Definition
The Clementine Constitutions (Latin: *Clementinae* or *Clementis Papae Constitutiones*) are a collection of papal decretals and ecclesiastical constitutions issued by Pope Clement V, compiled and published in the early fourteenth century. The collection was promulgated under the title *Liber Septimus Decretalium* — the "Seventh Book of the Decretals" — marking its place as the seventh installment, in chronological order, within the broader corpus of authoritative papal legislative texts governing the medieval and early modern Roman Catholic Church.
The Clementines constitute one of the foundational components of the *Corpus Iuris Canonici*, the body of canon law that governed ecclesiastical courts, church discipline, clerical conduct, and a wide range of matters touching religious life and, in many instances, civil affairs where Church jurisdiction was recognized or contested.
Common Confusion
The Clementine Constitutions are sometimes conflated with other components of the *Corpus Iuris Canonici*, particularly the *Extravagantes* of John XXII or the *Decretals of Gregory IX* (*Liber Extra*). The distinction matters in research: each collection has its own date, authorial authority, and scope. The Clementines are specifically Clement V's legislation, compiled after his death and officially promulgated by his successor, John XXII, in 1317. Researchers encountering citations to "the Decretals" in historical sources should not assume the Clementines are intended — the term "Decretals" most commonly refers to the Gregorian collection of 1234.
Why It Matters in Research
Historical legal sources — particularly in English ecclesiastical law, chancery practice, and common law commentary — occasionally cite or reference the Clementines when addressing matters that came before church courts: marriage, legitimacy, testamentary affairs, tithes, and clerical privilege. Researchers working in pre-Reformation English legal history will encounter the Clementines cited in connection with the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts that operated alongside, and sometimes in tension with, common law courts.
The promulgation date is a recurring research trap. Burrill's entry reflects a genuine scholarly disagreement: the collection is dated variously to 1308 or 1313 in different sources, depending on whether the date of Clement V's original work or the Council of Vienne (1311–1312) is used as the reference point. The formally accepted date of promulgation by John XXII is 1317, which post-dates Clement V's death in 1314. Researchers relying on secondary sources should verify which date convention a given author is using, as anachronistic references can create confusion when tracing the authority of specific canons.
In English legal history specifically, the Clementines have relevance to the *praemunire* controversies — disputes over whether appealing to Rome or citing papal authority in English courts violated the crown's prerogative. Citations to the Clementines in English Year Books or Chancery records often signal an argument about the boundary between ecclesiastical and temporal jurisdiction.
For researchers using Law Mind's corpus of historical dictionaries, note that coverage of the Clementines is thin. Burrill's entry provides the essential identification but stops short of explaining the collection's internal structure or its place in the broader *Corpus Iuris Canonici*. Researchers needing substantive engagement with the Clementines' contents should consult specialized canon law sources rather than relying on general legal dictionaries.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the essential framework: the Clementines are identified by their Latin title, attributed to Clement V, and placed as the seventh book of the decretal collections. Burrill flags the dating uncertainty (1308 or 1313) honestly, which reflects genuine disagreement in canonical scholarship of his era. The entry references the collection's ecclesiastical subject matter without elaborating on its internal organization or its relationship to the five books of *Liber Extra*, the *Liber Sextus* of Boniface VIII, or the subsequent *Extravagantes*.
What Burrill does not supply — and what no standard common law legal dictionary of the nineteenth century adequately addresses — is any account of how the Clementines functioned as living law in ecclesiastical courts, how specific canons were cited in practice, or how the Reformation altered their authority in Protestant jurisdictions. For English legal history after 1534, the operative question is not what the Clementines say but whether and to what extent they retained persuasive or binding force in the post-Reformation ecclesiastical courts of the Church of England.
Jurisdictional Note
The Clementines operated as binding authority within Roman Catholic ecclesiastical courts wherever papal jurisdiction was recognized. In England, their direct authority was severed at the Reformation, though pre-Reformation precedents grounded in them retained historical relevance in ecclesiastical proceedings. In civilian and mixed legal systems on the European continent, the *Corpus Iuris Canonici* — including the Clementines — remained influential well into the early modern period.