The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law CUA Law Scholarship Repository Scholarly Articles and Other Contributions Faculty Scholarship 1975 The French Recension of Compilatio Tertia Kenneth Pennington The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.edu/scholar Part of the Religion Law Commons Recommended Citation Kenneth Pennington, The French Recension of Compilatio Tertia, 5 BULL. MEDIEVAL CANON L. 53 (1975). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at CUA Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Scholarly Articles and Other Contributions by an authorized administrator of CUA Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The French recension of Compilatio tertia* Petrus Beneventanus compiled a collection of Pope Innocent III's decretal letters in 1209 which covered the first twelve years of Innocent's pontificate. In 1209/10, Innocent authenticated the collection and sent it to the masters and students in Bologna. His bull (Devotioni vestrae), said Innocent, was to remove any scruples that the lawyers might have about using the collection in the schools and courts. The lawyers called the collection Compilatio tertia; it was the first officially sanctioned collection of papal decretals and has become a benchmark for the growing sophistication of European jurisprudence in the early thirteenth century.1 The modern investigation of the Compilationes antiquae began in the sixteenth century when Antonius Augustinus edited the first four compilations and publish- ed them in 1576. His edition was later republished in Paris (1609 and 1621) and as part of an Opera omnia in Lucca (1769).