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Ecclesiastical letters are publications or announcements of the organs of Roman Catholic ecclesiastical authority, e.g. the synods, but more particularly of pope and bishops, addressed to the faithful in the form of letters. == Letters of the Popes in the period of the early church == The popes began early, by virtue of the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff, to issue canon laws as well for the entire Church as for individuals, in the form of letters which popes sent either of their own will or when application was made to them by synods, bishops or individual Christians. Apart from the Epistles of the Apostle Peter, the first example of this is the Letter of Pope Clement I (90-99?) to the Corinthians, in whose community there was grave dissension. Only a few papal letters of the first three Christian centuries have been preserved in whole or part, or are known from the works of ecclesiastical writers. Among them are Adversus Aleatores by Pope Victor I, some fragments of a letter by Pope Stephen I, three letters by Pope Cornelius, and one by Pope Dionysius.〔(Ancient Papal Documents )〕 As soon as the Church was recognized by the (Roman) State and could freely spread in all directions, the papal primacy of necessity began to develop, and from this time on the number of papal letters increased. No part of the Church and no question of faith or morals failed to attract the papal attention. The popes called these letters; with reference to their legal character, ''decreta, statuta, decretalia constituta'', even when the letters were often hortatory in form. Thus Siricius, in his letter of the year 385 to Himerius of Tarragona, a Greek Sophist, Rhetorician and archbishop of Tarragona.〔Jaffé, "Regesta Pontificum Romanorum" (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1885-88), I, no. 255.〕 Or the letters were called sententiœ, i. e. opinions;〔Syn. Tur., II, an. 567, c. ii.〕 prœcepta;〔Syn. Bracar., I, an. 561, præf.〕 auctoritates.〔Zosimus, an. 417; Jaffé, "Regesta", 2nd ed., I, no. 349.〕 On the other hand more general letters, especially those of dogmatic importance, were also called at times ''tomi; indiculi; commonitoria; epistolae tractoriae'', or simply ''tractatoriae''. If the matter were important, the popes issued the letters not by their sole authority, but with the advice of the Roman presbytery or of a synod. Consequently such letters were also called ''epistolae synodiae''.〔Syn. Tolet., III, an. 589, c. i.〕 By ''epistola synodica'' was also understood in Christian antiquity the letter of the newly elected bishop or pope by which he notified the other bishops of his elevation and of his agreement with them in the Faith. Thus an epistola of this kind had a certain relationship to the ''litterae formatae'' by which a bishop certified, for presentation to another bishop, to the orthodoxy and unblemished moral character of an ecclesiastic of his diocese. Closely related to the litterae formatae are the ''litterae dimissoriae'' (dimissorials) by which a bishop sends a candidate for ordination to another bishop to be ordained. While these names indicate sufficiently the legal character of the papal letters, it is to be noted that the popes repeatedly demanded in explicit terms the observance of their decrees; thus Siricius, in his letter of the year 385 to Himerius,〔Jaffé, "Regesta", 2nd ed., I, no. 255.〕 and Innocent I in his letter of the year 416 addressed to Decentius, Bishop of Gubbio.〔Jaffé, "Regesta", 2nd ed., I, no. 311.〕 In the same manner they repeatedly required from the persons to whom they wrote that these should bring the letter in question to the notice of others. Thus again Siricius, in his letter to Himerius;〔Jaffé, "Regesta", 2nd ed., I, no. 255〕 and Pope Zosimus, in the year 418 to Hesychius of Sabona.〔Jaffé, "Regesta", 2nd ed., I, no. 339.〕 In order to secure such knowledge of the papal laws, several copies of the papal letters were occasionally made and dispatched at the same time. In this way arose the letters a pari: ''a paribus uniformes, ta isa''.〔Jaffé, "Regesta", 2nd ed., I, nos. 331, 334, 373.〕 Following the example of the Roman emperors, the popes soon established archives (''scrinium'') in which copies of their letters were placed as memorials for further use, and as proofs of authenticity. The first mention of papal archives is found in the Acts of a synod held about 370 under Pope Damasus I.〔Pierre Coustant, "Epistolæ Romanorum Pontificum", Paris, 1721, 500.〕 Pope Zosimus also makes mention in 419 of the archives.〔Jaffé, "Regesta", 2nd ed., I, no. 350.〕 Nevertheless, forged papal letters appeared even earlier than this. But by far the greater number of the papal letters of the first millennium have been lost; only the letters of Pope Leo I, edited by the Ballerini brothers, the "Registrum Epistolarum" of Gregory I, edited by Ewald and Hartmann, and the "Registrum Epistolarum" of Gregory VII, edited by Jaffé, have been more or less completely preserved. As befitted their legal importance, the papal letters were also soon incorporated in the collections of canon law.〔Friedrich Maassen, "Geschichte der Quellen und Literatur des kanonischen Rechts im Abendlande bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters", Graz, 1870, 231 sqq.〕 The first to collect the epistles of the popes in a systematic and comprehensive manner was the monk Dionysius Exiguus, at the beginning of the sixth century.〔Maassen, "Geschichte der Quellen", 422 sqq.〕 In this way the papal letters took rank with the canons of the synods as of equal value and of equal obligation. The example of Dionysius was followed afterwards by almost all compilers of the canons, Pseudo-Isidore and the Gregorian canonists, e.g. Anselm of Lucca, Deusdedit etc. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ecclesiastical letter」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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