egard to
the sacraments, he seems to have incurred the suspicions of his own
friends; while from his intimacy with Martin Cellarius and other divines
of the Socinian school he drew on himself the charge of Arianism. His
principal works were:--_Institutionum Hebraicarum libri duo;
Enarrationes in Habacuc et Hoseam Prophetas_; a life of Oecolampadius
and an account of the synod of Berne (1532).
CAPITULARY (Med. Lat. _capitularium_), a series of legislative or
administrative acts emanating from the Merovingian and Carolingian
kings, so called as being divided into sections or chapters
(_capitula_). With regard to these capitularies two questions arise: (1)
as to the means by which they have been handed down to us; (2) as to
their true character and scope.
(1) As soon as the capitulary was composed, it was sent to the various
functionaries of the Frankish empire, archbishops, bishops, _missi_ and
counts, a copy being kept by the chancellor in the archives of the
palace. At the present day we do not possess a single capitulary in its
original form: but very frequently copies of these isolated capitularies
were included in various scattered manuscripts, among pieces of a very
different nature, ecclesiastical or secular. We find, therefore, a fair
number of them in books which go back as far as the 9th or 10th
centuries. In recent editions in the case of each capitulary it is
carefully indicated from what manuscripts it has been collated.
These capitularies make provisions of a most varied nature; it was
therefore found necessary at quite an early date to classify them into
chapters according to the subject. In 827 Ansegisus, abbot of St
Wandrille at Fontenelle, made such a collection. He embodied them in
four books: one of the ecclesiastical capitularies of Charlemagne, one
of the ecclesiastical capitularies of Louis the Pious, one of the
secular capitularies of Charlemagne, and one of the secular capitularies
of Louis, bringing together similar provisions and suppressing
duplicates. This collection soon gained an official authority, and after
829 Louis the Pious refers to it, citing book and section.
After 827 new capitularies were naturally promulgated, and before 858
there appeared a second collection in three books, by an author calling
himself Benedictus Levita. His aim was, he said, to complete the work of
Ansegisus, and bring it up to date by continuing it from 827 to his own
day; but the author has not o
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