W CONSTITUTIONS, APOSTOLICAL OB CLEMENTINE. 



CONSTRUCTIOX 



184 



the pariah church or chapel where he hath charge read all the said 

 canon*, order*, ordinance* and constitution* once every year, upon some 

 Suodayi or hnlydaya, in the afternoon before divine service. 



The oanona and oooatitutiona may be divided into fourteen heads, 

 which tr*U aa follow : 1. Of the Church of England. 2. Of divin* 

 rrrice, and administration of the saonmenU. 8. MlnUter*. their ordi- 

 nation, function, aad charge. 4. Schoolmaster*. 6. Things appertain- 

 ing to church**. 6. Churchwarden*, or quart-men, and aide-men, or 

 assistant*. 7. Pariah clerk*. 8. Eccleaiattical court* belonging to the 

 archbuhop'. jurisdiction. 9. Eocleaiaatioal court* belonging to the 

 jurisdiction of bUhop* and archdeacon*, and the proceedings in them. 

 10. Judge* ecclesiastical and their urrogate*. 11. Proctors. 12. Re- 

 gistrars. 18. Apparitors. 14. Authority of synods. The number of 

 constitutions is one hundred and forty-one. The authority of these 

 canon* is binding on the clergy, but not on the laity, except so far as 

 is stated under the head CAHON. The authority of Canon 77 may be 

 doubted ; it ia this : " No man shall teach, either in public school or 

 private house, but such aa shall be allowed by the bishop of the 

 oiooeas. or ordinary of the place, under his hand and seal ; been found 

 meet sa well for his learning and dexterity in teaching, as for sober aad 

 honest conversation, and also for right understanding of God's true 

 religion; and also except he shall subscribe to the first and third 

 articles afore-mentioned simply, and to the Brat ten clauses of the 

 second article." The 78th Canon provides that " curates desirous to 

 teach shall be licensed before others :" and the 79th declares " the duty 

 of schoolmasters." The Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical were 

 printed by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London,, 

 1841, together with the Thirty -nine Articles of the Church of 



ElJ--;^:il 



CONSTITUTIONS, APOSTOLICAL or CLEMENTINE, are a 

 code of regulations, attributed by some ecclesiastical writers to the 

 Apostles, and said to have been collected by Clemens Romanus. The 

 collection consists of eight books, containing a great many precepts 

 and rules concerning the discipline, doctrine, and ceremonies of the 



Besides the gospels, epistles, and apocalypse, which now compose the 

 rolutne of the New Testament, there were, in the earliest ages of 

 Christianity, numerous writings bearing the name of the apostles and 

 apostolical men, of which some are extant at the present time ; and it 

 is generally considered that two among the first in order of time are 

 the eight books of Apostolical or Clementine canons, and the Consti- 

 tutions which are the subject of the present article. That the latter 

 once constituted a part of the New Testament, is evident from the last 

 of the apostolical canons, which states that " The holy and venerable 

 Bible consists of the Old Testament (of which the several constituent 

 books are enumerated) and the New Testament, which consists of the 

 gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John ; 14 epistles of Paul ; 2 of 

 Peter ; 3 of John ; 1 of James ; 1 of Jude ; 2 of Clement, and the 

 Conttitutiont for you that are bishops, published by me Clement in 8 

 books, which are not to be divulged to all, because of the mystical 

 things contained in them ; and the Acts of the Apostles." (Labbei, 

 ' Collect. Concil.' torn, i.) One of the epistles of Clement, and part of 

 the other which is attributed to him, are included in the Alexandrine 

 MS. Epiphanius (AD. 400) cites the Constitutions not only as the 

 work of an honest Catholic Christian, but as the divine word and doc- 

 trine ; yet in his catalogue of canonical books they are not included, 

 and it is contended that the constitutions now extant are not identical 

 with those from which Epiphanius cited. 



