DECRETALI. — The letters of the Pontiff containing a rule, either in a general manner or, more often, for the resolution of a particular question brought before his judgment, were so called by antonomasia.
A precise distinction from the point of view of law
was represented by the classification of decretales iuris interpretativae, decretales iuris novi constitutivae e decretales hortatoriae.
The characteristic of the praecoptivae d. was identified, beginning with Pope Siricius (384–99), in the formula “volumus et mandamus,” with which that type of d. was issued. But Pope Siricius himself recalls the “Generalia decreta” of his predecessor Liberius (352–66).
The earliest texts of the papal constitutions have not come down to us, and among the oldest registers those of Gregory the Great, John VIII, and Gregory VII have been preserved.
The practice of compiling collections of the d. of one or more pontiffs must have arisen early, because of the need to have the established and operative norms at hand. The known collections are numerous (v. COLLEZIONI CANONICHE). The principal among these collections, which enjoyed particular influence in the period when a true scientific doctrine of canon law was being formed, are found chiefly in the Quinque compilationse antiquae (v. COMPILATIONSE [QUINQUE] ANTIQUAE), and in the official collections of Gregory IX’s Liber extra, Boniface VIII’s Liber sextus, John XXII’s Extravagantes, and the Extravagantes communes (v. CORPUS IURIS CANONICI).
(photograph: Vatican Library)
DECRETALI - D. of Gregory IX with the Glossa Ordinaria of Bernardo Parmense. Vatican Library, cod. Pal. lat. 629, f. 72ᵃ (14th century).
councils, until the papal constitutions were collected separately as a distinct and pre-eminent source of the Church’s law. It should be noted that, in addition to the regular collections of epistles d., collections were also made in which the texts of such epistles are partly spurious or deliberately altered. - Vedi tav. LXXXV.