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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.
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.
The Catholic Church utilizes the oldest continuously functioning legal system in the West, [1] much later than Roman law but predating the evolution of modern European civil law traditions. The history of Latin canon law can be divided into four periods: the jus antiquum, the jus novum, the jus novissimum and the Code of Canon Law. [2]
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.
The history of Byzantine and Eastern canon law to 1500. History of Medieval canon law, 4. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press. ISBN 978-0-8132-1947-9. OCLC 815276580. Ponomariov, Alexander (2017). The visible religion: the Russian Orthodox Church and her relations with state and society in post-Soviet Canon law (1992-2015 ...
Collections of ancient canons contain collected bodies of canon law that originated in various documents, such as papal and synodal decisions, and that can be designated by the generic term of canons. Canon law was not a finished product from the beginning, but rather a gradual growth. This is especially true of the earlier Christian centuries.
Thus the only pseudo-epigraphic document preserved in the law of the Greek Church is the small collection of the eighty-five so-called "Apostolic Canons" (q.v.). The compilers, in their several collections, gathered only occasional decisions, the outcome of no pre-determined plan, given by councils or by certain great bishops.
Some authors conceive of canon law as essentially theological and the discipline of canon law as a theological subdiscipline, [19] but Msgr. Carlos José Errázuriz contends that "in a certain sense, all postconciliar canonical scholarship has shown a theological concern in the widest sense, that is, a tendency to determine more clearly the ...