Significación de las Palabras y Reglas del Derecho / Meaning of Words and Rules of Law (DCH)
 

No. 2025-01

English Abstract: Both universal canon law and the derecho canónico indiano between the 16th and 18th centuries were aware of the method, tools and modalities in which secular law was developed. In fact, being one of the columns that supported the immense edifice of Ius Commune, canon law received great influence from Roman law in its content and in the way of expressing it. In this sense, the concepts “meaning of words” and “rules of law” are clear examples of such an impact that we could consider as a “canonization” of the normative and teaching methods of the Roman tradition that influenced the formation of the law of the Church. These legal tools were inextricably linked to normative knowledge and its concrete practice. Concomitantly, but with a more limited reach, lesser legal value and in a certain way more unstructured than the previous ones, other instruments emerged such as the axioms, aphorisms and sentences of the Church Fathers, to which were endowed with legal value. Finally, the Rules of the Pontifical Chancellery constituted brief norms that each Pope dictated for the internal government of that agency and whose extension and application was the subject of a long and unresolved legal and canonical controversy.