Collectio Avellana
Collectio Avellana is a collection of 244 documents, dating from AD 367 to 553. It includes many imperial letters written to Catholic popes and others, imperial acts, papal letters and other documents that were gathered just after the mid-6th century.
Many of the documents have not been preserved in any other collection and contemporary copies have not survived. The oldest and best manuscript is in the Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 3787. It was this text which was edited by O. Guenther, and published as Epistolae Imperatorum Pontificum Aliorum Inde ab a. CCCLXVII usque DLIII datae Avellana Quae Dicitur Collectio, in Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vol. 35, in 2 parts.
The compiler of Collectio Avellana aimed to fill the gaps of previous compilations. The author or authors must have had access to archives of the See of Rome, since they incorporated into the collection a variety of papal documents not in the Liber Pontificalis and imperial acts.
The documents include;
- CA 1-40 ;
- CA 41-50 ;
- CA 51-56 ;
- CA 56-104
- CA 105-243.