A body of ecclesiasti- cal law, which originated in the church of Rome, relating to matters of which that church has or claims jurisdiction. A canon is a rule of doctrine or of discipline, and is the term generally applied to designate the or dinances of councils and decrees of popes. The position which the canon law obtains beyond the papal dominions depends on the extent to which it sanctioned or permitted by the government of each country; and hence the system of canon law as it is administered in different countries varies somewhat. In the wording of a canon it is not enough to admonish or to express disap- probation; its wording must be explicitly permissive or prohibitory, backed by the provision, expressed or admittedly un- derstood, that its infringement will be visited with punishment. Cent. Dict.; The Churchman, lvi. 462. Though this system of law is of primary impor- tance in Catholic countries alone, it still maintains great influence and transmits many of its peculiar regulations down through the jurisprudence of Protestant countries which were formerly Catholic. Thus, the canon law has been a distinct branch of the profession in the ecclesiastical courts of Eng- land for several centuries; but the recent modifica tions of the jurisdiction of those courts have done much to reduce its independent importance. The Corpus Juris Canonici is drawn from various sources the opinions of the ancient fathers of the church, the decrees of councils, and the decretal epistles and bulls of the holy see, together with the maxims of the civil law and the teachings of the Scriptures. These sources were first drawn upon for a regular ecclesiastical system about the time of Pope Alexander III., in the middle of the twelfth century, when one Gratian, an Italian monk, ani- mated by the discovery of Justinian's Pandects, collected the ecclesiastical constitutions also into some method in three books, which he entitled Con- cordia Discordantium Canonum. These are gener- ally known as Decretum Gratiani. The subsequent papal decrees to the time of the pontificate of Gregory Gregory IX. were collected in much the same method, under the auspices of that pope, about the year 1230, in five books, entitled Decre- talia Gregorii Nonii. A sixth book was added by Boniface VIII., about the year 1298, which is called Sextus Decretalium. The Clementine Constitution, or decrees of Clement V., were in like manner au- thenticated in 1817 by his successor, John XXII., who also published twenty constitutions of his own, called the extravagantes Joannis, so called because they were in addition to, or beyond the boundary of, the former collections, as the additions to the civil law were called Novels. To these have since been added some decrees of later popes, down to the time of Sixtus IV., in five books, called Extravagantes communes. And all these to- gether-Gratian's Decrees, Gregory's Decretals, the Sixth Decretals, the Clementine Constitu- tions, and the Extravagants of John and his successors-form the Corpus Juris Canonici, or body of the Roman canon law; 1 Bla. Com. 82; En cylopédie, Droit Canonique, Droit Public Ecclesi- astique Dict. de Jur. Droit Canonique; Erskine, Inst. b. 1, t. 1. 8. 10. See, in general, Ayliffe, Par. Jur. Can. Ang.; Shelford, Marr. & D. 19; Preface to Burn, Eccl. Law, Tyrwhitt ed. 22; Hale, Civ. L. 26; Bell's Case of a Putative Marriage, 203; Dict. du Droit Canonique; Stair, Inst. b. 1, t. 1, 7; 1 Poll. & Maitl. 90.