Capitularies

(capitula, chapters), a term applied especially to the statutes of the Frankish kings made in the assemblies of bishops and lords of the kingdom, and called capitula because published in chapters. The bishops reduced into the form of articles such rules as they deemed necessary, taken for the most part from the canons. The temporal lords also drew up on their part ordinances taken from the civil laws and customs, which the king afterward ratified and confirmed. These capitularies were in force throughout the kingdom. Those best known are the capitulars of Charlemagne and Louis le Debonnaire, which were first collected by Ansegis (q.v.) A.D. 827. The work is divided into four books, to which, about 845, Benedict, a deacon of Mayence, added some which Ansegis had omitted, together with the capitulars of Carloman and Pepin. In the eighth and following centuries, bishops were accustomed to give the names of capitularies to the rules which they drew up from the canons of councils for the regulation of their dioceses. Such capitularies had no force beyond the particular diocese for which they were made, except they were confirmed by a provincial synod, which made them binding on the whole province. Other prelates, however, sometimes adopted the capitularies of particular bishops. An edition of the early capitularies was printed by Baluze (Paris, 1677, 2 vols. 4to), reprinted and re-edited by Chiniac, 1780; the latest and best edition is found in Pertz, Monum. Germ. Hist. (Legum), t. 1, 2 (Hanover, 1835- 1837). — Farrar, Eccl. Dict. s.v.; Herzog, Real-Encyklopädie, 2:563.