Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/308

 the canons of the councils, now possessing cogent authority, and the laws of the empire, now framed on a strict conformity between church and state.

Here then we reach the historical materials on which is based the later canon law; and almost at the same time the date at which the conversion of England began. In the middle of the sixth century Dionysius Exiguus, a Roman abbot, compiled the collection of canons which was the germ and model of all later collections. Nearly at the same time, both in the Eastern Church under John the Faster, and in the extreme West under the Irish and other Celtic missionaries, began the compilation of Penitentials; and in the same century the emperor Justinian completed the great body of the civil law. Thus you get the three conjoint systems of jurisprudence: not distinct in fact from each other; overlapping everywhere, and even containing much common matter, but distinct in basis. Take the Penitential first: that was in reality a list of sins and their penances; sins so ticketed and valued as to please even the most abstract philosopher; permutated and combined to mathematical precision. This sort of literature, belonging especially to ages and nations brought into close contact with heathen abominations, was very important in the last converted countries of East and West; Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury, the Venerable Bede, Egbert of York, and among the Celts Columbanus, Cummian, Vinniaus, and Adamnan, founded the penitential system here: from them the Frank and German churches adopted their rules, and by and by, when Anglo-Saxon literature was borrowing from the Continent, our scholars translated back with interest the developed systems which their predecessors had sent abroad. These rules of penance continue to be elaborated in England to the time of the Conquest; and bear some analogy to the early laws of the Anglo-Saxon kings, which consist so largely of definitions of crimes and penalties. It is to be remembered, however, that the Penitentials were private compilations, the authority of which depended on the estimation or dignity of their authors, and not on any legislative sanction; but,