canon law, in the Roman Catholic Church, the body of law based on the legislation of the councils (both ecumenical and local) and the popes, as well as the bishops (for diocesan matters). It is the law of the church courts and is formally distinguished from other parts of ecclesiastical law, such as liturgical law. However, when liturgical law overlaps with canon law, canon law normally prevails. Canon law has had a profound influence on the law of countries where the Roman Catholic Church has been the state church. In the Middle Ages the church courts had very wide jurisdiction—e.g., in England, control of the law of personal property—and because they were well regulated, they tended to attract many borderline cases that might also have been heard by the developing royal courts (see benefit of clergy).

Catholics of Eastern rites have their own separate codes of canon law, approved by the Roman Catholic Church. The term "canon law" is also used for ecclesiastical law in churches of the Anglican Communion. The Anglican Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical (1603) was a collection of rulings, not based on the old canon law, but given equal force with the canon law.

The Canon Law Code

The Code of Canon Law for the Latin Church, which became effective in 1983, is a revision of the Codex juris canonici [code of canon law], promulgated in 1917. The code itself, the culmination of centuries of legal growth, consists of 1,752 canons in seven books and supersedes all previous compilations. It does not contain all canon law, which continues to grow, but it is the base of the present-day law, and the study of canon law consists mainly in mastering the code and its application. Canon law lays down rules for the governance and regulation of the clergy and the church, including such matters as the qualifications, duties, and discipline of the clergy and the administration of the sacraments (more particularly the laws regarding holy orders and the sacrament of marriage). Canon law embraces both general laws applicable in the church universal, such as those on requirements for the priesthood and those on marriage, and local laws applicable only in certain dioceses.

Compilations of Canon Law

The early law grew particularly from the canons of church councils, from the letters of bishops regarding church discipline and governance, and later from papal letters, called decretals, that settled matters of ecclesiastical government and discipline. After the 4th cent. this legislation grew profuse, and attempts to collect and correlate the laws began early (see Constitutions, Apostolic). These collections were private in that they seem not to have been authorized by the popes. They also contained material that was not genuine, as in the case of the False Decretals. It was not until the middle of the 12th cent. that the great genius of the canon law, Gratian, following after Ivo of Chartres, applied the methods of Roman law in bringing order out of the chaos of conflicting and uncoordinated legislation. His Concordia discordantanium canonum (c.1140) or Decretum Gratiani [Gratian's Collection of Decrees] became the basis for future compilations of the law.

The first decretal compilations authorized by the popes appeared in the 13th cent. Important among these later "official" collections were the Extravagantes or Liber extra of Gregory IX, so named because they were outside Gratian; the collection issued (1298) by Boniface VIII called Liber sextus [the sixth book] because it added to the five books of decretals promulgated by Gregory; the collection promulgated (1317) by John XXII, drawn mostly from the constitutions of Clement V at the Council of Vienne and called the Clementinae; the work commonly called Corpus juris canonici, which in 1500 combined all the preceding with the Extravagantes of John XXII and the Extravagantes communes (decretals from Boniface VIII through Sixtus IV that were not included in previous collections) and was to be the fundamental work in canon law for centuries. The Council of Trent (1545-63, with interruptions) by its decrees concerning the church and church discipline was a landmark in canon law.

Church legislation had become considerably confused by the time St. Pius X announced (1904) the undertaking of the Codex juris canonici. This was drafted by a commission of cardinals headed by Cardinal Gasparri. In 1917, when the code was finished, a permanent commission of cardinals was set up to interpret it. In 1959, Pope John XXIII convoked the Second Vatican Council and announced a revision of the code of 1917. In 1963 he appointed a pontifical commission for the revision; the revised code became effective in 1983.

canon, in Christianity, in the Roman Catholic Church, decrees of church councils are usually called canons; since the Council of Trent the expression has been especially reserved to dogmatic pronouncements of ecumenical councils. The body of ratified conciliar canons is a large part of the legislation of canon law. The Eucharistic central, mainly invariable part of the Mass is the canon. The term is also applied in the Western Church to certain types of priests. There are canons regular, priests living in community under a rule but not cloistered like monks; the Augustinian, or Austin, canons and the Premonstratensians are the best known of these. The priests attached to a cathedral or large church are sometimes organized into a group, or college, and called canons secular; a church having such a group is a collegiate church. A canon is also an official list, as in canonization, i.e., enrollment among the saints, and of the names of books of the Bible accepted by the church (see Old Testament; New Testament; Apocrypha; Pseudepigrapha). Cathedral canons often have diocesan charges or pastoral duties apart from the cathedral. Canons of the Church of England are mostly cathedral canons.

canon, in music, a type of counterpoint employing the strictest form of imitation. All the voices of a canon have the same melody, beginning at different times. Successive entrances may be at the same or at different pitches. Another form of canon is the circle canon, or round, e.g., Sumer Is Icumen In. In the 14th and 15th cent. retrograde motion was employed to form what is known as crab canon, or canon cancrizans, wherein the original melody is turned backward to become the second voice. In the 15th and 16th cent. mensuration canons were frequently written, in which the voices sing the same melodic pattern in different, but proportional, note values, i.e., to be sung at different speeds. Bach made noteworthy use of canon, particularly in the Goldberg Variations. Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Schumann, and Brahms wrote canons, and Franck used the device in the last movement of his violin sonata. It is an essential device of serial music.

Pali canon, sacred literature of Buddhism. The texts in the Pali canon are the earliest Buddhist sources, and for Theravada Buddhists, who claim to conserve the original teachings of the Buddha, they are still the most authoritative sacred texts. Pali, the language in which the canon is written, is a Prakrit (vernacular dialect) of classical Sanskrit (see Prakrit literature). The word Pali literally means a "line" or "norm," hence the extended meaning of "scriptural text."

The teachings of the Buddha were first transmitted orally, and were not committed to writing until the 1st cent. B.C. Over the succeeding centuries, the Buddha's teachings were both systematized and expanded upon. The canon is generally called the Tripitaka [threefold basket]; the name refers to the baskets passed from hand to hand by construction workers, and is thus a metaphor for the passing on of tradition. The first part, the Vinayapitaka [basket of discipline], contains rules for Buddhist monks; it was kept secret from laymen. The Suttapitaka, or Sutrapitaka [basket of teaching], is divided into five nikayas [collections]. The first four, containing discourses and verse statements of varying lengths and forms, are the main authority for the doctrines of early Buddhism. The fifth nikaya is a miscellany of anecdotes and dialogues. Some of these anecdotes are related to the Avadanas [stories of great deeds] found in the Sanskrit literature of the Mahayana branch of Buddhism. The Jatakas, fables of the Buddha's former births in various animal forms, occur also in the fifth nikaya. The third and final basket is the Abhidhammapitaka [basket of metaphysics], mainly an analytical and methodological elaboration of the previous pitakas. Probably the best-known work in the Pali canon is the Dhammapada [path of righteousness or truth], an anthology of maxims arranged in 423 stanzas. Of the extracanonical works, the Milindapanha [the questions of Milinda], which describes the dialogue between the Indo-Bactrian king Menander (Milinda) and the Buddhist sage Nagasena, is outstanding.

After the decline of Buddhism in India, Pali literature was preserved in Sri Lanka, where a vast body of commentary and elaboration of the canon developed. In later times the most notable writer in Pali was Buddhaghosa, who flourished in the 5th cent. Pali is still written in Sri Lanka and to a lesser extent in SE Asia. The Pali Text Society, founded in London in 1882, has published several hundred volumes of texts as well as English translations of Pali literature.

Body of laws established within Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, independent churches of Eastern Christianity, and the Anglican Communion for church governance. Canon law concerns the constitution of the church, relations between it and other bodies, and matters of internal discipline. The ecclesiastical lawyer and teacher Gratian published the first definitive collection of Roman Catholic canon law circa 1140; the Decretum Gratiani drew on older local collections, councils, Roman law, and church fathers. The enlarged Corpus juris canonici (“Body of Canon Law”) was published in 1500. A commission of cardinals issued the new Codex juris canonici (“Code of Canon Law”) in 1917, and a revised version was commissioned after the Second Vatican Council and published in 1983. Following the Schism of 1054, the Eastern Orthodox church developed its own canon law under the patriarch of Constantinople. The Anglican, Coptic, and Ethiopian Orthodox churches also formulated their own collections.

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Musical form and compositional technique. Canons are characterized by having a melody that is imitated at a specified time interval by one or more parts, either at the same pitch or at some other pitch. Imitation may occur in the same note values, in augmentation (longer notes), or in diminution (shorter notes); in retrograde order (beginning at its end), mirror inversion (each ascending melodic interval becoming a descending interval, and vice versa), or retrograde mirror inversion; and so on. Canons range from folk rounds such as “Three Blind Mice” and “Frère Jacques” to the massively complex canons of Johann Sebastian Bach.

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