A DISTINCT VOICE Medieval Studies in Honor of Leonard E. Boyle, O.P. Edited by Jacqueline Brown and William P. Stoneman University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana The Extravagantes communes and Its Medieval Predecessors Jacqueline Brown N1501, when Jean Chappuis completed the editio princeps of what would Ibecome known as the Corpus iuris canonici, he saw into print five texts whose contents had long been established, either by tradition (Gratian's Decre- tum, the Extravagantes Johannis XXIII or by papal decree (the Dectetales Gregorii IX, Boniface VIII's Libet sextus, the Constitutiones Clemetitinaes. But the sixth and last part of his edition was a novelty: the title, Extravagantes communes, was of Chappuis's own devising, and the contents, sixty-eight pa- pal letters I ranging in date from the pontificate of Boniface VIII (1294-13031 to that of Sixtus IV 11471-841,2were of his own choosing. There were precedents in print for Chappuis's Communes, but it is strik- ing how far he departed from them. Earlier printers and editors of the Sext and Clementines had included extravagantes at the end of those works, some- times only one, sometimes as many as thirty-seven. In 1503, when Chappuis brought out his revised, and definitive, version of the Communes, it contained seventy-three papal decrees, double the highest number available in other printed editionsr' The manuscript precedents for Chappuis's Extravagantes communes are both more numerous and more varied than those in printed form. Even so, like the printed texts, none of the extant manuscript collections of late-medieval extravagantes provides even an approximate exemplar of Chappuis's work. And since it was Chappuis's selection of material that served as the Corpus iutis canonici of the Catholic Church from the sixteenth until the early twen- tieth century, the actual extravagantes communes of the later Middle Ages have largely been lost to view. This article will survey the manuscript and printed precedents of the Extravagatites communes in order to highlight what has been obscured by the success of Chappuis's work and to understand better what Chappuis himself hoped to achieve. Manuscript Collections of Late-Medieval Extravagantes Extravagantes-laws "wandering outside" the established collections of canon law-are often found in manuscripts with the Liber sextus or the Con- 373 374 JACQUELINE BROWN stitutiones Clementinae (or both], they are also found in miscellanies and on their own. Hundreds of such manuscripts survive from the Middle Ages, and, in the nature of manuscripts, no two of them are exactly alike. That their contents should be ever-changing is a common feature of medieval collections, as other researchers have shown about miscellanies and other derivative texts; 4 and so it is not surprising to find scribes adding and subtracting extravagantes, rearranging them, adding their own summaries or adapting the ones found in their sources. I have singled out for attention in this essay only the most gen- eral aspects of the manuscript transmission in order to show which papal de- crees were most often copied in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and were thus made easily available to canon lawyers, scholars, and ecclesiastical officialsf Some limitations in this survey should be mentioned. For reasons of space, manuscripts with only a few extravagantes and, conversely, extrava- gantes that turn up in very few manuscripts have not usually been cited. Also, there inevitably remain many manuscripts that I have not yet had the oppor- tunity to examine/' I expect, though, that while the counts reported in Tables 1-5 cannot claim to be definitive, the picture given in Table 8 of the over- all distribution of extravagantes-that is, which ones are commonly found in manuscripts and which ones are rare-will probably not change signifi- cantly with further research. Lastly, while most of the manuscripts mentioned below predate the 1470s, when collections of extravagantes first began to be printed, some of the later manuscripts may be based on printed sources, as, for example, is certainly the case with the six extravagantes (the sixth unfinished) copied on fols. 77r-BOr of Vatican Library, MS Vat.lat. 12102. The six corre- spond in sequence and headings to the first six in a list of twenty-nine extrava- gantes found on fol. 49r-v of the same manuscript; those twenty-nine, in turn, are described as having been printed in Venice on 1 January 1480 at the end of a copy of the Constitutiones Clementinae/ The six extravagantes found later in the manuscript have the date of the edition in the top margin, making the connection unmistakable. 