history of canon law

History of Canon Law

Introduction

Canon law is the body of laws and regulations made by or adopted by ecclesiastical authority , for the government of the Christian organization and its members . The word adopted is here used to point out the fact that there are certain elements in canon law borrowed by the Church from civil law or from the writings of private individuals , who as such had no authority in ecclesiastical society

Canon is derived from the Greek kanon , i .e . a rule or practical direction (not to speak of

the other meanings of the word , such as list or catalogue , a term that soon acquired an exclusively ecclesiastical signification . In the fourth century it was applied to the ordinances of the councils , and thus contrasted with the Greek word nomoi , the ordinances of the civil authorities the compound word "Nomocanon " was given to those collections of regulations in which the laws formulated by the two authorities on ecclesiastical matters were to be found side by side

Canon law is also called "ecclesiastical law (jus ecclesiasticum however , strictly speaking , there is a slight difference of meaning between the two expressions : canon law denotes in particular the law of the "Corpus Juris , including the regulations borrowed from Roman law whereas ecclesiastical law refers to all laws made by the ecclesiastical authorities as such , including those made after the compiling of the "Corpus Juris

For many years , the Christian groups existed without having a complete and thorough body of written law . As a result , canon law served as a system of norms that ruled the early church

After the Roman Empire had become Christian at the early part of the fourth century , the Roman state created and organized religious practice and somewhat legislated for the Church . The Christian emperors attitudes were seen visibly in the legal code . There were about 41 imperial statutes , which dated between 313 and 399 that focused on ecclesiastical discipline and practice (Titles 2-13 of the Codex . Only the Church in the West had started to organize itself as a joint group that had the power to provide the statutes to rule it and practice an autonomous judicial role in society . In East , the Roman emperor continually legislated and ruled ecclesiastical organizations till its downfall in 1453 A .D

In the sixth century , after the downfall , the Byzantine canon law started to join and unite with the civil law . The initial authorized and lawful collections only comprised the ecclesiastical norms (means canon ) or the secular norms (means laws . But during the end of sixth century and in the beginning of seventh century , Byzantine canonists joined the collections called nomokanons (see Pennington Kenneth . A Short History of Canon Law from Apostolic Times to 1917 The Catholic University of America

Evolution Of The Office Of Bishop (Monarchical Bishop , which can be generally translated as bishop , overseer superintendent , supervisor , or foreman . Words related to episkopos are used in two other verses . Some Bibles attempting to distance themselves from certain types...