CAPITULARY
311
CAPITULATIONS
consent of a nation was required. The laws or ordi-
nances were enacted either by the king himself and
alone, or after a consultation with his advisers, or
with the men of rank in a diet or parliament. It
was customary among the Franks, as indeed among
the Germanic nations generally, to assemble once a
year in the month of March, or at some other time in
the spring or summer, for legislative, military, or other
purposes. The attendance, which at first was general
on the part of all freemen, gradually shrank to the
men of rank or the nobles and ecclesiastical digni-
taries, such as counts, bishops, and abbots. At such
assemblies or diets legislative matters were discussed
between the king and his attendants, in which all,
bishops, abbots, counts, and other royal officers, took
part. Once the subjects were sufficiently debated,
they were drawn up as capitula and published as laws.
For this reason a certain number of capitularies were
prepared and issued in the annual diets. But the
same cannot be asserted of all, since there are many
which were not issued in the diets, or at least of which
this cannot be stated with certainty. If matters of
an ecclesiastical character came up for discussion,
they were generally, though not always, submitted
to the judgment of the bishops alone. In fact, the
bishop of the Frankish Empire often held their
synods contemporaneously with the diets. Some-
times also the diets presented an almost exclusively
ecclesiastical character, and thus they were called
synods as well as conventus or placita. In order to
preserve the capitularies and through them the writ-
ten law, they were reduced to writing and kept in the
archives of the imperial palace. Copies of them were
sent to the royal officers throughout the empire, or
else the officers were themselves requested to secure
copies, send them to each other, and in turn make
them known to the people. In a capitulary of the
y< ;ir 825 Emperor Louis the Pious (814-40) ordered
that the archbishops and counts should secure copies
of the capitularies from the chancellor, and communi-
>jate them to other ecclesiastical or royal dignitaries
in their districts for the purpose of publication. This
publication was to be done in the judicial assemblies
or courts of justice, in the market-places of cities, and
also in the churches. These orders were apparently
not executed conscientiously; otherwise translations
into the vernacular would have been made, of which,
however, there is practically no trace.
As the number of the capitularies kept growing, the need was felt of uniting them into one work. The first (incomplete) collection of this kind was made in 827 by Ansegisus (q. v.), Abbot of the mon- astery of Fontanelle, or, as it was called afterwards, St-Vandrille in Normandy. He divided his work into four books: the first contained the ecclesiastical capitularies of Charlemagne, the second the ecclesias- ii :l capitularies of Louis the Pious, the third the capitularies of Charlemagne on civil matters, the fourth the capitularies of Louis the Pious and his son Loiv'iaire on civil matters. Three appendixes were added to the work containing titles of capitularies, or capitularies that were doubled. This collection, though owing to the private initiative of Ansegisus, received the sanction of Louis the Pious in 829, and in this way obtained an official character. Towards the middle of the ninth century a new collection in three books appeared, designed to continue and com- plete the work of Ansegisus. Its author states that it was made by Benedictus Levita, a deacon of Mainz (847), at the suggestion of Bishop Autgar of that city. In reality it contains few genuine capitularies; the greater part of the work is a forgery, the materials for which were taken from the Roman law, the Bre- viarium Aland, the leges of the Visigoths and Bava- rians, the canons of councils, the decretals of the popes, the penitential books, and the writings of the Fathers. It was published shortly after 847 and is
intimately connected with the decretals of Pseudo-
Isidore. Hence, according to many, it was most
probably written cither at Reims or Le Mans, the
birthplace of the Isidorian decretals.
The capitularies enjoyed great authority through- out the Middle Ages. Bishops made use of them in their legislation; thus the above mentioned Herard of Tours in his capitula, Isaac of Langres in his canones, and Walter of Orleans in his capitula. The provincial councils of the ninth and tenth centuries recommended their perusal, or else adopted their con- stitutions, e. g. a synod of Reims (SSI), a synod of Mainz (88S), a synod of Ravenna (904), and a synod of Trosly, Diocese of Soissons (909). Finally, the later compilers of canons, like Regino of Priim, Bur- chard of Worms, Ivo of Chartres, and Gratian, borrowed much of their material from the capitula- ries. The text of the capitularies has often been printed. They were first edited by Vitus Amenpach (Ingolstadt, 154.5) from a manuscript of the monas- tery of Tegernsee (Bavaria). An incomplete edition of the capitularies of Ansegisus and Benedictus Levita was published by Jean du Tillet (Paris, 1548). Five books of capitularies were published by B. J. Herold (Basle. 1557), but this edition is rather incomplete and defective. The edition of du Tillet was com- pleted by Pierre Pithou (Paris, 15S8), and again by Francois Pithou (Paris, 1(303). Jacques Sirmond published the capitularies of Charles the Bald and his successors (Paris, 1623). A very complete edition of the capitularies was produced by Etienne Baluze (Paris, 1677), was reprinted at Venice in 1772. and re-edited by Pierre de Chiniac (Paris, 1780). The edition of Baluze has been inserted in various publi- cations of law and history issued since then in Ger- many, France, and Italy. A new edition was made by Pertz for the "Monumenta Germanise Historica" (Leges. I— II, Hanover, 1835-37). A later and bet- ter edition appeared in the same great collection, the work of A. Boretius and V. Krause (Leges, I— II, Hanover, 1883-97). Baluze, Pertz, Boretius, and Krause sought to give the complete text of all exist- ing capitularies and to arrange them in their chrono- logical order; in their editions, then-fore, the reader will find much more than the capitularies of Ansegisus and Benedictus Levita, which lat ter arc now accessible in special reprints.
Phillips. Kirchenrechl (Ratishon. 1851), IV; HlNSCHras, Kirchenr. (Berlin, 1SS3). Ill; VEBING, Lehrbucli des Kirchenr. (Freiburg. 1SS1); Sagmcller, Lchrb. des kaihol. Kirchenr. (Freiburg, 1904); Maassen, Gesch. der Quellrn und der Lift. des canon. Rechts (Gratz. 1S70); Pohle in Kirchenlex. (Frei- burg, 1S87), s. v. Capi' h> Knpitularien </- r Karolingrr (Munich, 1S93); Platz. Die Cop/'. Ktmige bis zu Karl dem Grossen (Pforzheim. 1SS2-SS); Idem, Die Gesetzgebung Karl dr* Grossen nach <l< n Capil. (Offenburg, 1897-98); Baluze, Pra-fnlxa in Migne, P /. (Paris, 1862), XCVII; Waitz, DeuUseh erlin, 1883), III; Dahn. Die Konige drr Germanen (Leipzig, 1894-99), VII. 2. VIII, 3; EsMEiN, Cours iUmen lu droit francai.t (Paris, 1892); Schlossee in Kirchenlex. (Freiburg, 1887), s. v. Capilularia regum Francorum: Rietschel in Realencyk. f. prot. Theol. (Leipzig, 1901), X, 43.
Francis J. Schaefer.
Capitulary Vicar. See Vicar Capitular.
Capitulations, Episcopal and Pontifical, were agreements, by which those taking part in the elec- tion of a bishop or pope imposed special conditions upon the candidate to be fulfilled by him after his election. Episcopal capitulations owe their origin to the fact that since the eleventh and twelfth centuries the real election of bishops was restricted to the canons of cathedral chaptt ere anxious to
curtail the prerogatives or the income of the bishops, and to secure for themselves privileges or larger rev- enues. Since the early part of the thirteenth cen- tury the canons of Mainz agreed amongst, themselves not to elect a bishop unless he promised beforehand to exact no financial contributions from the clergy.