1. The Extravagantes Bonifatii VIII Although the title is misleading-the contents are not limited to decrees issued by Boniface VIII-it is found in manuscripts and so I retain it here. This and the two following collections have a feature in common: each came into existence in conjunction with a commentary. In this first instance the com- mentary is the work of Johannes Monachus-known as lithe Cardinal" from his ecclesiastical rank-who had previously glossed the Libet sextus. The Extravagantes communes and Its Medieval Predecessors 375 As R. M. Johannessen has recently demonstrated, the Cardinal's glosses on extravagantes were released in four stages between 1301 and 1307: (I) De- testandae, Antiquorum, and Super cathedram. (2) Excommunicamus, Pro- vide, Debent, and Iniunctae (all of the preceding extravagantes issued by Boniface VIII); (3) Unam sanctam, Rem non novam, Dudum bonae, Inter cunctas, Ex eo, Si teligiosus, Quod olitn, Piae, and Sancta Romana eccle- sia (the first two and last two issued by Boniface, the rest by his successor, Benedict XI); (4) Pastotalis, Dudum Boniiatius, Meruit, and Quia nonmilli (all issued by Benedict's successor, Clement VJ.8 The Cardinal's choices proved to he popular: the decrees are commonly found in medieval manuscripts, often with his commentary but often grouped together even in its absence. The following manuscripts-and undoubtedly others than I have not yet had the opportunity to examine-contain the entire Extravagantes Bonifatii VIII in the order outlined above: Admont, Stiftsbihliothek, 603, fols. 134r-143v; Chantilly, Musee Conde, 217, fols. 19Sv-208v; Krak6w, Biblioteka Jagielloiiska,333 ,fols.16 7v-182 v, Krak6w, Biblioteka Iagielloriska, 1288, fols. 137v-149v; London, British Library, RoyallO.E.l, fols. 204v-217v; London, Lambeth Palace Library, 13, fols. 353r-367v; Saint-Omer, Bibliotheque municipale, 458, fols. 81v-96v. Far more frequently we find manuscripts that preserve only portions of the collection, reflecting the stages in which the Cardinal's glosses were published. For example, Angers, Bibliotheque municipale, 391, fols. 107r- 122v, and Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 329, fols. 129r-144v, con- tain the first sixteen decrees, with glosses, hut omit the final four issued by ClementV. In other manuscripts the relationship of the contents to the Extravagantes Bonifatii VIII is harder to detect. Amiens, Bibliotheque municipale, 376, fols. 87r-llOv, omits Super cathedram, Rem non novam, Dudum Bonifatius, and Pastoralis and gives the other sixteen in a completely different order from that given above: Sancta Romana ecclesia, Iniunctae, Debent, Unam sanctam, Piae, Detestatidae, Antiquorum. Excommunicamus, Provide, Si teligiosus, Quod olim, Dudum Bonifatius, Ex eo, Inter cunctas, Quia nonmilli. and Me- ruit. Possibly the compiler of the collection in this manuscript had his own independent access to original papal documents, hut given the presence of the Cardinal's gloss, it is more likely that the compiler, or a predecessor, copied the material of interest to him, in the order that he preferred, from a copy of the Extravagantes Bonifatii VIII. 376 JACQUELINE BROWN Table 1 Manuscripts Containing One or More of the Extravagantes Bonifatii VIII 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Admont StiftsB 603 X X X X X X X Amiens BM 376 X X X X X X Angers BM 391 X X X X X X X Arezzo B. della Cittä 345 X X X Arras BM 610 X X X· X X X Arras BM 793 X· X X· X X X· Aschaffenburg StiftsB Pap. 10 X X X X2 X X2 Avignon M. Calvet 1702 X Avranches BM 154 X Basel UB C.V.19 X X X X Berlin SPK lat. fol. 212 X X X X X X Berlin SPK lat. quo 209 X X X Bologna Coll. di Spagna 276 X X -• X X X X Brussels BR 8018-26 X* Cambridge CCC 450 X X X Cambridge Cony. & Caius 257 X X X X Cambridge Harv. Law Sch. 65 X X X X X X X Chantilly M. Conde 217 X X X X X X X Epinal BM 106 X X X Florence Laur. Aedili 45 Frankfurt a.M. S-UB Barth. 29 X Graz UB 49 X X X X X X Hannover LB 11282 X X X X X X Hereford Cath. P.VIII.3 X2 X X X X X Kassel LB 2° iur. 13 X X X X X X X Krak6w BJ323 X X X X X X Krak6w BJ 333 X X X X X X X Krak6w BJ 1288 X X X· X X X X Leipzig UB 980 X X X X X X Leipzig UB 1041 X X X X X X London BL Burney 354 X London BL RoyallO.E.l X X X X X X X London Lambeth 13 X X X X X X X London Lambeth 171 X X X X X X X London Ray. Call. Phy. 410 X X X X X X X The Extravagantes communes and Its Medieval Predecessors 377 Table 1 (continued) 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 IS 16 17 18 19 20 X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X* X2 X X X X X X* X· X· X X X· X· X· X· X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X2 X2 X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X2• X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X· X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X· X 378 TACQUELINE BROWN Table 1 {continued! 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Lucca B.