The authenticity and date of this work have been a subject of much 

 learned contention ; and though by far the greater number of critics 

 have pronounced it to be a pseudonymous compilation, made in the 

 third or fourth century, there have been ome who support the opinion 

 of its apostolical origin. (See Tillemout, ' Me'moires pour 1'Hist. de 

 1'Eglise,' vol. ii. : Mosheim, cent, i., part ii. ; and Neander, ' Genetische 

 Entwickelung,' &c. 



CONSTITUTIONS, ROMAN. The word constitutio (from con- 

 stituere, that is, to set up, to establish) signifies any disposition or ap- 

 pointment ; for example, in Dig. iv. 2, 1. 9, 3, an interlocutory decree 

 of the praetor is called constitutio ; whilst in D. 45, 1. 91. 3 and 4, the 

 expression " quod veteres constituerunt " is used to signify a legal rule 

 or maxim in use among the old Roman lawyers. The decrees and 

 decisions of Roman emperors are also called constitutions, and, 

 according to Oaius (i. 6), an imperial constitution is what the emperor 

 declares by a decree, or an edict, or a letter. That modern signification 

 of the term, which denotes the fundamental law of a state, was not in 

 use among the Romans ; yet Cicero (' De Kepublica,' i. 45) employs the 

 word to express a similar notion. 



During the republic the Roman law was made or developed by 

 dcii* of the people in the comitia (leges and plebiscite), by decrees 

 of the senate, and by the edicts of various magistrates, as the praters 

 and Bdiles. [ROMAN LAW.] After the great internal change and 

 revolutions had token place in the Roman state, and Augustus had 

 united in himself the powers of all the branches of government, with 

 the direction of the senate, and of the assemblies of the people, the 

 imperial authority was firmly established. The emperor not only had 

 the right of issuing edict*, as the magistrate* of the republic had done, 

 but he could propose and make entirely new laws. Propositions of 

 laws from the emperor to the senate were called orationes principum. 



Thus arose the imperial constitutions, with the supremacy of Augustus. 

 But as the arbitrary acts of Sulla, Pompeius, and Julius CSJSHT were 

 ratified and confirmed by the people, both in their lifetime, and after 

 their death, this may be considered as the beginning of the system of 

 constitutions. As the institution* of the republic only gradually 

 merged into the imperial autocracy, the voice of the people in the 

 oomitia and the decrees of the senate were still respected in form, 

 though not in substance. But after A.D. 24, during the reign of Tiberius, 

 the regulation of the people, and 200 yean later the decrees of the 

 senate also, totally ceased. From that era laws were made only by 

 the emperors ; and from the time of Constantine the Great, the consti- 

 tutions were properly called leges nova, or new laws. 



The imperial constitution* occur under different denominations ; as 

 dicta (leges edictales), or decrees addressed to and binding on all 

 Roman subjects ; decreta or rescripta, which are decisions in particular 

 cases, upon questions proposed to the emperor by public functionaries 

 or private persons ; these decisions also were universally binding. We 

 find the terms epistolee also used, when the decisions were answers to 

 magistrates, and littero, when given in reply to private persons. Im- 

 portant single constitutions were often entitled from the emperor who 

 made them, as, for example, " lex Anastasiana." 



In course of time the number of these constitutions became so great, 

 that to prevent confusion collections were made, and called codes. 

 The first collections made by private persons were the codices Grego- 

 riani and Hermogeniani, of which we know very little ; it being even 

 uncertain if they were two separate codes or only one. Tet it seems 

 that the first collector was Qregorius, and that Hermogenes continued 

 the work. Opinions vary also as to the time when these compilers 

 lived ; Blume fixes on the reigns of Diocletian and Maximian, as the 

 period when Gregorius or Gregorianus flourished, resting his hypothesis 

 on a mutilated inscription found in one of the rescripts in his code, in 

 which Blume traces the words " Diocletianus et Maximianus Domini 

 Nostri." (See Irving's ' Introduction to the Civil Law,' p. 28, n. 29.) 

