Christianity

This is the 1605 edition of Liber Sextus Decretalium or the Six Book of Decretals which was printed in Venice, Italy.


Liber Sextus Decretalium is a collection of Roman Catholic canon laws that was compiled by Guillaume de Mandagot who was the Bishop of Embrun, Berenger Fredoli who was the Bishop of Beziers, and Ricardo Petroni who was the vice chancellor to Boniface VIII. The text was commissioned by Pope Boniface VIII, who approved it on March 3, 1298. Liber Sextus Decretalium consisted of five books which were split off into titles as well as chapters. This is similar to the Decretals of Gregory XI in which Liber Sextus is supposed to be a continuation of. Liber Sextus contains an additional eighty-eight regulce juris or rules of law taken from Roman law which was compiled by University of Bologna professor of civil law Dino de’ Rossoni. The result was a code of law that annulled all general laws from the publication of the Decretals of Gregory XI until the beginning of Pope Boniface VIII's reign with the exception of those that were included in Liber Sextus. This meant that the majority of the Decretals of Gregory XI were abolished as they were inconsistent with the new laws.


As well as being a continuation of the Decretals of Gregory XI, Liber Sextus would also be the sixth book of canon law which would make it a perfect number, as intended by Pope Boniface VIII. As stated by the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid, six is a perfect number as it is equal to the sum of its factors i.e. 1+2+3. According to the Roman senator Boethius, an organized body should be compared to a number and thus a perfect number would mean a body in which all members work together perfectly. Therefore, Boniface VIII believed that the six works of canon law would, in the end, bring happiness to followers.

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The spine of the book (left) features faint writing. Above is a selection of pages from the book.

Ukrainian Old Believer Crosses

These crosses were found in Ukraine and date as early as the 17th century up to the 19th century. They are small and possibly would have been worn as pendants. Several of them depict Jesus on the cross on the front while others just depict the cross. Many of them feature Cyrillic text on the back. They would have originally been painted as a few of the examples in our collection feature small remnants of pigment.

These crosses would have belonged to a Russian religious group known as the Old Believers or Raskolniki. The Old Believers were originally part of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, after a series of reforms ordered under Moscow's Patriarch Nikon. These reforms were caused by the fact that the texts which Russian Orthodox followers had been using were translated from Greek to Old Slavic. These translations were deemed inaccurate due to the possibility of mistranslations and errors from scribes and translators. Patriarch Nikon believed that the Russian Orthodox Church should follow the system of beliefs put in place by the Greeks including forms of clerical dress as well as new religious texts.

Due to such reforms, it would be obvious that not everyone would accept such new standards of worship. This led Avvakum Petrovich and a group of other Muscovite priests to establish the Old Believers who rejected these reforms and continued to follow the original system of belief. Due to Nikon's brutal treatment of nonconformists, his reforms were seen as unpopular and after learning of the Old Believers, he began heavily persecuting them. Avvakum himself was imprisoned because of his anti-reform beliefs and was later burned at the stake.

Due to the lack of a hierarchy, the Old Believers split into two main factions, the Popovsty, or priestly sects, who supported the usage of priests, and the Bezpopovtsy, or priestless sects, who rejected the usage of priests. These factions inhabited the remote regions of Russia and were important to the settlement of said areas.  They believed that Peter I was the Antichrist and thus rejected Western innovations which he brought to Russia.

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