Capitularies

Capitularies (Lat. capitularia), the name given to the laws, or royal enactments, issued by the Frankish kings. These laws proceeded from the great assemblies of the king, nobles, and bishops, which formed the estates of the kingdom, as distinguished from the laws issued for the separate states, which were called leges. They were divided into general and special capitularies, according to the more or less general nature of the interests which they embraced, and the mode of their publication. They have by no means been all preserved. The most famous are those of Charlemagne and of St Louis. The first collection was made in 827. It contained in four books the capitularies of Charlemagne and his son Louis le Débonnaire. They were brought down to 845 by Benedict, deacon of Mainz, and later supplements were added by successive editors, until the number of capitularies reached 2100. These were all included in the great edition of Baluze (2 vols. Paris, 1677); that of Pertz, in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (1835-37), is now behind the state of knowledge. An excellent and fundamentally new edition is that of Boretius (vol. i. Hanover, 1883). See the same scholar's Beiträge zur Kapitularienkritik (Leip. 1874).