Ivo of Chartres, Collection of
IVO OF CHARTRES, COLLECTION OF
Three canonical collections are attributed to Ivo of Chartres: the Tripartita, the Decretum, and the Panormia. There is considerable doubt about the sources, the dates, and the circumstances of the editing of these collections. These questions will be resolved definitively only when critical editions of these writings can be made and when the minor collections and the florilegia of the 11th century are better known.
As its name indicates, the Tripartita is composed of three parts. The first two parts, Collection A, are a group of 655 fragments of decretals, real or false, from Clement I to Urban II (Part 1), and 789 conciliar canons or patristic texts (Part 2). The third part, Collection B, is an abridgment in 29 titles (861 fragments) of the Decretum of Ivo. The Tripartita is unedited.
The Decretum (Patrologia Latina 161:59–1022) is a compilation of 3,760 chapters divided into 17 parts. Its immediate sources are: the Decretum of burchard, taken over almost entirely; Collection A of the Tripartita; and a compilation of decretals related to the Britannica and, probably, to the Gregorian and French florilegia (schools of Laon, Bec, and Chartres). The composition of the collection leaves much to be desired: the series are transcribed without order or repeated; there are mistakes in the inscriptions. Theological questions form a great part of the work: I Pars, faith, Baptism, and Confirmation; II Pars, Eucharist; XVII Pars, theological virtues, and the four last things. One may also find in it almost 250 texts of Corpus iuris civilis, Codex Iustinianus, and 150 taken from authentic or apocryphal Carolingian legislation. Being too voluminous and inconvenient for a reference work, the Decretum was not very successful (list of MSS in Fournier-LeBras 2:67), but various abridgments were made of it until the 13th century.
The Panormia (Patrologia Latina 161:1045–1344) or Pannormia (collection of all the laws) contains 1038 chapters divided into eight books. 920 texts come from Ivo's own Decretum; the others are borrowed from the Collection of seventy-four titles, from Collection A of the Tripartita, and from a collection of decretals similar to the Britannica. The success of the Panormia, attested by the numerous preserved MSS of this collection, is due to its incontestable qualities of brevity, order, and the legal precision of the summaries (Gratian copied them by the hundred). In fact the work offers "a compendious encyclopedia of Canon Law at the end of the 11th century" (Fournier-LeBras 2:99).
If one accepts the conclusions of P. Fournier, one will have to admit that the three collections were composed in a fairly brief lapse of time (1093–95) by a group of copyists working under the direction of Ivo of Chartres, with the encouragement of Pope Urban II (Ep. 2, Patrologia Latina 162:13). Collection A of the Tripartita must have been prepared in 1093–94 from documents brought back from Rome (where Ivo had gone in 1090 and 1093), combined with traditional French Canon Law. The Decretum would date from 1094, as would the Tripartita, completed by the addition of Collection B; the Panormia, from 1095. The legal science displayed in the Summaries in the Panormia, the care taken in distinguishing the exact nature of juridical rules (precept, counsel, unchangeable and contingent laws), the space given to exemption, the rules given for reconciling conflicting texts (inspired partly by the works of bernold of con stance), reveal the guiding hand of the great canonist Ivo himself. The same tendencies run through the Prologus (Patrologia Latina 161:47–60 and 1041–46), of which it is difficult to say whether it was intended for the Decretum or the Panormia.
Bibliography: p. fournier and g. lebras, Histoire des collections canoniques en occident depuis les fausses décrétales jusqu'au Décret de Gratien, 2:55–114 (Paris 1931–32). É amann and l. guizard, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 15.2:3625–40 (Paris 1903–50). a. van hove, Commentarium Lovaniense in Codicem iuris canonici 1 (Mechlin 1928) 1:331–332. ivo of chartres, Correspondance, ed. and tr. j. leclercq (Les Classiques de l'histoire de France au moyen âge 22; Paris 1949) vii–xli. p. fournier, "Les Collections canoniques attribuées â Yves de Chartres," Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes 57 (1896) 645–698; 58 (1897) 26–77, 293–326, 410–444, 624–676. j. de ghellinck, Le Mouvement théologique du XXIe siècle (2nd ed. Bruges 1948) 445–459. c. munier, Les Sources patristiques du droit de l'église du VIIIe au XIIIe siècle (Strasbourg 1957).
[c. munier]