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Canon law (from Ancient Greek: κανών, kanon, a 'straight measuring rod, ruler') is a set of ordinances and regulations made by ecclesiastical authority (church leadership) for the government of a Christian organization or church and its members.
Gratian himself raises questions and brings forward difficulties, which he answers by quoting auctoritates, i. e. canons of councils, decretals of the popes, texts of the Scripture or of the Fathers. These are the canones ; the entire remaining portion, even the summaries of the canons and the chronological indications, are called the maxims or ...
In canon law, a canon designates some law promulgated by a synod, an ecumenical council, or an individual bishop. [ 2 ] The word "canon" comes from the Greek kanon , which in its original usage denoted a straight rod that was later the instrument used by architects and artificers as a measuring stick for making straight lines.
Some, such as the Church of England, has an ancient, highly developed canon law while others, such as the Episcopal Church in the United States have more recently developed canonical systems originally based on the English canon law. Unlike the system of canon law in the Church of England, which continues to be drawn from the canon law of the ...
The Code of Canon Law: A Text and Commentary. New York: Paulist Press, 1985. Commissioned by the Canon Law Society of America. John J. Coughlin. Canon Law: A Comparative Study with Anglo-American Legal Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Fernando Della Rocca. Manual of Canon Law. Trans. by Anselm Thatcher.
The jurisprudence of canon law is the complex of legal principles and traditions within which canon law operates, while the philosophy, theology, and fundamental theory of Catholic canon law are the areas of philosophical, theological, and legal scholarship dedicated to providing a theoretical basis for canon law as a legal system and as true law.
Philosophy and theology shape the concepts and self-understanding of canon law as the law of both a human organization and as a supernatural entity, since the Catholic Church believes that Jesus Christ instituted the church by direct divine command, while the fundamental theory of canon law is a meta-discipline of the "triple relationship ...
Secular courts in medieval times were numerous and decentralized: each secular division (king, prince, duke, lord, abbot or bishop as landholder, manor, [1] city, forest, market, etc.) could have their own courts, customary law, bailiffs and gaols [a] with arbitrary and unrecorded procedures, including in Northern Europe trial by combat and trial by ordeal, and in England trial by jury.