Reference Edition:

Theodosiani Libri XVI cum Constitutionibus Sirmondianis, (T. Mommsen, P. M.Meyer), Berolini 1905, I,2, pp. 907-921.

The Constitutiones Sirmondianae (or Sirmondinae) are a collection of sixteen constitutions concerning ecclesiastical law. They were named by the French Jesuit, Jacques Sirmond (1559-1651), a distinguished Patristic scholar, who prepared the first edition in 1631. It is a private collection of imperial constitutions, whose compiler is unknown; it is possible that he worked in Gaul, in a Romano-Christian setting, since the collection includes many constitutions concerning the Praetorian prefecture of Gaul; Mommsen contends, moreover, that he came from Africa, since it also contains constitutions that were published in Carthage. According to Scherillo, such anthologies must have circulated in ecclesiastical settings, in the West and the East, since imperial constitutions independent of the Codex Theodosianus – or, at any rate, not present therein – seem to have been included in contemporary ecclesiastical collections and the acts of councils. The Constitutiones Sirmondianae are the only collection of this type to have come down to us; the rest have been lost. The work does not have a systematic structure or follow a chronological order; Scherillo argues that this is a strong indication that it is complete, and not a fragment of a longer work. The oldest constitution is from 333 CE, and the latest is from 425; it is thought that the work was compiled before the Codex Theodosianus, published in 438, given that some of the Constitutiones Sirmondianae were not included in the Codex. Gothofredus questioned their authenticity, but they are now commonly understood to be authentic, although some doubts remain concerning the first constitution (that of Constantine, from 333) because some scholars consider its recognition of bishops’ jurisdiction to be too sweeping for the period – and, furthermore, it does not appear in the Codex Theodosianus or the Codex Iustinianus repetitae praelectionis. The collection comprises both western and eastern constitutions, which are numbered and reproduced in their entirety (or in a form that must be very close to the originals), and additionally it contains the praefationes and the formulae for writing to the receiving officials, parts that were normally omitted by the Theodosian and Justinian compilers. The constitutions that are present in both this collection and the Codex Theodosianus allow us to make comparisons that reveal, on the one hand, how the versions in the Sirmondinae are longer than those in the Codex and, on the other hand, to examine how careful the compilers of the Codex Theodosianus were in removing the parts of the constitutions that were not directly prescriptive, according to what had been, after all, imperial directives. The constitutions that are also found in the Codex Theodosianus, are therein divided into fragments under a number of titles, without their praefationes and formulae of address (see, for example, Sirm. 6 e and C.Th. 16.2.47 ). The main manuscript of the Constitutiones Sirmondianae is Phillips 1745 (fol. 101ᵛ-119), preserved in the Staatsbibliothek-Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin; it dates to the 7th/8th century and is the only witness that contains all sixteen constitutions. This manuscript must have been used by Florus, the deacon of Lyon (ca. 800-860), when he wrote his commentary, which survives today. Among the other manuscripts are the 9th/10th century Lat. 1452, of Burgundian origin, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and F.v. II. 3 (the so-called Codex Lugdunensis), now in St. Petersburg, at the Rossiyskaya Natsional'naya Bibliotheka im . M. E. Saltikova-Sčedrina. Sirmond’s first edition from 1631 is entitled Appendix Codicis Theodosiani novis constitutionibus cumulatior, but already in 1566 Cuiacius had published the first three constitutions, which he had found in a manuscript other than Phillips 1745. Sirmond’s edition includes twenty-one constitutions; he took the 17th and 18th from C.Th. 1.27.1 and 2, and added them to a second edition of the collection; the 19th is a constitution from 417, which was then added by Haenel into his Corpus legum ab imperatoribus romanis ante Iustinianum latarum, quae extra constitutionum codices supersunt (Leipzig 1857, p. 238); Haenel likewise added the 20th, from 430, to his Corpus legum (p. 241), from a Corbie manuscript that is now kept at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (Lat. 12097), but it probably should not have been included in the original collection; finally the 21st constitution reproduces C.Th. 16.6.4. G. F. Haenel produced the first critical edition, XVIII constitutiones quas Iacobus Sirmondus ex Codicibus Lugdunensi atque Anitiensi Parisii a. MDCXXXI divulgavit. Corpus Iuris Romani Anteiustiniani, IV (Bonn 1844), which was followed by that of T. Mommsen and P. Meyer, Theodosiani libri XVI cum constitutionibus Sirmondianis et leges novellae ad Theodosianum pertinentes, 1/2 (Berolini 1905), which is the reference edition and is limited to the first sixteen constitutions. This library transmits only the texts transmitted in the Mommsen and Meyer editions. [M. A. Ligios; tr. C. Belanger]