Folia Theologica et Canonica 9. 31/23 (2020)

Ius canonicum

FOLIA THEOLOGICA ET CANON ICA (2020) 73-89

Péter Erdő

THE ORIGIN AND SPREAD OF PARISHES*

Models of mission and local pastoral care in the first millennium

I. The contemporary relevance of the question; II. The character and role of the local Christian communities up to the fourth century; III. The growth of communities of the faithful after 313 and especially after 380; IV. Terminology; V. The development of different institutional structures in the Early Middle Ages, 1. Private churches or churches of a community?, 2. Urban parish structures', VI. Parishes’ financial autonomy; Conclusion

Keywords: mission of the Church, developing of parishes, developing of dioceses, role of bishops and presbyters, the Early Church, Medieval structure of the Church, pseudo-Apostolic and conciliar sources

I. The contemporary relevance of the question

According to the current Code of Canon Law, a parish is ‘a certain community of Christ’s faithful stably established within a particular Church, whose pastoral care, under the authority of the diocesan Bishop, is entrusted to a parish priest as its proper pastor’ (c. 515 § 1). The Code requires that this community ‘as a general rule, (...) be territorial, that is, it is to embrace all Christ’s faithful of a given territory. Where it is useful, however, personal parishes are to be established, determined by reason of the rite, language or nationality of Christ’s faithful of a certain territory, or on some other basis’ (c. 518). However, to propose to trace the history of this precise institution all the way back to the time of the early Church would be to risk adopting an anachronistic approach, since the definition cited above is an innovation of the 1983 Code. Even though, alongside various texts of the Second Vatican Council, c. 216 of the Pio-Benedictine Code is listed among the sources of the current c. 515 § l,* 1 not even the 1917 Code offered a single definition of what a parish is. In that Code, the term parish had various meanings: a certain territory, the parish

* The original Italian text was published in Ephemerides Iuris Canonici 59 (2019) 25-45.

1 Pontificia Commissio Codici Iuris Canonici Authentice Interpretando, Codex luris Canonici auctoritate Ioannis Pauli PP. II promulgatus, fontium annotatione et indice analyticoalphabetico auctus, Cittá dei Vaticano 1989. 146.