Three separate canonical collections
The Liber Septimus (Latin for "Seventh
Catholic canon law
collections of quite different value from a legal standpoint which are known by this title.
Constitutiones Clementinae, 1314
The Constitutiones Clementis V or Constitutiones Clementinæ are not officially known as "Liber Septimus". However, they were so designated by historians and
Bishop of Strasburg. This collection was not even considered a "Liber" (book).
[1]It was officially
Decretales Clementis Papæ VIII, 1598
The name has also been given to a canonical collection officially known as Decretales Clementis Papæ VIII. It owes the name of "Liber Septimus" to
Benedict XIV imitated him in this, and it has retained the name.
[1]The Decretales Clementis Papæ VIII is divided into five books, subdivided into titles and chapters, and contains disciplinary and
It was to supply the defect of an official codification of the canon law from the date of the publication of the Constitutiones Clementinæ (1317), that
Clement VIII in 1598 for his approbation, which was refused. A new revision undertaken in 1607-08 had a similar fate, the reigning
pope Paul V declining to approve the "Liber Septimus" as the obligatory legal code of the Church.
[1]The refusals of approbation by Clement VIII and Paul V are to be attributed not to the fear of seeing the canons of the Council of Trent glossed by canonists (which was forbidden by the bull of
Pius IV,
Benedictus Deus, confirming the Council of Trent), but to the political situation of the day. Indeed, several states had refused to admit some of the constitutions inserted in the new collection, and the Council of Trent had not yet been accepted by the
French government; it was therefore feared that the Governments would refuse to recognize the new code. It also seems a mistake to have included in the work decisions that were purely and exclusively dogmatic and as such entirely foreign to the domain of canon law. This collection, which appeared about the end of the sixteenth century, was edited by François Sentis ("Clementis Papæ VIII Decretales", Freiburg, 1870).
[1]Seventh Book of Decretals, 1590
Pierre Mathieu (Petrus Matthæus), a
Justus Henning Boehmer's edition, Halle, 1747) contained the text of this "Liber septimus" as an appendix.
[1]References
