This Library Research Guide provides an introduction to the major resources for the study of Canon Law. It includes the basic encyclopedias and reference sources and links to LibrarySearch for materials on canonical topics. For more information, use the tabs you find above. These provide brief overviews of sources that will help your research.
Canon Law, in the Roman Catholic Church, is the body of law based on the legislation of the councils (both ecumenical and local) and the popes, as well as the bishops (for diocesan matters). It is the law of the church courts and is formally distinguished from other parts of ecclesiastical law, such as liturgical law. However, when liturgical law overlaps with canon law, canon law normally prevails. Canon law has had a profound influence on the law of countries where the Roman Catholic Church has been the state church. In the Middle Ages, the church courts had very wide jurisdiction,e.g., in England, control of the law of personal property, and, because they were well regulated, they tended to attract many borderline cases that might also have been heard by the developing royal courts.
Catholics of Eastern rites have their own separate codes of canon law, approved by the Roman Catholic Church. The term "canon law" is also used for ecclesiastical law in churches of the Anglican Communion. The Anglican Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical (1603) was a collection of rulings, not based on the old canon law, but given equal force with the canon law.
The Code of Canon Law for the Latin Church, which became effective in 1983, is a revision of the Codex canonici [code of canon law], promulgated in 1917. The code itself, the culmination of centuries of legal growth, consists of 1,752 canons in seven books and supersedes all previous compilations. It does not contain all canon law, which continues to grow, but it is the base of the present-day law, and the study of canon law consists mainly in mastering the code and its application. Canon law lays down rules for the governance and regulation of the clergy and the church, including such matters as the qualifications, duties, and discipline of the clergy and the administration of the sacraments (more particularly the laws regarding holy orders and the sacrament of marriage). Canon law embraces both general laws applicable in the church universal, such as those on requirements for the priesthood and those on marriage, and local laws applicable only in certain dioceses.
The early law grew particularly from the canons of church councils, from the letters of bishops regarding church discipline and governance, and later from papal letters, called decretals, that settled matters of ecclesiastical government and discipline. After the 4th cent. this legislation grew profuse, and attempts to collect and correlate the laws began early. These collections were private in that they seem not to have been authorized by the popes. They also contained material that was not genuine, as in the case of the False Decretals. It was not until the middle of the 12th cent. that the great genius of the canon law, Gratian, following after Ivo of Chartres, applied the methods of Roman law in bringing order out of the chaos of conflicting and uncoordinated legislation. His Concordia canonum (c.1140) or Decretum Gratiani [Gratian's Collection of Decrees] became the basis for future compilations of the law.
The first decretal compilations authorized by the popes appeared in the 13th cent. Important among these later "official" collections were the Extravagantes or Liber extra of Gregory IX, so named because they were outside Gratian; the collection issued (1298) by Boniface VIII called Liber sextus [the sixth book] because it added to the five books of decretals promulgated by Gregory; the collection promulgated (1317) by John XXII, drawn mostly from the constitutions of Clement V at the Council of Vienne and called the Clementinae; the work commonly called Corpus juris canonici, which in 1500 combined all the preceding with the Extravagantes of John XXII and the Extravagantes communes (decretals from Boniface VIII through Sixtus IV that were not included in previous collections) and was to be the fundamental work in canon law for centuries. The Council of Trent (1545-63, with interruptions) by its decrees concerning the church and church discipline, was a landmark in canon law.
Church legislation had become considerably confused by the time St. Pius X announced (1904) the undertaking of the Codex juris canonici. This was drafted by a commission of cardinals headed by Cardinal Gasparri. In 1917, when the code was finished, a permanent commission of cardinals was set up to interpret it. In 1959, Pope John XXIII convoked the Second Vatican Council and announced a revision of the code of 1917. In 1963 he appointed a pontifical commission for the revision; the revised code became effective in 1983.
See J. A. Abbo and J. D. Hannan, The Sacred Canons (2d rev. ed. 1960); S. Kuttner, Harmony from Dissonance: An Interpretation of Medieval Canon Law (1960); R. Metz, What Is Canon Law? (1960); T. L. Bouscaren and A. C. Ellis, Canon Law (4th rev. ed. 1966).
