Monumenta Iuris Canonici

curavit
Institutum Iuri Canonico Medii Aevi Perquirendo
‘Stephan Kuttner’
(Stephan Kuttner Institute of Medieval Canon Law)

edidit
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana

Series C: Subsidia
Vol. 15
 Monumenta Iuris Canonici
Series C: Subsidia
Vol. 15

Proceedings of the
Fourteenth International Congress
of Medieval Canon Law
Toronto, 5-11 August 2012

Edited by
Joseph Goering, Stephan Dusil, and Andreas Thier

Città del Vaticano

Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
2016
 Monumenta Iuris Canonici

Collectio tribus seriebus constat:

Series A: Corpus Glossatorum, sive editiones criticae auctorum operumve anonymo-

rum iuris canonici classici;

Series B: Corpus Collectionem, sive editiones criticae vel analyticae collectionem ca-
nonum et decretalium medii aevi;

Series C: Subsidia, sive studia varia, repertoria, aliaque instrumenta iuri canonico medii
aevi perquirendo utilia.

The Bibliographical Record can be found at:

www.vaticanlibrary.va

______________________________

Proprietà letteraria riservata

© Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2016
ISBN 978-88-210 -0965- 5
 Piae Memoriae

Leonardus Eugenius Boyle

Michael M. Sheehan

Magistrorum Sociorum Amicorum

D.D.D.
 General Index
Introduction.............................................................................................................. XV
Program..................................................................................................................XVII
Participants............................................................................................................XXXI
Abbreviations...................................................................................................... XXXIII

Texts and Transmissions

Michael D. Elliot
The Worcester Collection of Canons.............................................................................1

Joaquín Sedano
The Collectio decem partium’s Distinctive Sections: Parts 4 and 10...............................31

Greta Austin
Rubrics in the Panormia..............................................................................................61

Jacques Péricard
Retour aux manuscrits de la médiathèque d’Albi (IXe-XIe siècles).
L‘intérêt des collections canoniques ‚mineures‘............................................................73

Szabolcs Anzelm Szuromi, O.Praem.

A Canonical Manuscript in the Collection
of the National Library of St. Petersburg.....................................................................87

Philipp Lenz
The Context of Transmission of the Decretum Gratiani in Sankt Gallen,
Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 673 (= Sg): An Investigation of pp. 201a-246b.........................95

Melodie H. Eichbauer
Rethinking Causae 23-26 as the Causae hereticorum..................................................115

Travis R. Baker
Gratian’s ‘Tract on Monks and the Outside World’ and Its Sources...........................117

John C. Wei
The Later Development of Gratian’s Decretum...........................................................149

José Miguel Viejo-Ximénez

The Summa Quoniam in omnibus Revisited...............................................................163
VIII General Index

Pier V. Aimone
Alcune note sulla Abbreviatio Dunelmensis della Summa Simonis Bisinianensis............179

Bruce C. Brasington
The Summa Queritur cuius sint hec uerba...................................................................199

Danica Summerlin
Drafts and Divergent Traditions: Three Manuscripts of the 1179 Lateran Canons.....213

Dominik Budský
Processus iudiciarius secundum stilum Pragensem of Nicolaus Puchnik:
Analysis of the Preserved Manuscripts.......................................................................215

Fabrice Delivré
Le Libellus super electionibus de Guillaume de Mandagout (1286/1287).
Histoire d’un succès dans l’Occident médiéval...........................................................233

Michèle Bégou-Davia
Les origines doctrinales du Liber Sextus de Boniface VIII. Une première ébauche......243

Lorenzo Sinisi
On the Tracks of the Liber Septimus of Gregory XIII.................................................257

Gero R. Dolezalek
Taking Inventory of Juridical Manuscripts.
Survey of Tasks Achieved, and Tasks to Do................................................................275

Councils and Synods

Gregory I. Halfond
Contextualizing the Council of Tours (567)..............................................................289

Wilfried Hartmann
Zur Entstehungszeit der Kanones der angeblichen Konzilien
von Nantes und von Rouen.......................................................................................303

William S. Monroe
A Synod of Ravenna Confirming the Cadaver Synod (?)...........................................313

Brigitte Basdevant-Gaudemet
Quelle hiérarchie d’après la législation conciliaire du IV° au VIII° siècle,
en Occident?.............................................................................................................327
 General Index IX

Eldbjørg Haug
The Council of Basle, the Rise against King Erik of Pomerania
and the Last Provincial Statute of Norway.................................................................343

Persons, Teaching, and Books

Abigail Firey
How Carolingians Learned Canon Law.....................................................................355

Nicolás Álvarez de las Asturias

Lanfranc’s Readings on Canon Law...........................................................................369

Anders Winroth
Where Gratian Slept: The Life and Death of the Father of Canon Law......................377

Peter Landau
Master Peter of Louveciennes and the Origins
of the Parisian School of Canon Law around 1170....................................................379

Gergely Gallai
Notes on the Origin of Damasus, a Thirteenth Century Canonist in Bologna...........395

Nicolas Laurent-Bonne
Un canoniste montpelliérain oublié: Étienne de Clapiers,
abbé de Saint-Victor de Marseille..............................................................................407

Osvaldo Cavallar
La coscienza del giurista: Gli scrupoli patrimoniali di Baldo degli Ubaldi..................421

Charles Donahue, Jr.

English Canon Lawyers of the Fourteenth Century: A Moment of Transition?..........433

Yves Mausen
Proprium est iudicis finem controuersiis imponere.
Les limites de la justice chez John Ayton...................................................................435

Ryan Rowberry
The Social Status, Education, and Benefices of Gilbert Rothbury,
a Clerical Common Law Justice (1295 – 1321).........................................................453
X General Index

Kerstin Hitzbleck
Quo iure non video - Guillelmus de Montelauduno († 1343)
über die Benefizialpraxis seiner Zeit...........................................................................471

Andrea Padovani
An Unknown Work about Legal Procedure in the Fifteenth Century:
Iohannes de Imola on the Fifth Book of the Liber Extra............................................485

Monasticism
Philippe Depreux
La profession monastique au temps de la réforme d’Aix (816 – 819)
et les formules de voeux, de petitio des novices et d’oblation des enfants....................487

Giles Constable
Three Abbatial Elections During the Regency of Suger of St Denis............................503

Hans-Joachim Schmidt
Episcopus, conservator et iudex. Bishops as Protectors of Religious Orders...................513

Antonina Sahaydachny
A Cistercian Statute of 1188 AD and the Promulgation ‘ante et retro oculata’
of Gratian’s Decretum.................................................................................................527

Charles Hilken
An Anonymous Eleventh-Century Doctor of Charity:
Additions to the Holy Rule of Saint Benedict............................................................553

Tristan Sharp
William of Pagula’s Speculum religiosorum:
A Legal Compendium in a Work of Monastic Formation..........................................573

Procedural Law
Kirsi Salonen
Reconsidering the Sacra Romana Rota in the Late Middle Ages.................................581

Franck Roumy
Silentium perpetuum et absolutio ab impetitione.
L’expression de la sentence définitive et de la requête irrecevable
dans la procédure canonique des XIIe et XIIIe siècles..................................................589
 General Index XI

Per Andersen
Old Customs and New Trends – Legal Procedure
between Ecclesiastical Ideology and Secular Practice in Medieval Denmark...............603

Nicolas Pose
L’aveu civil erroné et ses conséquences
dans la procédure romano-canonique (XIIe – XIIIe siècle)..........................................613

Sex, Marriage, and Children

Anne J. Duggan
‘Our letters have not usually made law (legem facere) on such matters’
(Alexander III, 1169): A New Look at the Formation of the Canon Law
of Marriage in the Twelfth Century...........................................................................627

Christof Rolker
The Hot and the Cold Language: Incest Discourses
in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries....................................................................651

Bernard d’Alteroche
Si fornicatio clerici est publica:
La fornication publique des clercs dans le droit canonique classique..........................667

Florence Demoulin-Auzary
L’abandon des enfants en droit médiéval:
l’apport de la doctrine romano-canonique.................................................................691

Talia Zajac
Marriage Impediments in Canon Law and Practice:
Consanguinity Regulations and the Case of Orthodox-Catholic Intermarriage
in Kyivan Rus, ca. 1000 – 1250................................................................................711

Mia Korpiola
Qui facit adulterium, frangit fidem et promissionem suam.
Adultery and the Church in Medieval Sweden...........................................................731

Elizabeth Makowski
The Curious Case of Mary Felton..............................................................................733

Alessandra Bassani
Secret Wedding, Incestuous Marriages and Subornation of Witnesses
in the Tractatus de testibus by Hugolinus da Sesso......................................................743
XII General Index

Crimes and Punishment, Penance and Penitentials

Marie-Clotilde Lault
À la recherche de l’incorrigibilitas dans les pénitentiels (VIe – XIe siècle).....................753

Frederik Keygnaert
The Meaning of Ecclesiastical Exclusion in the Archdiocese of Reims, c.1100.
The Legal Difference between Excommunication, Anathema and Interdict...............767

Brandon T. Parlopiano
Insanity, Blame, and ‘Quidam Theologi’ in C. 15 q. 1................................................779

Sara McDougall
Enclosure as Punishment for Adultery.......................................................................793

Nicolas Gillen
Escaping the Lion of St. Mark – Church Asylum in Renaissance Venice....................807

Popes, Bishops, and Clerics

Stephan Dusil
Lawmaking between Burchard and Raymond.
The Example of the Prohibition of Hunting by Clerics in the Twelfth Century.........817

Steven A. Schoenig, S.J.

The Palliated Suffragan..............................................................................................837

Thibault Joubert
Unius uxoris vir: Le lien sponsal entre l’évêque et son Église
dans le Décret de Gratien...........................................................................................849

Andreas Meyer
Attention, No Pope! New Approaches to Late Medieval Papal „Litterae“...................865

Julien Théry-Astruc
Judicial Inquiry as an Instrument of Centralized Government:
The Papacy’s Criminal Proceedings against Prelates
in the Age of Theocracy (Mid-Twelfth to Mid-Fourteenth Century).........................875

Elizabeth L. Hardman
Debt Litigation in the Bishop’s Court of Carpentras, 1486 – 1487:
The Court and Its Users............................................................................................891
 General Index XIII

Law and Politics

George Conklin
Redde singula singulis and Suum cuique tribuens:
Re-Thinking Medieval Two-Sword Theory................................................................893

Kriston R. Rennie
The Canon Law of Legation......................................................................................903

Gregory Roberts
Policing and the Public Interest in Communal Bologna............................................905

John Phillip Lomax

The Negotium Terrae Sanctae in Papal-Imperial Discourse (1226–1244)....................915

Thomas Wetzstein
The Deposition of Frederick II (1245) – a Public Lesson in Procedural Law..............949

Péter Molnár
La reprise du terme plenitudo potestatis au profit des souverains laïques......................965

Vito Piergiovanni
Il mare nella canonistica medievale: note normative e dottrinali................................983

Rusne Juozapaitiene
The Problem of Ecclesiastical and Secular Court Competence Delimitation
in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (XIV – XVIII Centuries)......................................995

Law and Theology

David von Mayenburg

‚Unterm Krummstab ist gut leben‘? – Bäuerliche Freiheit
im mittelalterlichen Kirchenrecht..............................................................................997

Roger E. Reynolds (†)

Christ’s Money in the pseudo-Isidorian Collectio Hispana Gallica Augustodunensis...1021

Thomas Izbicki
How the Language of Transubstantiation Entered Medieval Canon Law.................1023
XIV General Index

Jason Taliadoros
Law, Theology, and the Schools:
The Use of Scripture in Ricardus Anglicus’s Distinctiones decretorum........................1045

Elisabeth Schneider
Les origines théologiques de la personne en droit canonique médiéval.....................1091

John A. Lorenc
An Early Fourteenth Century Confessor’s Legal Toolkit:
The Origin of John of Freiburg’s Legal Learning in the Summa confessorum.............1111

Helmut G. Walther
Canon Law and Theology: John of Legnano’s Part in the Quarrels
between Aristotelians and Jurists in the Era of the Beginning Theological Faculty
at the Fourteenth-Century University of Bologna....................................................1121

Mathias Schmoeckel
Wichtiger als Wahrheit? Grenzen des Beichtgeheimnisses im kanonischen Recht?...1131

Historiography
Peter D. Clarke
Peter Landau’s Contributions to Scholarship
on Canonistic Doctrine and Jurisprudence..............................................................1163

Robert Somerville
Peter Landau at Yale................................................................................................1169

Atria A. Larson
Peter Landau’s Contribution to the Study of Gratian
and Twelfth-Century Canon Law............................................................................1175

Index of Manuscripts..............................................................................................1185
Index of Persons......................................................................................................1191
Index of Works, Councils and Decretals..................................................................1203
 The Worcester Collection of Canons
Michael D. Elliot
The Wigorniensis, the one major canonical collection known to have been compiled in Anglo-Saxon England,
has been the subject of much controversy and confusion over the last five hundred years. The edition published
in 1999 represents the culmination of several scholars’ efforts at the end of the twentieth century to resolve some
of this confusion. However, the editors’ decision to edit only about half of the collection’s content ensured that
much about the collection would remain obscure. The present paper seeks to bring attention to the collection
in its entirety, and explores some of the problems still surrounding the collection’s origin, authorship, and later
development. It is argued that the original version of the collection (‘A’, or the versio primitiva) probably origina-
ted outside the control of Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester (1002 – 1016) and Archbishop of York (1002 – 1023),
but that all subsequent versions represent successive Wulfstanian adaptations of the original core. The collection’s
textual tradition is examined and found to be, apparently, chaotic. A solution to this apparent chaos is proposed
based on the peculiar conditions of manuscript production current in Worcester during Wulfstan’s pontificate,
wherein individual gatherings (‘booklets’) were copied and combined in different ways to produce larger compo-
site volumes of canonical material. It is suggested that other early medieval collections exhibiting symptoms of
Ursprungskontamination similar to those of the Wigorniensis may have been produced under similar conditions.

I. Introduction: The Context, Historiography and Title of the Collection

Slowly, and not altogether steadily, over the last several hundred years scholars have been
piecing together a picture of the role the Anglo-Saxons played in the development and
spread of canon law collections in the early medieval period. The picture, as it is currently
framed, is far from finished, but the main contours have already taken shape and many
interesting details are now being filled in. Beginning in the seventh and eighth centuries,
and fuelled it seems by the early Anglo-Saxon church’s strong ties to Roman models, we
see in England the considerable influence of Italian canon law collections, most nota-
bly the Collectio Dionysiana II, Collectio Sanblasiana and Collectio Quesnelliana.1 In
the eighth century, imbued with the legal concepts enshrined in these collections, re-
form-minded Anglo-Saxon personnel descended on the Low Countries and lands east of
the Rhine, and brought with them the institutional framework and disciplinary teaching
materials they had inherited from their Roman and, by then too, Irish mentors. These
included the collections already mentioned, as well as the Collectio Hibernensis and
several new and rather innovative penitential handbooks, most importantly the Canones
Theodori and the penitentials ascribed to Bede and Ecgberht (and perhaps too the Paeni-
tentiale Oxoniense II and Iudicium Clementis – both of which have been tentatively
attributed to Willibrord).2 During this time Anglo-Saxons also played an important role
1 The outline presented here of the use of canon law collections in Anglo-Saxon England is a synopsis of
evidence and arguments presented in M. D. Elliot, Canon Law Collections in England ca. 600 – 1066: The
Manuscript Evidence, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Toronto 2013.
2 On the Oxoniense II and Iudicium Clementis see Rob Meens, Penance in Medieval Europe, 600 – 1200,
Cambridge 2014, 103 – 106. The authenticity of the Bede penitential has long been doubted, and perhaps
rightly so. Doubts about the authenticity of the Ecgberht penitential seem to me entirely without support,
however. Objections to Ecgberht’s authorship have so far amounted to nothing more than noticing that
all early surviving manuscripts of the Ecgberht penitential are Continental (and not English) in origin.
This is the extent of the discussion of authorship offered in the otherwise excellent study by Reinhold
Haggenmüller, Die Überlieferung der Beda und Egbert zugeschriebenen Bussbücher, Frankfurt am Main
The Collectio decem partium’s Distinctive Sections: Parts 4 and 10
Joaquín Sedano
The analysis of Books 1 – 3 and 5 – 9 of the Collectio decem partium (10P) shows the astonishing parallel with
the Panormia (only nineteen canons from the Panormia have not been included in 10 Parts), although it seems
to be a more systematic work than the Panormia. In this paper we intend to know the real characteristics and
personality of the Collectio decem partium. To this aim, a detailed study of the material added to the Panormia
(that is, mainly those in parts 4 and 10) is required. Parts 4 and 10 show an original and complex structure in
which we find hardly any extensive blocks of successive canons belonging to the same formal source, but the
compiler used many collections and rearranged the material under the headings of 10P. Currently there is no
known collection that could have served as a model for the composition of parts 4 and 10, but it is likely that the
appendices to the manuscripts PoPpTdVo of the Panormia constitute a testimony of a preparatory collection for
10P made of non-Panormia texts.

Introduction
The significant dependence of the Collectio decem partium (10P) on the Panormia has
been long known. As I have had the opportunity to demonstrate several times, this corre-
spondence is astonishingly close. Parts 1 – 3 correspond to the same Books of the Panor-
mia, and parts 5 – 9 correspond to Books 4 – 8 (only nineteen canons from the Panormia
have not been included in 10P!).1 In this way, the underlying structure of 10P is derived
directly from that of the Panormia, except in parts 4 and 10. Part 4 of 10P does not draw
any text from the Panormia at all, nor does the tenth part, which treats penance. In view
of these points it is easy to see that, regarding the Panormia, 10P’s unique personality lies
mainly in parts 4 and 10. We must, therefore, turn to the content of these two parts in
order to know the true interests of the author of the collection and, at a later stage, also
to learn of his personality and the place of composition. However, these issues are still
unresolved. This paper, thus, focuses on the study of the Parts 4 and 10 which mark the
personality of 10P, depending on my transcription of the contents of these two parts in
manuscript F.2

I. Part Four
If we turn to the formal sources of part 43, we can see that the compilation of this part
is a really complicated one. We find hardly any large blocks of successive canons from
the same collection. Instead, the compiler culled from various collections the required
material and reorganized it under the headings of 10P.
The formal sources of this part are several: first, we find the Decretum Burchardi Wor-
matiensis (BD), from which 10P takes about 130 canons. Secondly, the Collectio novem
librorum or Sangermanensis (9L), from which 10P takes about 110 canons. Then, with a

1 J. Sedano, The Manuscript Tradition of the Collection in Ten Parts, in: Proceedings Esztergom 2008, 261 –
271; J. Sedano, A Comparative Analysis of the Panormia and the Collectio X Partium, in: ZRG Kan. Abt.
96, 2010, 80 – 110.
2 Firenze, BNC, Conv. soppr., D.II.1476 (SS. Annunziata).
3 See Appendix 3.
 Rubrics in the Panormia
Greta Austin
Despite being common features of many medieval canon law collections, rubrics – or summaries of texts – have
been little studied. This article proposes that rubrics may potentially provide lenses for understanding the many
collections that lack commentary. Rubrics might provide analysis or even glosses of the texts; they also functioned
as finding devices for users. Yet some canon law collections, like the Panormia formerly attributed to Ivo, bishop
of Chartres, do not have rubrics for every canon. This article suggests that rubrics in the various forms of the
Panormia served to locate canons, and that the collection’s relatively clear structure made rubrics less vital to the
collection.

Rubrics, the short descriptions of texts that appear in many canon law collections made
before Gratian, have received little scholarly attention.1 Yet rubrics deserve study for
many reasons.2 For one, rubrics potentially provide clues about how users viewed canons
and collections. Users might modify or even change rubrics. Although canons tend to get
copied over and over, and thus they often came with rubrics already attached, some texts
that compilers included in their canon law collections might not come with existing ru-
brics. For instance, texts excerpted directly from Augustine’s writings may come without
rubrics, while other canons, such as conciliar ones, might have rubrics,3 but these could
be abandoned or simplified to suit particular needs.4 In short, rubrics opened up the pos-
sibility of an interpretative space for users. A second reason for modern scholars to take
rubrics seriously is that rubrics might provide clues about the medieval interpretation of
the canons. What did medieval users identify as the main point of the canon? What did
they stress? What did they ignore? (By the same token, many rubrics simply quote the
opening lines of the text, which often reveal frustratingly little to the modern reader.)
In addition, rubrics serve an important function as finding devices which helped
readers locate texts.5 On the page, rubrics are written above the main text of the canon,
often set off with a different color of ink such as red. In addition, sometimes rubrics were
also re-copied as chapter headings (capitulationes). Although these capitulationes seldom

1 Peter Landau’s study of the Panormia’s rubrics is an early exception: Peter Landau, Die Rubriken und Inskrip-
tionen von Ivos Panormie: Die Ausgabe Sebastian Brants im Vergleich zu der Loewener Edition des Melchior
de Vosmédian und der Ausgabe von Migne, in: BMCL 12, 1982, 31 – 49. See also Martin Brett’s discussions
of rubrics in Creeping up on the Panormia, in: R. H. Helmholz / P. Mikat / J. Müller / M. Stolleis (Eds.),
Grundlagen des Rechts. Festschrift für Peter Landau, Paderborn 2000 (Rechts- und Staatswissenschaftliche
Veröffentlichungen der Görres-Gesellschaft 91), 205 – 270, especially 210 – 214.
2 I thank Martin Brett, Bruce Brasington and Robert Somerville for their discussions of the Panormias and
related issues with me. They do not bear responsibility for my comments or errors below. I also thank the
many helpful commentators during the paper’s discussion at the Toronto Congress.
3 See, e.g., the council of St.-Basle of 991 in: Ernst-Dieter Hehl / Carlo Servatius, Die Konzilien Deutschlands
und Reichsitaliens 916 – 1001, Hannover 2007 (MGH Conc. 6, 2), 380 – 469; a capitula at the beginning
lists the contents (although there are not specific rubrics with each numbered text).
4 For instance, a specific rubric to a conciliar text might be simplified to something like de eodem re (‘regarding
the same thing’) if it followed a canon on a similar topic.
5 See Mary Rouse / Richard H. Rouse, Statim invenire: Schools, Preachers, and New Attitudes towards the
Page, in: Mary Rouse / Richard H. Rouse, Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to Medieval Texts and Manu-
scripts, Notre Dame 1991, 191 – 219, especially 196.
 Retour aux manuscrits de la médiathèque
d’Albi (IXe-XIe siècles). L’intérêt des
collections canoniques ‚mineures‘
Jacques Péricard
The media library of Albi holds at present several manuscripts composed between the ninth and the eleventh
century and coming from the cathedral chapter of Sainte-Cécile. Containing the main canonical collections
circulating during the Early Middle Ages, these volumes, given their diversity, seem important for the history of
the canon law and its practice. However, it is important to note that until now they have received little scholarly
attention. This paper would like to draw attention to these manuscripts, their origin and destination. First it is
necessary to highlight the dynamism of the Albi’s cathedral chapter. Surviving documents testify not only to a
considerable production during the Early Middle Ages but also remarkable exchanges between Albi and northerly
centres of power. We can then begin to ask about the use made of these manuscripts. An attentive examination
of the contents seems to indicate more precise uses than education or liturgy. They were perhaps used in a con-
tentious context.
« Le catalogue de la Bibliothèque d’Albi est, pour le canoniste, tout plein d’attrayants
mystères ».1 Gabriel Le Bras attirait ainsi en 1929 l’attention sur la richesse de l’ancien
fonds du chapitre cathédral Sainte-Cécile d’Albi dont une partie est aujourd’hui numéri-
sée.2 Si certains des manuscrits le composant restent inclassables en raison de leur hétéro-
généité, deux types principaux se distinguent. On remarque tout d’abord une importante
proportion de documents liturgiques bien étudiés par les musicologues y ayant relevé des
notations musicales originales.3 L’autre catégorie est composée de collections canoniques
mêlées à quelques œuvres patristiques.4 Pour clore cette première approche, constatons
que s’il existe dans ce fonds plusieurs manuscrits enluminés caractérisant le style aquitain,

1 G. Le Bras, Richesses méconnues de la bibliothèque publique d’Albi, in : RHD, 1929, 767 – 775, ici 767.
2 http://archivesnumeriques.mediatheques.grand-albigeois.fr/ (dernière visite : 4 juillet 2014). Une publica-
tion en version imprimée met également en valeur les plus beaux manuscrits de ce fonds : M. Desachy (éd.),
Le scriptorium d’Albi. Les manuscrits de la cathédrale Sainte-Cécile, (VIIe – XIIe siècles), Rodez, 2007.
Nous tenons à remercier Mathieu Desachy, conservateur de la médiathèque Pierre-Amalric d’Albi, de nous
avoir donné librement accès aux manuscrits.
3 Pour une présentation générale, M.-N. Colette, Aux origines de la notation musicale, in : M. Desachy (éd.),
Le scriptorium d’Albi (n. 2), 61 – 65.
4 En dépit de l’importance du fond, notons à titre informatif l’inexistence de collections strictement ju-
ridiques : aucune exemplaire ou extrait du Bréviaire d’Alaric, encore moins du code théodosien, pas même
dans les inventaires les plus anciens. Un examen des actes de la pratique (assez peu nombreux) n’a pas permis
de déceler de réelles survivances romaines témoignant de l’utilisation d’un tel corpus. Les textes relevés ne
font au mieux allusion qu’à des vestiges de droit romain habillant les préambules de chartes de donations,
comme dans beaucoup d’autres régions. A titre d’exemple, citons cet acte de donation de l’évêque Miron de
942, tiré des archives de la communauté albigeoise de Saint-Salvi : on y fait référence, pêle-mêle, à l’autorité
et à la loi romaine, goth et salique (sic), évoquant la liberté pour tout homme de disposer librement de ses
biens, vieux souvenir du code théodosien (C. Th., 3, 1, 6.). GC, t. I, Instrumenta, III, p. 3 : Multum declarat
auctoritas et lex Romana, et Gotha, sive Salica, ut qualiscumque homo res suas proprias in Dei nomen licentiam
habeat donandi vel cedendi. En 1062, une donation du comte Pons de 1062 s’éloigne un peu plus encore de
la lettre romaine (GC, I, Instrumenta, VIII, p. 4): Multum declarat auctoritas et lex Romanorum et Gotorum
sive Salicorum, ut unusquisque homo de propriis rebus suis dare, aud cedere, aut condonare voluerit, licentiam
habeat ad faciendum.
 A Canonical Manuscript in the Collection
of the National Library of St. Petersburg
Szabolcs Anzelm Szuromi, O.Praem.*
The Medieval Latin collection of the National Library of St. Petersburg has some remarkable manuscripts from
the seventh to the fourteenth centuries. Since 1795, volumes that were transferred by the Russian Army during
the Napoleonic War, for instance, from Warsaw, arrived in St. Petersburg. We summarize here some observations
on one of those manuscripts, namely, Ermit. lat. 11. This manuscript contains a copy of Bartholomeus de Pisa,
Summa de casibus. This widespread work, which belongs to the fourteenth century summa literature, was compo-
sed in the year 1338. