Bullarium

From the Catholic Encyclopedia

Bullarium is a term commonly applied to a collection of bulls and other analogous papal documents, whether the scope of the collection be general in character, or whether it be limited to the bulls connected to any particular order, or institution, or locality. The name bullarium seems to have been invented by the canonist Laertius Cherobini who in 1586 published under the title "Bullarium, sive Collectio diversarum Constitutionum multorum Pontificum" a large folio volume of 1404 pages containing 922 papal constitutions from Gregory VII down to Sixtus V, the pope then reigning. With regard to this and all subsequent collections, three things have carefully to be borne in mind. First, whatever may have been the intrinsic importance or binding force of any of the bulls so published, the selection itself was a matter that depended entirely upon the arbitrary choice of the various editors. As a collection the publication had no official character. The only recognized exception to this assertion is the first volume of a collection of his own bulls which was sent by Benedict XIV in 1746 to the University of Bologna to serve as a fons iuris, or source of legal principles. Secondly, it was never seriously maintained, despite some pretentious title pages, that these collections were in any sense complete, or that they even contained all the constitutions of more general interest. Thirdly, it was the intention of the editors, at least at first, rather to exclude than to include the papal pronouncements which had already been incorporated into the text of canon law. The avowed object of the early collections was to render assistance to canonists by bringing within their reach papal enactments which either had been overlooked by the compilers of the "corpus" or which had been issued subsequently to the latest decrees included in it.

We may disregard in the present notice various collections of relatively recent papal constitutions which were published in the early part of the sixteenth century. A typical specimen of such booklets is supplied by a rare little volume of sixty-two pages printed at Rome per Stephanum Guillereti in regione Parionis 1509, a copy of which is in the British Museum Library. A contribution of more substantial volume appears to have been a volume edited by Mazzutellus in 1579 which contained 723 documents. But it is to Laertius Cherubini that the credit is usually given of creating the bullarium in substance as well as in name. In the preface to the volume of which the title has already been given, the editor refers to his experiences in the ecclesiatical courts of Rome. In these courts I have noticed (he says) that certain advocates and judges went completely astray because they had not at hand the text of those apostolic constitutions a knowledge of which is most necessary in treating and pronouncing upon causes, seeing that in such constitutions is embodied the whole of the most recent pontifical law. After this explanation it is not surprising to find that out of Cherubini's 922 documents more than 800 were of recent date, that is to say they belonged to the hundred years immediately preceding the appearance of the volume. Of this collection, a second edition in three volumes, was printed at Rome in 1617, and a third edition in four volumes extending in this case from Leo I to Urban VIII, was prepared by the editor's son, Angelo Cherubini, in 1638, with a supplement added in 1659. Other editions followed, always somewhat enlarged. The fifth in six volumes was brought out by two Franciscans at Rome, 1669-72.

THE LUXEMBURG BULLARIUM

Moreover, a fuller but not more accurate reprint with supplementary volumes appeared in the eighteenth century, nominally at Luxemburg, although the actual place of impression is said to have been Geneva. Of this edition, which is one of the most commonly met with in libraries, the first eight volumes coming down to Benedict XVIII all bear the date 1727, while a ninth and tenth volume, supplementing the earlier portion, appeared in 1730. Other supplements followed at intervals. Four volumes were published in 1741 covering respectively the periods 1670-89, 1689-1721, 1721-30, 1730-40. In the same series, and still later, we have the following volumes: XV (1748), extending over 1734-40; XVI (1752) 1740-45; XVII (1753), 1746-49; XVIII (1754), 1748-52; XIX (1758), 1752-57. The last four volumes are entirely taken up with the Bulls of Benedict XIV. Although this is not the most important bullarium, it seemed worthwhile to indicate the arrangement of this Luxemburg edition as it appears to have been in part the source of the great confusion which is to be found in many accounts of the subject, notably in the recent article "Bullaire" in the "Dictionnaire de theologie catholique." It is not quite true, as has sometimes been supposed, that the "Luxemburg" editors contributed nothing of their own to the collection. For example, in Vol. IX (1730) we have two bulls of the English pope, Adrian IV, printed from the originals at Geneva with engraved facsimiles of the rota and the leaden bulla, and in fact the whole of the content of Vols. IX and X represent a large measure of independent research. The later volumes of the series, however, have simply been copied from the Roman edition next to be mentioned.

MAINARDI'S ROMAN BULLARIUM

This Roman edition of the bullarium, which still remains the most accurate and practically useful, bears on the title pages of its thirty-two volumes, the name of the publisher, Girolamo Mainardi, while the dedications to the cardinals prefixed to the different volumes and extending from 1733 to 1762 are also signed by him. The arrangement of the volumes, however, is peculiar, and the neglect to indicate these peculiarities has made the accounts given to this edition in most bibliographies almost unintelligible. Mainardi began with the idea of printing a supplement to the latest Roman edition of Cherubini's bullarium. As this was six volumes and stopped short at the pontificate of Clement X (1670-76), Mainardi called his first published volume Tome VII, and reprinted the bulls of Clement X from the beginning of his pontificate to his death. Moreover, an engraved frontispiece prefixed to this volume, printed in 1733, bears the words "Bullarium Romanum Tom. VII." The book further contains a promise that the six volumes of Cherubini's bullarium should in the course of time be reprinted in a corrected and enlarged form, with the aid of the documents contained in the secret archives of the Holy See. Seven other volumes followed in sequence to this first. They were printed from 1734 to 1744 and brought the collection from Clement X in 1670 to the accession of Benedict XIV in 1740. Meanwhile, the publisher had engaged an able scholar, Charles Cocquelines, to re-edit the six volumes of Cherubini's bullarium from Leo I to Clement X. In his hands an immense mass of material accumulated. The first volume was printed in 1739 and it bore a slightly different title from that of the installment which Mainardi had already published, beginning at "Tom VII." Cocquelines' section was headed "Bullarium privilegarium ac diplomatum Romanorum Pontificum amplissima collectio" and in comparison with Cherubini's meager gleanings from antiquity the epithet amplissima was fully deserved. This series, like all good work, advanced very slowly. A tabular arrangement will best show the details. The editor had to make his numbering correspond with Cherubini's six volumes and consequently some of the nominal tomi of the new edition were divided into several parts: