must now consider the history
of those texts and collections of canons which to-day form the
ecclesiastical law of the Western Church: (1) up to the _Decretum_ of
Gratian, (2) up to the council of Trent, (3 and 4) up to the present
day, including the codification ordered by Pius X.

1. _From the Beginning to the Decretum of Gratian._--At no time, and
least of all during the earliest centuries, was there any attempt to
draw up a uniform system of legislation for the whole of the Christian
Church. The various communities ruled themselves principally according
to their customs and traditions, which, however, possessed a certain
uniformity resulting from their close connexion with natural and divine
law. Strangely enough, those documents which bear the greatest
resemblance to a small collection of canonical regulations, such as the
Didache, the Didascalia and the Canons of Hippolytus, have not been
retained, and find no place in the collections of canons, doubtless for
the reason that they were not official documents. Even the Apostolical
Constitutions (q.v.), an expansion of the Didache and the Didascalia,
after exercising a certain amount of influence, were rejected by the
council in Trullo (692). Thus the only pseudo-epigraphic document
preserved in the law of the Greek Church is the small collection of the
eighty-five so-called "Apostolic Canons" (q.v.). The compilers, in their
several collections, gathered only occasional decisions, the outcome of
no pre-determined plan, given by councils or by certain great bishops.

Greek collection.

These compilations began in the East. It appears that in several
different districts canons made by the local assemblies[1] were added to
those of the council of Nicaea which were everywhere accepted and
observed. The first example seems to be that of the province of Pontus,
where after the twenty canons of Nicaea were placed the twenty-five
canons of the council of Ancyra (314), and the fifteen of that of
Neocaesarea (315-320). These texts were adopted at Antioch, where there
were further added the twenty-five canons of the so-called council _in
encaeniis_ of that city (341). Soon afterwards, Paphlagonia contributed
twenty canons passed at the council of Gangra (held, according to the
_Synodicon orientale_, in 343),[2] and Phrygia fifty-nine canons of the
assembly of Laodicea (345-381?), or rather of the compilation known as
the work of this council.[3] The collection was so wel