, and their influence has power- fully affected not only the principles but also the forms of common law procedure (Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, i. 131 f). But these statements are limited to the period before Edward i. In Scotland in those days there was no body of learned lawyers, and the justiciaries were, so far as can be inferred from the records, generally laymen. Since the days of Saint Marofaret there has never been a time when the lesser kingdom has not been more or less powerfully influenced by the greater ; but in no century before the nineteenth was that influence so completely predominant as in the thirteenth. At that period, then, the Canon Law influ- enced Scotland mainly as a result of its influence in England. But the want of a metropolitan made con- stant recourse to Rome on all occasions a necessity and, as will appear further on, the weakness of our central power and of our legal profession made it im- possible for them to vindicate for the king's courts the whole extent of the jurisdiction which the English king's courts successfully maintained against the claims of the courts Christian. Among the results of the wars of independence was the eclipse, though not the disappearance, of the influence of England ; but Scotland was not yet provided either with a strong government nor with that tranquillity which is necessary to the growth of legal or any other learning. Hence there was more place for the canonist than ever ; of conflicts with Rome, save over matters financial, no more is heard: "Scot- PREFACE xiii land, though remote in^ place, "'had probably a closer connexion with Rome than any other country in Christ- endom, outside the ' Patrimony of St. Peter,' and was thrown into particularly intimate relations with the Holy " See (see Medieval Church in Scotland, p. 224). Of the causes which at last alienated Scotland from the Pope, it is, happily, unnecessary to say anything here. But it was the influence, once more predominant, of a now anti- papal England that made the final rupture possible. This dependence of Scotland upon England is very conspicuous when we come to the special customs recog- nised in each country. In ritual, the " Sarum Use" is believed to have been universal in Scotland till partially superseded by the Aberdeen Breviary, itself only differ- ing from its predecessor in matters of detail. The rule which prescribes two godfathers and one godmother at baptism for each boy, one godfather and two godmothers for each girl, was laid down as the legal maximum for the diocese of Exeter in 1287, and for that of Aberdeen at an unknown date in the thirteenth century ; in the town of Aberdeen, as the Registers show, this practice continued for some years after the Reformation, and it is still the rule throughout the Anglican Church. The two customs specially mentioned and approved by Lyndwood (see Canon Laiv in the Church of England, p. 42) are that which makes parishioners responsible for the upkeep of the nave of their parish church, and that which assigns to the spiritual courts an exclusive juris- diction in testamentary causes. Both of them obtained xiv PREFACE in Scotland also. Another custom, by no means to be approved of by any churchman, was that which per- mitted the king to seize the moveable estates of deceased bishops. This was in existence in England in King- Stephen's days, and was practised for long afterwards on the estates of such bishops as died intestate {History i. of English Law, i. 519) ; but by the time of Edward it seems to have gone out. That monarch refers to it as the custom of Scotland. In that belated country, though formally renounced by David 11. in full parlia- ment, it revived, and was not finally abolished till 1450. Another custom, that which gave to the king the advow- son, sede vacante, of all livings in the bishop's gift was early and easily established in England, where advow- sons were by law temporal property, and cognisable by the secular courts.