 Hugo thinks it probable that both these lawyers flourished during, 

 or a little after Diocletian's reign ('History of the Roman Law,' 

 book 2, 379) : in a note to that section he mentions as a curious fact 

 that in on old treatise, the ' Consultatio veteris Jurisconsults, ' an 

 extract from the corpus Hermogeuianum is ascribed to the reigns of 

 Valentinian and Volens, nearly 100 years later. Their collections, 

 which contained the constitutions from the time of Hadrian to Dio- 

 cletian, ore lost, and we have only some fragments, which were first 

 edited by Jac. Sichordus (Basil, 1528, foL), together with the Codex 

 Theodosianus. The fragments are in Schulting's ' Jurisprud. Vet. 

 Ante-Just,' Lugd. Bat 1712, and in the ' Jus Civile Ante-Just,' Berol. 

 1815, purporting to be taken ex Breviario AUriciann ; but a more 

 recent and a very valuable edition of these constitutions has been pub- 

 lished by Ha'nel, at Bonn, 1635, entitled ' Codicis Gregorian! et Codicis 

 Hermogeniani Fragments.' In connection with the Theodosian code a 

 remarkable document discovered by Clopius deserves mention, the 

 ' Gesta in Senatu Urbis Romas de recipiendo Theodosiano Codice,' con- 

 taining the announcement to the senate of Rome by the consul 

 A. A. Glabrio Faustus of the emperor's legislative enterprise, and the 

 o'her's concurrence, "Quom rem rcternus princeps dominus noster 

 Volentinianus, devotioue socii afi'ectu filii comprobavi," together with 

 the approbation with which that announcement was received Xor 

 should the student of this portion of the ante-Justinianean Roman 

 law omit to refer to a work of much research and sound learning for 

 an admirable illustration of the history of the Theodosian era, in 

 Bishop Mutter's ' Commentatio historica de Genio Moribus et Luxu 

 jEvi Theodosiani.' 



Another and more important collection was made in the reign of 

 Theodosius II., by public authority. The emperor having nominated, 

 in the year 435, a commission of eight persons, including Antiochus, 

 who was their director, for the purpose of collecting the constitutions 

 from the time of Constantine the Great, three years afterwards (A.D. 

 438) the new code, called Codex Theodosianus, was confirmed by the 

 emperor, and published in the Eastern empire. It contains sixteen 

 books, divided into titles, in which the separate constitutions are 

 arranged, according to their subject-matter, in such a way that many 

 of them are subdivided. Some additions, called novelloe, were U|UT- 

 wards made to the collection of Theodosius. The first five books were 

 lost, but portions of them have been recently discovered at Milan, 

 by Clossius (Clossii ' Theodoo. Codic, Genuin. Fragmcnta,' Tub. 1824); 

 and at Turin, by Peyron, (' Codic. Theodos. Fragm. Ined.,' Tur., 

 1823-4). The best edition of the Theodosian Code is that by Jac. 

 Gothofredus, torn, vi., Lugd., 1665, who also wrote an excellent com- 

 mentary on it, which was published, together with the text, by 1 

 Leipzig, 1736-54. A copy of this code has appeared in the Berlin 

 edition (1815) of the ' Jus Civile Ante-Justinianeuin.' 



In the year 506, Alaric II. made an abridgement of the Theodosian 

 Code, adding to it the excerpts from the codices Gregorian! and Hermo- 

 geniani, and the works of the Roman lawyers Gaius and Paulus, for 

 the use of the Romans then living in the empire of the Visigoths ; the 

 collection is called ' Breviarium Alaricianum,' and is also known by the 

 title ' Aniani Breviarium.' 



The last and most important collection of Roman constitutions was 

 made by the order of Justinian. [JUSTINIAN'S LEGISLATION.] 



CONSTRUCTION (Geometry). All formation of lines, figures, *c., 



