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Canonical Acts
According to the old Roman jurisprudence, acts are the registers
(acta) in which were recorded the official documents, the decisions
and sentences of the judges. Acts designate in law whatever serves
to prove or justify a thing. Records, decrees, reports,
certificates, etc. are called acts. Canonical acts derive their name
from connection with ecclesiastical procedure. Acts may be public or
private, civil or ecclesiastical.
Public acts are those certified by a public notary or other person
holding a public office or position These acts may be judicial, or a
part of court-procedure, or voluntary. In contentious trials to
secure justice, the acts should be judicial; extra judicial acts are
not contentious but voluntary. Both civil and canon law recognize as
public acts those that occur before witnesses, if these acknowledge
them before the court, otherwise they are private. Public acts
include any action taken by the judge, the authorities he may quote,
the proceedings in the court, documents drawn from the public
archives. An original document of a community, bishop, or public
officer, with the official seal, or a copy of these sent by these
persons with due authentication, is a public act. Public acts are
determinative against anyone, though at times they may not impose
personal obligation on those not participating in them. In old
public acts, the presumption is in favour of their being rightly
done; to upset their value, the burden of proof is upon him who
attacks them or argues that they were not executed with due
formalities. Ecclesiastically, an exception is made for alienation
of Church property, where, for the validity of a deed, a further

requisite may be exacted, such as a clear proof of the authorisation

of a bishop, or the consent of the chapter. For these presumption
does not suffice.
Private acts are those of one or more individuals they tell against
those who executed them, not against absent parties not
participating in them. While public acts have force from the day of
their date, private acts, whose date is not authenticated, have
force only from the day of their public registry. When
authenticated, fraud alone can upset them. If the authenticating
official overstepped his competency, the act would only be a private
act, but yet of private value, unless the law requires for its
validity the authentication of an official. Thus, a deed
transferring real estate, even signed by the parties, becomes valid
for public purposes when authenticated by the official designated by
law, though the private agreement may be a basis for redress.
It is not easy to draw precise limits between civil and
ecclesiastical acts. While civil acts are mainly of the laity, about
secular things, and ecclesiastical acts mainly of ecclesiastics, in
connection with spiritual things, yet both easily overlap each
other. Acts are civil or ecclesiastical by their relations with the
State or the Church, by their emanation from either, by touching
upon matters belonging to either, or by affecting the dealings of
persons with either. The same individuals are subject to both
authorities. Thus ecclesiastics do not cease to be citizens, and all
Christian citizens are subject to the authority of the Church as
well as of the State. Many things, even linked with spiritual
affairs, do not lose their natural character of temporalities. Many
acts passing between ecclesiastics are purely civil. An
ecclesiastic, though a minister of the Church, is also a citizen;
his actions as a citizen are purely civil; those emanating from him
as a clergyman are ecclesiastical. If the acts are such as could be
properly performed by a layman, they would belong to the civil
order; if their performance required the clerical state, they are
ecclesiastical. Yet a layman's spiritual duties and exercises are
ecclesiastical, coming under the authority of the Church; an
ecclesiastic's money matters come under the authority of the State
as far as those of other citizens. This is the basis of the
distinction between the civil and ecclesiastical forum. The Church
by divine right has inalienable control of strictly spiritual
things; the State of strictly temporal things. By the goodwill of
peoples and governments the Church obtained many privileges for its
forum, respecting the temporalities of ecclesiastics, and even of
the laity in matters connected with spiritual things. In other
matters assigned to her by Divine Law she cannot yield her
authority, though for peace sake she may tolerate aggressions upon
it. She may yield (and in concordats and in other ways does yield)
those privileges which had for centuries become part of her forum.
Acts also designate certain general formalities for the validity of
documents, often essential requisites, such as the date, the
signature, the qualifications of persons, the accurate names of
witnesses, and other similar conditions which may be demanded by
civil or ecclesiastical laws or by the custom of a country.
Acts of a council are the definitions of faith, decrees, canons, and
official declarations of the council, whose sphere of action is more

or less extended according as it is oecumenical, national,

provincial, etc.
Acts of the Martyrs are the documents, narrations, and testimonies
of the arrest, interrogatories, answers, torments, and heroic deaths
of the Christians who sealed their faith by the shedding of their
blood in the times of persecution. The documents of the Congregation
of Rites connected with the beatification and canonisation of saints
are designated as Acts of the Saints. This is also the title given
by the Bollandists to their monumental account of the lives of the
saints (Acta Sanctorum). Acts-Capitular are the official discussions
of the assembled members of the chapter, the name given to the
canons of the cathedral who form a corporation established to aid
the bishop in the government of the diocese, and to supply his place
when the see is vacant.
WAGNER, Dictionnaire de droit eccles., v. Actes (Paris, 1901);
SANTI, Pray. iur. can., II, Lib. XXII, De Fide Instrum. (New York);
SMITHY Eccles. Law, II, v, Judicial Proofs; D AVINO, Enciclopedia
dell Ecclesiastico (Turin, 1878) v. Atti; CROW ON, Man. tot. iur.
can., IV, iii, art. 3, De Instrum. (Poitiers, 1880) PIHRING, Sac.
Can. Doctrines II, Lib. XXII, De Fide Instrum (Rome, Propaganda,
1859).
R.L. BURTSELL
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume I
Copyright 1907 by Robert Appleton Company
Online Edition Copyright 1999 by Kevin Knight
Nihil Obstat, March 1, 1907. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor
Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

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