User:Revent/Biography/sources/A/Acton, John

DNB

 * Article title: Acton, John
 * Author: Lee, Sidney
 * LEAD: ACTON, JOHN (d. 1350), writer on the canon law, is stated by Leland to have been educated at Oxford, and to have taken there the degree of LL.D.
 * LEAD: ACTON, JOHN (d. 1350), writer on the canon law, is stated by Leland to have been educated at Oxford, and to have taken there the degree of LL.D.
 * LEAD: ACTON, JOHN (d. 1350), writer on the canon law, is stated by Leland to have been educated at Oxford, and to have taken there the degree of LL.D.

General

 * Tanner's Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica
 * Coxe's Cat. MSS.
 * prefaces to Lyndewood's Provinciale.

Cites

 * Le Neve, Fasti, ii. 233

Works

 * Acton's chief work was a commentary on the ecclesiastical ‘constitutions’ of Otho and Ottobone
 * Acton's work was printed for the first time in 1496 by Wynkyn de Worde in William Lyndewood's ‘Provinciale.’
 * Sir Henry Spelman made use of Acton's commentary in his ‘Concilia.’
 * Many of his notes are translated in Johnson's ‘Collection of Ecclesiastical Laws,’ 1720, and are referred to in ‘Otho's Ecclesiastical Laws,’ translated by J. W. White in 1844.
 * In the library of All Souls College is a manuscript entitled ‘Quæstiones et notabilia Johannis Athonis (Actoni) supra dictas constitutiones’ [i.e. Ottonis et Ottoboni], which appears to be an epitome of Acton's larger work.
 * Another manuscript, entitled ‘Summa Justitiæ,’ attributed to Acton, is in Corpus Christi Library at Cambridge.
 * Pits gives the name of a few other legal books ascribed to Acton, but nothing is now ascertainable of them.