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REDC53(1996)9-14
«CONSUETUDINES ECCLESIE ANGLICANE». ARXIU CAPITULAR DE LA SEU D'URGELL MS. 2874: ANOTE
In 1978 students of medieval canon law were apprised of the interest and importance of Urgell MS. 2874 and nothing remains to be added to the exhaustive account which Dr Benigno Marquès provided on that occasion ofJaume Sitjo, the author of the Lectura super IVLibro Decretalium, the text which occupies 198 of the Urgell codex's 206 folios '. In connexion with the catalogue of the archive's notable collection of legal manuscripts, however, which Professor Antonio Garcia y Garcia and his colleagues have in preparation, the question has now been raised of the identity of one of the three diverse pieces found at the end of MS. 2874, the tract there entitled «Consuetudines ecclesie Anglicane». The present note is offered as a modest contribution to that noble enterprise. Occupying fos. 198vb-201rb, commencing on the folio on which the Lectura ends, and written in what appears to be the same fourteenth-century hand 2, the said Consuetudines comprise a formulary for the conduct of episcopal elections, beginning with a model letter addressed to the king of England in which the dean and chapter of a cathedral church seek leave to proceed to an election.
Corpore autem defuncti sepulture tradito de consuetudine ecclesie Anglicane [whence presumably the title supplied hy the scribe] actenus est optentum scilicet quod sollempnes nuncii aliqui scilicet de canonicis ad dominum regem (add. eant] petituri ab eo licentiam eligendi \
1 B. Marquès, 1 El M,s. 2874 de l'Arxiu Capitular de Ia Seu d'Urgell ¡ cl seu autorJaume Sitj6', Urgellia 1 (1978) 367-400. Sitjó was bishop of Lérida 1341-1348 and of Tortosa 1348-13il. 2 As is the tract that follows (Compendium disponentium bominem in uita spirituali). The final itcm, however —Petrus de Vineis, Ritbmi contra predicatores ct minores [ed. A. Huillard-Breholles, Vic et correspondance de Pierre de Ia Vigne, ministre d'empereur Frédéric 11, Paris 1865, 40217]— is in a fifteenth-century hand- Marques, 368; information supplied hy Antonio Garcia. 3 Fo. 198vb.
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