CAPITULARE. – This is the technical term for those juridical provisions which, articulated into capitula, found their particular expression under Frankish rule. They were not originally true laws, since, according to the Germanic conception, the only body capable of making laws was the assembly. The c. were instead originally ordinances or decrees (also called praeceptiones, decretiones) which, with the development of royal power to the detriment of popular power, came to possess an independent value, alongside or above the Frankish law itself, especially when the sovereign overcame the formal difficulty by submitting those ordinances merely for the assembly’s approval.
Among the tasks that the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire assigned to the Frankish sovereigns, the predominant one was that of tuitio ecclesiae, given the religious character of the new imperial institution.
The exercise of this task led the sovereign progressively to concern himself with the provision of ecclesiastical offices, the discipline of the clergy, and even doctrinal and matters of faith, as is evident from an entire series of c., in which it is easy to discern the growing intrusion of imperial power into the ecclesiastical sphere. Among these c., those that particularly concerned the regulation of the Church and ecclesiastical affairs were given the specific designation capitularia ecclesiastica, being kept distinct from the other c. that concerned the organization of civil affairs and were therefore called capitularia mundana. A third type of c., which regulated civil and ecclesiastical matters at the same time, was called capitularia mixta.
As Frankish conquest expanded under Carlomagno and his successors, it brought about a wider diffusion of the Catholic religion in the new countries subjected to the empire, an extension of the ecclesiastical powers assumed by the emperor, and a broader application of the ecclesiastical c.
To understand properly this intrusion of civil power into the ecclesiastical sphere, one must nevertheless bear in mind the fact that the bishop’s political functions were combined with his religious ones, first through the relationship of immunity and then through that of vassalage. When imperial policy came to rely more confidently on ecclesiastical dignities than on lay ones for the administration of public affairs, granting ecclesiastics broad exercise of civil powers in the emperor’s name, the ecclesiastical office became so closely joined to the public office that the emperor believed he could not regulate the latter without also restraining and directing the former.
But ecclesiastics also came into a position of subjection to imperial power by another route, when they were appointed as missi dominici in those embassies dispatched periodically throughout the empire’s vast territories as organs for the supervision and adjudication of peripheral administrations. There is more: the intermingling of the two orders, ecclesiastical and civil, also occurred through the assemblies. In this connection, it must be kept in mind that the Church’s own organization in various places was absorbed into, and partly identified with, political organizations. Thus councils were often the very assemblies of the State, directed by the sovereign or his representatives, and the enactments of these assemblies also concerned matters relating to faith and the discipline of the clergy. In this respect, conciliar canons consequently came, in that period and in those regions, often to represent a further concrete intrusion of the lay element into the administration and life of the Church and ecclesiastical affairs. Nevertheless, that interference by the higher laity in religious matters, which was initially tolerated in the spirit of a presumed dependence of the sovereign upon the Church’s central authority and for the better advancement of religious faith and the internal discipline of ecclesiastics, and which was also partly encouraged by the ambitious aspirations to autonomy of local ecclesiastical currents, in the long run, given the political authority’s scant sense of proportion, encountered resistance from the Church’s hierarchy. An entire movement thus came into being that would reach its culmination in the restorative policy of Ildebrando, aimed at freeing the ecclesiastical hierarchy from the meshes of the feudal political order.
There would first be a separation or, more precisely, an independent conception of the two offices held by ecclesiastics, the religious and the civil; and just as consecration to the episcopate and the provision of the Church would be recognized as falling within the exclusive competence of the ecclesiastical party, so the granting of any civil powers to an ecclesiastic could be accorded subordinately but separately. It is well known that a c. of 818–19 issued by Ludovico il Pio, responding to this new direction, seemed to leave the election of the bishop free to the ecclesiastical party (MGH, Capitularia, 1, p. 275). But imperial legislation under Lotario soon returned to the rigid Carolingian organization. Indeed, with the Constitutio romana of 824, Lotario even demanded that the consecration of the pontiff should not take place unless he had taken the prescribed oath in the presence of the imperial envoys (MGH, Capitularia, I, p. 322).
As the ecclesiastics grew stronger, especially in Italy, it can be seen that they quite frequently became the arbiters of the election of political leaders. Thus Guido di Spoleto owed his imperial election to the oath to safeguard ecclesiastical prerogatives according to the formula: «Sanctam romanam ecclesiam ex corde se diligere et exaltare et ecclesiastica iura in ordinibus observare... se velle, Deo teste, professus est...» (MGH, Capitularia, II, n. 222).
A special authority must be recognized for a series of Capitularia ecclesiastica, because they were incorporated and systematized in the Lombarda, which for a long time had particular application in Italy and to which the religious authorities themselves referred in resolving disputes, including those between ecclesiastics. In the Lombarda, the provisions in question are contained in Book III and are arranged more precisely under various titles (tit. I, De episcopis et clericis; tit. II, Quando liceat alterius clericum accipere vel non; tit. III, De decimis; tit. VIII, Quando liceat rectoribus ecclesiarum acta antecessorum suorum rescindere; tit. IX, De pontificibus). The most notable of these provisions are indicated in summary fashion.
Title I gathers a group of c. dating back to Carlomagno. Chapter 1 speaks of a synod at which bishops, abbots, and viri illustres are assembled together with the emperor, and at which it is decided that suffragans are to remain subject to the metropolitans secundum canones, who also possess the power to correct them. It is further established that monasteries are to live according to the rules and that abbesses are to reside continuously in the monastery (chap. 3). Bishops are acknowledged to possess power (secundum canones) over presbyters and clerics infra eorum parrechiam (chap. 4). The exemption of clerics from civil jurisdiction is declared (chap. 11), as is the irrevocability of the monastic state (chap. 11), and the permanence of the dedication of consecrated places is affirmed (chap. 13). Episcopal jurisdiction of its own is provided for in disputes between clerics (chap. 14). Also noteworthy is a c. of King Pipino (chap. 17) concerning the power of the bishop (pontifex) to order his own church and to compel the clerics canonico ordine vivere, with the threat: si quis pontifex clericos suos canonico ordine distringere noluerit, anathema sit.
Also noteworthy is chapter 36 of the same title, which declares Roman law to be proper to the ecclesiastical order.
Two Chapters of Pipino under Title II deserve mention, in which the bishop is forbidden to receive theેણ
the cleric and priest of other dioceses without letters dimissory. In tit. VIII, noteworthy are a capitulary of Lotario (cap. 2) concerning the rescindability of penalties assumed by predecessors in ecclesiastical precariae, and a capitulary of King Carlo (cap. 4) concerning the division of ecclesiastical tithes into four parts: one for the bishop, a second for the clerics, a third for the poor, and the fourth for the fabric of the Church.
To avoid confusion, the individual c. will be treated under the entries EPISTOLARIO; EVANGELIARIO; cf. also COMES; LEEIONARIO. *