SEVENTY-FOUR TITLES, COLLECTION OF

A compilation of 315 capitula or ordinances distributed unequally under seventy-four titles, the whole entitled Diversorum patrum sententie. The important titles are: 1, 2, on the primacy of the Roman Church; 3, 4, on monastic and ecclesiastical privileges; 5–14, clerical immunity, accusation, and trial; 15, unworthy clergy; 16–21, entry to the priesthood and episcopacy; 22, 23, the Roman pontificate; 59–61, prohibition of lay control of church property. Seventy-four Titles is a well-ordered collection down to title 28, chapter 202. One group of manuscripts, known as the Swabian group, contains 15 additional titles (chapters 316–330) on excommunication. The author of this addition was probably bernold of constance (c. 1090).

This collection was probably compiled about 1074 at Rome. The unknown author belonged to the circle of reformers influenced by the ideas of Cardinal humbert of silva candida (d. 1061). The collection had three main influences: (1) it spread the notion of Roman primacy and clerical independence of secular power; (2) it presented a convenient text for papal legates, abbeys, and churches that opposed lay influence or wanted to reform lax clergy; (3) it was a model and main source of many later collections, including those of St. anselm ii of lucca, St. ivo of chartres, the unpublished Collection in Four Books, the Polycarpus, and possibly the Decretum of gratian. The Seventy-four Titles exists in some form or other in more than 60 manuscripts: the best text is given in the Namur 5 and Monte Cassino 522.

The majority of the capitula come from papal sources or were papal oriented. The false decretals was the formal source of some 259 chapters. This helped to popularize the False Decretals in Italy and elsewhere. Burchard of Worms was not used as a source, although later collections combined the Seventy-four Titles, Burchard, and canons of the councils.

The Seventy-four Titles' influence in the period c. 1076–1141 was not merely in canonical collections already

listed, but upon ideas and in polemical writings, e.g., bernold of constance and manegold of lau tenbach. In 1525 Johannes cochlaeus printed title 1, and thereafter there were spasmodic references until Theiner (1836), Thaner (1878), and the important article by Fournier (1894). In recent years the work of Anton Michel, especially Die Sentenzen des Kardinals Humbert: Dos erste Rechtsbuch der päpstlichen Reform (Leipzig 1943), has created a new interest and controversy about the Seventy-four Titles.

Bibliography: a. m. stickler, Historia iuris canonici latini: Vol. 1, Historia fontium (Turin 1950) 1:170–172, 187. j. autenrieth, "Bernold von Konstanz und die erweiterte 74-Titelsammlung," Deutsches Archiv für Enforschung des Mittelalters 14 (1958) 375–394. j. t. gilchrist, "Canon Law Aspects of the Eleventh Century Gregorian Reform Programme," The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 13 (1962) 21–38.

[j. t. gilchrist]