**CODE OF CANON LAW**
With this name is designated the code promulgated in 1917, containing the universal law of the Latin Church.
**OUTLINE:**
I. Necessity of codification
II. Preliminaries of codification
III. The work of codification
IV. The Code
V. Authentic interpretation of the CIC
VI. The sources of the CIC.---
**I. NECESSITY OF CODIFICATION**
The causes that led to the gathering of the universal laws of the Church into an authentic and systematic collection are analogous to those that gave rise to civil codes.
The plurality and confusion of legislative sources in various states—Roman, canonical, and common law, royal decrees, municipal statutes, general and local customs—and the resulting multitude and disorder of collections containing them led, beginning in the 16th century, to increasingly numerous and authoritative voices, including those of F. Bacon, G. Leibniz, and L. A. Muratori, calling for profound reforms to remove uncertainty and disorder. Three methods were proposed: the ancient system of compilation to unify all laws in a single collection in the form in which they were promulgated, while eliminating existing contradictions; an intermediate system between compilation and codification that would allow for the inclusion of original texts but also the addition of new ones in even greater number, unifying the law in force throughout the nation; and finally, the system of codification (proposed by Leibniz in 1716), namely, the gathering into a single collection of the law of each country, so that ancient laws would also be included, but corrected and adapted to circumstances, expressed in new and concise form, omitting useless old formulas.
Criticism spared no ecclesiastical law collections. Tommaso Campanella even appealed to Paul V to compile a single code encompassing both canon and civil law.
The *Corpus iuris canonici* (q.v.) no longer met the demands of modern times: of the six collections that composed it, Gratian’s *Decretum*, the *Extravagantes* of John XXII, and the *Extravagantes communes* remained private collections; the other three—the *Decretales* of Gregory IX, the *Sextus* of Boniface VIII, and the *Clementinae*—were official collections, but incomplete and outdated; the last of these had been promulgated in 1317. The *Decretales Clementis VIII*, more commonly known as the *Liber septimus Clementis VIII*, Pietro Matteo’s *Liber septimus decretalium*, and Paolo Lancellotti’s *Institutiones iuris canonici*, attempted to meet a need increasingly felt after the reforming work of the Council of Trent; but these three works lacked official character. The first volume of the *Bullarium* of Benedict XIV did have official status, and as a jurist he was well aware of the defective state of legislative sources, but he was not in a position to remedy II. Meanwhile, laws multiplied; to papal acts were added the decrees of the Roman congregations, but both were scattered in bullaria and private collections, always incomplete. Thus, only a few could have a perfect knowledge of ecclesiastical legislation.
While, in fact, for the laws included in the three authentic collections of the *Corpus* the principles of interpretation of universal laws applied, for all other cases it was necessary to investigate their scope and nature—whether territorial or personal. For all laws, whether included in the *Corpus* or not, it had to be determined whether they were still in force or whether intrinsic or extrinsic circumstances had deprived them of their binding force. Indeed, even laws contained in official collections sometimes dated back to the early centuries of the Church, were often repeated and thus useless, many expressly abrogated, others fallen into desuetude. Nor were there lacking laws promulgated for the universal Church that in fact were particular, because in many places they had ceased to apply by virtue of concordats, privileges, dispensations, customs, or later laws; nor were there lacking true and irreconcilable contradictions between norms issued on the same matters in such distant and different times and circumstances. Interpretation was further complicated by the excessively confused and prolix form in which the laws were drafted, convoluted and divided into narrative, motivational, and dispositive parts, and complicated by clauses and formulas devoid of normative content. While, finally, for certain matters the number of laws was excessive, for others they were entirely lacking.
To eliminate similar inconveniences and difficulties that were also deplored in civil legislation, various states had systematic collections in which, after removing superfluous and contradictory elements, common law, customary law, and even statutes were retained as supplementary sources. Thus had Vittorio Amedeo II of Savoy done with the *Regie Costituzioni* of 1723; Charles Felix with the *Leggi civili e criminali per Regno di Sardegna* of 1827; and Pope Gregory XVI with his *Regolamento legislativo per gli Stati pontifici* of 1834. Driven by the same causes, the Prussian Code of 1794 and the French (or Napoleonic) Code of 1804 were promulgated; yet between the two there were profound differences: the Prussian Code contained not only private law but also public law and was therefore extremely extensive (19,000 paragraphs), while the Napoleonic Code contained only private law; the Prussian Code replaced common law but left local, provincial, and customary law in force, whereas the Napoleonic Code was exclusive.