Bullarium is a term commonly applied to a collection of papal bulls and other analogous documents, whether the scope of the collection be general in character, or limited to the bulls connected to any particular order, or institution, or locality.
Bullaria were generally intended to render assistance to canonists by bringing within their reach papal enactments which either had been overlooked by the compilers of the "corpus" or which had been issued subsequently to the latest decrees included in it. As such, they frequently excluded papal pronouncements which had already been incorporated into the text of canon law. In general, the collections were not complete, and the selection of canons to include depended on the choice of the editor.
Origins
Various collections of relatively recent papal constitutions were published in the early part of the sixteenth century. A typical specimen of such booklets is supplied by a rare little volume of sixty-two pages printed at Rome per Stephanum Guillereti in regione Parionis 1509, a copy of which is in the British Museum Library. A contribution of more substantial volume appears to have been a volume edited by Mazzutellus in 1579 which contained 723 documents.
Cherubini bullarium
The name bullarium seems to have been invented by the canonist Laertius Cherobini who in 1586 published under the title "Bullarium, sive Collectio diversarum Constitutionum multorum Pontificum". It was a large folio volume of 1404 pages containing 922 papal constitutions from Gregory VII down to Sixtus V, the pope then reigning. This is generally considered to be the first proper bullarium.
Out of Cherubini's 922 documents, more than 800 were from the preceding century. A second edition of his collection, in three volumes, was printed at Rome in 1617. A third edition in four volumes, extending from Leo I to Urban VIII, was prepared by the editor's son, Angelo Cherubini, in 1638, with a supplement added in 1659. Other editions followed, always somewhat enlarged. The fifth in six volumes was brought out by two Franciscans at Rome, 1669–72.
Luxembourg edition
A fuller but not more accurate reprint with supplementary volumes was published in 1727-1730 at Luxembourg, although the actual place of impression is said to have been Geneva.
Other supplements followed at intervals:
volume XI (published 1741), covering 1670–1689
volume XII (published 1741), covering 1689–1721
volume XIII (published 1741), covering 1721–1730
volume XIV (published 1741), covering 1730–1740
volume XV (published 1748), covering 1734–1740
volume XVI (published 1752), covering 1740–45
volume XVII (published 1753), covering 1746–1749
volume XVIII (published 1754), covering 1748–1752
volume XIX (published 1758), covering 1752–1757
While some content was original to the Luxembourg edition, the later volumes were straightforwardly copied from the Roman edition.
Mainardi's Roman edition
From 1733 to 1744, Girolamo Mainardi printed a supplement to the latest six-volume Roman edition of Cherubini's bullarium. This eight-volume supplement extended its scope from Clement X (1670–1676) to Benedict XIV (1740).
Simultaneously with this project, Mainardi engaged Charles Cocquelines to re-edit the pre-existing six volumes. The first of these new editions was published in 1739 under the title "Bullarium privilegarium ac diplomatum Romanorum Pontificum amplissima collectio". Cocquelines died before finishing the project, and the following five volumes did not bear his name. In order to keep the numbering consistent with Mainardi's supplement, some of the nominal tomi of the new edition were in fact divided into several parts.
Mainardi had additionally been publishing, in folio, but somewhat smaller, the four volumes of the bullarium of Benedict XIV. In sum, the whole collection which issued from Mainardi's press amounted to thirty-two folio volumes and extended from Leo I in 450 to the death of Benedict XIV, 1758.
As this in time grew antiquated, Andrew Barberi began in 1835 the publication of the Bulls of Pope Clement XIII and his successors "Bullarii Romani Continuato" (19 volumes, fol.), Rome, 1835–57. These came down to the fourth year of Gregory XVI, i.e. to 1834. There is also another series of the same kind which appeared as a continuation of the Bullarium of Benedict XIV at Prato in 1843–67 (10 vols., folio).