Corpus Juris Canonici (Canon Law) — Reference Entry
The Corpus Juris Canonici ("Body of Canon Law") is the classical body of Roman Catholic canon law that governed the Western (Latin) Church from roughly 1140 until the 1917 Codex Iuris Canonici replaced it. It is not a single statute but a corpus of successive collections: Gratian's Decretum followed by the great decretal collections (the Liber Extra, the Liber Sextus, the Clementinae, and the Extravagantes). Its name and authoritative arrangement were fixed by the Roman Edition (Editio Romana) decreed under Pope Gregory XIII in 1582.
This entry is a reference record, not a full-text mirror. The complete corpus runs to thousands of pages of Latin — the standard scholarly edition by Friedberg fills two large volumes — and a complete English translation does not exist; only copyrighted partial scholarly translations. Reproducing the work in full here is neither feasible nor useful, so this entry describes the corpus, identifies its standard public-domain Latin edition, and links the verified sources where the genuine text can be read.
Source: https://archive.org/details/BD1141951 (Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici, Vol. 1 — Public Domain Latin edition)
I. What it is
The Corpus Juris Canonici is the body of internal ecclesiastical law of the Roman Catholic Church for the Latin rite, assembled over roughly four and a half centuries (c. 1140 – 1582). It stood as the cornerstone of Church law until the promulgation of the first Codex Iuris Canonici (Code of Canon Law) in 1917. The name itself — deliberately echoing the Corpus Juris Civilis of the Emperor Justinian — received official sanction in the sixteenth century under Pope Gregory XIII.
The corpus is composed of two broad layers: (1) Gratian's foundational textbook, the Decretum Gratiani, and (2) the later, officially promulgated decretal collections that supplemented and built upon it.
II. The component collections
1. Decretum Gratiani (c. 1140) — Gratian's textbook, properly titled Concordia discordantium canonum ("The Concord of Discordant Canons"). It harmonizes apparently contradictory canons drawn from Scripture, Church councils, papal decretals, and the Church Fathers. It is the foundation of the whole corpus, and Gratian is honored as Pater Juris Canonici, the "Father of Canon Law."
2. Decretales Gregorii IX / Liber Extra (1234) — the decretals collected by order of Pope Gregory IX, compiled by Raymond of Peñafort, organized in five books.
3. Liber Sextus (1298) — promulgated by Pope Boniface VIII, a "sixth book" supplementing the five books of the Liber Extra.
4. Clementinae (1317) — the Constitutiones Clementis V, decretals of Pope Clement V, published under John XXII.
5. Extravagantes Joannis XXII — constitutions of Pope John XXII ("wandering outside" the earlier collections).
6. Extravagantes Communes — papal constitutions through about 1484, gathered as a common supplement.
III. The standard edition
The authoritative modern scholarly edition is that of Emil (Aemilius) Friedberg, Corpus Iuris Canonici, 2 volumes (Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1879–1881):
- Volume 1 — the Decretum Gratiani.
- Volume 2 — the later decretal collections (Liber Extra, Liber Sextus, Clementinae, Extravagantes).
Friedberg's edition, building on the earlier work of Emil Ludwig Richter, supplies the critical apparatus on which all modern citation of the canon law rests. The older authoritative printed text is the Editio Romana of 1582, prepared by the Correctores Romani and promulgated by Gregory XIII. Friedberg's two volumes (and their later facsimile reprints) are in the public domain by reason of age; this is the edition cited and linked below.
IV. Translation status
A complete English translation does not exist; only copyrighted partial scholarly translations. Portions of the Decretum (for example, the introductory distinctiones on the theory of law) and selected decretals have been translated in modern academic monographs and source readers, but those translations are under their own modern copyright and cover only fragments of the whole. There is no public-domain, complete English rendering of the corpus. Anyone needing the authoritative text must work from the public-domain Latin edition of Friedberg.
V. Verified public-domain sources (Latin)
- Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici, Vol. 1 (Decretum Gratiani) — Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/BD1141951
- Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici, Vol. 2 (decretal collections) — Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/BD1141952
- Decretales Gregorii IX (Liber Extra), Latin text — Bibliotheca Augustana: https://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/Chronologia/Lspost13/GregoriusIX/gre_0000.html
Provenance & licence: All component texts of the Corpus Juris Canonici date from c. 1140 to 1582 and are in the public domain worldwide by reason of age. The standard scholarly edition by Emil Friedberg (Corpus Iuris Canonici, 2 vols., Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1879–1881) is likewise in the public domain (author died 1910; published over a century ago); the linked Internet Archive copies are facsimile reprints of that Leipzig edition. The Bibliotheca Augustana Latin text of the Decretales Gregorii IX is based on the same Richter/Friedberg edition (Leipzig 1881). No portion of the historical Latin corpus is under modern copyright. Note that the unrelated Code of Canon Law of 1917 and 1983, and any recent English translations or scholarly apparatus, may carry their own copyrights — only the historical Latin corpus and the Friedberg edition are asserted here as public domain. This entry is a reference record; it does not reproduce the full source text.