How was the Liber decretalium of Pope Gregory IX organized?

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First Council of Nicaea — canon law Council of Nicaea in 325, depicted in a Byzantine fresco in the basilica of St. Nicholas in Demre, Turkey.

The Liber decretalium of Pope Gregory IX, also known as the Liber extra, was organized using a systematic structure inspired by the codification of Justinian. Composed by the Spanish canonist St. Raymond of Peñafort and promulgated in 1234, the work was divided into five books.1

This organizational system is briefly summarized by the phrase judex, judicium, clerus, connubium, crimen (judge, trial, clergy, marriage, crime). Within this framework, each book was further subdivided into titles, which were then organized into capitula, or canons. This structural approach, originally introduced by Bernard of Pavia in his Breviarium extravagantium, became the standard for all subsequent collections of decretals.1