Collectio canonum quadripartita (original) (raw)

The Collectio canonum quadripartita (also known as the Collectio Vaticana or, more commonly, the Quadripartita) is an early medieval canon law collection, written around the year 850 in the ecclesiastical province of Reims. It consists of four books (hence its modern name 'quadripartita', or 'four-parted'). The Quadripartita is an episcopal manual of canon and penitential law. It was a popular source for knowledge of penitential and canon law in France, England and Italy in the ninth and tenth centuries, notably influencing Regino's enormously important Libri duo de synodalibus causis ('Two books concerning diocesan affairs'). Even well into the thirteenth century the Quadripartita was being copied by scribes and quoted by canonists who were compiling their own collections of canon law.