MANY, SÉRAPHIN. - Canonist, b. at Gespunsart (Reims) on 30 Dec. 1847, d. at Fiesole on 19 Aug. 1922. Ordained a priest and appointed parish priest of the very modest parish of Sy, he devoted himself to profound legal training at the wish of Icard, superior of the Society of S. Sulpice, to which M. had meanwhile given his name. He studied law in Rome at the Apollinare. He taught canon law in Paris at the Seminary of S. Sulpice from 1878 to 1898, where he succeeded Msgr. Gasparri in teaching law in the Faculty of Canon Law.
In 1906 he was called to Rome, and Msgr. Gasparri entrusted him with an important part in the drafting and subsequent revision of the canons of the future CIC. Appointed auditor of the Rota in 1908, he became its dean in 1920.
He published: Le règlement de l'Officialité de Paris, an exact summary of the judicial and disciplinary procedure then in force; De Missa (Paris 1903); De locis sacris (ibid. 1904); De sacra ordinatione (ibid. 1905): three works representing the fruit of more than twenty years of labor and revealing a rigorous critical study of the sources, a high degree of theological and legal maturity, characterized by a profound analysis of the principles of laws and by a reasoned use of the rules of interpretation.