Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontificum

Liber Romanorum Pontificum diurnus is the name for a collection of writings of the papal government in Rome. The collection includes documents dating from the late 5th century to the 11th century.

Content and history

The collection contains about 100 forms for the usual in the office operations such as letters, forms for the election, the enthronement and the funeral of the Pope, on the procedure for the appointment of bishops, about the founding of monasteries and dedicating churches, ie documents that affect all areas of church administration. The first documents date from the late 5th century, and there are about the exact dating of divided opinions. Major parts of the collection date from the time of the popes Gelasius I ( 492-496 ) and Gregory I ( 590-604 ). The Liber diurnus was in the papal chancery to the 11th century in use. Because of changes and their changed needs of the bureaucracy, the book was no longer needed and fell into oblivion.

About 1641 a copy in the monastery of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme was rediscovered in Rome by the papal librarian Lucas Holstenius. From the college of the Jesuits in Paris, the Collège de Clermont, Holstenius received another copy. However, he was not allowed to publish the texts, since apparently individual documents were considered by the Curia as inappropriate.

The Paris copy was published in 1680 by the Jesuit Jean Garnier for the first time. The submission of this part clearly erroneous print output was lost in part. The Benedictine Jean Mabillon published a supplementary volume to the Garnier edition. A combination of these printouts provided the basis for the Basel printing from 1741, which was taken up by Jacques Paul Migne in his extensive text output of the Patrologia Latina of 1851 ( PL 105.21 to 186 ).

Manuscripts

The three manuscripts, which form the basis for the text output are:

Expenditure

• Theodor von Sickel, Liber Romanorum Pontificum diurnus ex unico codice Vaticano, Vindobonae 1889.