Canon

CANON. - I. LAW. - The term canon comes from the Greek κανών, which in its proper and primitive sense meant reed, straight rod, a measuring instrument used by craftsmen, and in a figurative sense indicated a rule or norm. The word canon entered the patrimony of the Latin language rather late. Cicero still uses the Greek form.

In a figurative sense the word canon was used in grammar, in literature (canones were the classical authors), in art (canon of Polyclitus: Quintilian, Inst. orat., X, 1, 54), in matters of faith (Gal. 6, 16), in matters of morals (Phil. 3, 16), in liturgy (St. Clement, Ep. I Cor., I, 41).

The practice of considering the Holy Books as the rule of faith, or as having the force of law, or as admitted by law or rule, likewise led to the practice of designating them as canonical. Subsequently their list was called canon (v. BIBBIA).

The laws of the Church, insofar as they are rules of morals, already at the beginning of the 4th century (Council of Ancyra, can. 24; Council of Nicaea, cann. 1, 2, 5 etc.) are called κανόν, κανονικός, and thus opposed to civil laws, called νόμοι, as appears from Nov. 137 of Justinian and from the collections of the Nomocanons (v.). At first the term was used especially to designate the decisions of the Eastern councils and the norms believed to have been given by the Apostles, and subsequently all the juridical or disciplinary norms issued by councils, or even all ecclesiastical laws. In the Middle Ages the single ecclesiastical law was called ius canonicum, ius canonum, lex canonica, and the body of laws was called ordo or mos canonicus (R. von Scherer, Handbuch des Kirchenrechts, I, Leipzig 1886-89, p. 111); it is in this sense that the word is used by Gratian in the work Concordia discordantium canonum, by the Decretists and the Decretalists. Innocent III opposes canon to custom (c. 11, X, I, 2). Often the collections of the laws of the Church were called Corpus canonum or Corpus iuris canonici (v.).

From the 15th century, in the Councils the term canon indicates dogmatic definitions, while disciplinary provisions are called decrees. At the same time the term is attributed to universal ecclesiastical laws as compared with the provisions of particular councils. With the Pian-Benedictine codification, canon indicates the universal laws contained in the CIC.

The term also assumed other meanings over the centuries: in ancient times it designated the roll in which were listed the clerics assigned to the service of a church; in the medieval period it also came to mean monastic rule or liturgical psalmody. Even today it also indicates a payment in money or in kind, temporary or perpetual (v. CANONS AND CENSES).

Elio Gambari

II. MUSIC

In the musical poetry of the Greek-Byzantine church, with Andrew of Crete it came to mean a hymn composed of 9 odes (initially: 8 odes of the Old Testament plus the Magnificat) of 304 strophes each, often interspersed with troparii. John Damascene and Cosmas of Jerusalem (7th-8th centuries) were also canonists.

The canon then came to mean, in both popular and religious music of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, a melodic line stated by one voice or part and rigorously imitated by several voices or parts, which enter one after another at given intervals of time and thus give the impression of chasing one another: hence perhaps the names rota, caccia, fuga, given from the 13th century onward to certain imitated compositions.

The canon may be at the unison, at the octave, at the fifth, at the third, at the fourth above and below; infinite or perpetual or circular; by inversion or contrary motion, retrograde or crab-wise, mirror-like; by augmentation or diminution, etc. In earlier times it was customary to write canons even on a single line (L'homme armé by J. Després). If the key needed to read all the other parts from a single part was contained in a riddle sentence, it was called an "enigmatic" canon. In the 15th century the infinite canon was also written in a circle. With the Franco-Flemish school, the canon reached its greatest development and attained artistic heights, even though fashion and mannerism at times complicated it almost to the point of absurdity. But quite remarkable examples are known as early as the 13th and 14th centuries: from this arises that imitative style (motet, canzona, ricercare, fantasia) which would develop into the seventeenth-and eighteenth-century fugue.

Canons are very frequent in Palestrina's masses; they then pass into the figurative chorales for organ; Bach's oeuvre, both vocal and instrumental, is full of them; afterward, that of the German musicians perpetuates their use down to our own day, especially in Protestant liturgical music.

Anna Maria Gentili