The 1917 Code of Canon Law: Codification and Development of Latin canon law in the First Half of the 20th Century

Abstract

This publication presents the very first Russian translation of the First Book of the first official comprehensive Code of Latin canon law. The Code was promulgated on 27 May, 1917, and took legal effect on 19 May 1918. Although replaced in the practice of the Church with the new Code of 1983, the so-called “Pio-Benedictine Code” remains the most important source for the history of the development of canon law of the Catholic Church in Modern era. It represents the first experience of a full-scale legal codification, on which the development of Catholic ecclesiastical law was based throughout the 20th century. Prior to the promulgation of the Code in 1917, the canon law of the Latin Church was dispersed over a number of sources created in different periods of church history. By the time of the convocation of the First Vatican Council (December 8, 1869 – October 20, 1870) by Pope Pius IX (June 16, 1846 – February 7, 1878), it was obvious to many in the Church that there was an urgent need to codify the vast and unorganised mass of ecclesiastical laws that was presenting all sorts of challenges to both church authorities and canonists. Calls for the codification of Latin canon law, voiced in the run-up to and at the Council itself, were heard by the Holy See, although direct work on the creation of the first full-fledged Code of canon law began only 34 years after the Council’s adjournment, in the pontificate of Pius X (August 4, 1903 – August 20, 1914). The introductory article analyses the main stages of the development of can-on law of the Catholic Church, the history of the creation of the Code, the discussions that unfolded in the 19th century among canonists as to the very need for codification, as well as the impact of the Code on the development of Canon law in the 20th century.