Corpus Juris Canonici

The Corpus Juris Canonici (lit. 'Body of Canon Law') is a collection of significant sources of the canon law of the Catholic Church that was applicable to the Latin Church. It was replaced by the 1917 Code of Canon Law which went into effect in 1918. The 1917 Code was later replaced by the 1983 Code of Canon Law, the codification of canon law currently in effect for the Latin Church. In 1990, Oriental canon law was codified in the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, which is currently in effect for the Eastern Catholic Churches.

The Corpus juris canonici was used in canonical courts of the Catholic Church such as those in each diocese and in the courts of appeal at the Roman Curia such as the Roman Rota.

The term corpus juris canonici was used to denote the system of canonical law beginning in the thirteenth century.

The term (Latin for 'body') here denotes a collection of documents; corpus juris, a collection of laws, especially if they are placed in systematic order. It may signify also an official and complete collection of a legislation made by the legislative power, comprising all the laws which are in force in a country or society. The term, although it never received legal sanction in either Roman or canon law, being merely academic phraseology, is used in the above sense when the "Corpus juris civilis" of the Christian Roman Emperors is meant.

The expression corpus juris may also mean, not the collection of laws itself, but the legislation of a society considered as a whole. Hence Benedict XIV could rightly say that the collection of his Bulls formed part of the corpus juris. One best explains the signification of the term corpus juris canonici by showing the successive meanings which were usually assigned to it in the past and at the present day.

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