JOHN OF WALES

Bolognese canonist of the classical period, of whom nothing is known other than that he was a native of Wales. He wrote an apparatus to the Compilatio tertia antiqua (1210–15), and put together and glossed what is known as the Compilatio secunda antiqua between 1210 and 1212 or 1215. This compilation is, in fact, the third in time of the five "received" collections of decretal letters prior to the great compilation commissioned by Gregory IX in 1234 (see quinque compilationes an tiquae), but it became known as the "second" or "inter-mediate" since it contained decretals after those in the Breviarium, or Compilatio prima, of Bernard of Pavia (1191–92) and before the official collection of Innocent III's decretals known as Compilatio tertia (1210). John's fellow exiles gilbertus anglicus and alanus anglicus had made collections of decretals to supplement Compilation prima before 1210; but although these collections had been superseded by Innocent's Compilatio, there was still a demand for the extra documents they contained. Of all the attempts made to arrange these documents of Gilbertus and Alanus systematically in a single collection, only that of John was accepted by the schools as Compilatio secunda. The center of his compilation depends on Gilbertus and Alanus; the system is that of the five books of the Compilatio prima. In all there are 106 titles divided into 331 chapters, embracing texts prior to the Decretum and many decretals of Clement III (1187–91) and Celestine III (1191–98), as well as decretals omitted from Compilatio prima, such as some of Alexander III and Lucius III [ed. A. Friedberg, Quinque Compilationes Antiquae (Leiden 1876) 66–104].

Bibliography: f. gillmann, "Johannes Galensis als Glossator …," Archiv für katholisches Kirchenrecht, 105 (1925) 488–565. "Des Johannes Galensis Apparat zur Compilatio III in der Universitäts-bibliothek Erlangen," ibidem 118 (1938) 174–222. g. post, "Additional Glosses of Johannes Galensis and Silvester in the Early Tancred or So-called Laurentius Apparatus to Compilatio III," ibidem 119 (1939) 364–375. a. van hove, Commentarium Lovaniense in Codicem iuris canonici 1, v.1–5 (Mechlin 1928—) 1:356, 444, 445. a. m. stickler, Historia iuris canonici latini: v. 1, Historia fontium (Turin 1950) 234. s. kuttner, "Bernardus Compostellanus antiquus," Traditio 1 (1943) 310. g. oesterlÉ, Dictionnaire de droit canonique, ed. r. naz, 7v. (Paris 1935–65) 6:105–106.

[l. e. boyle]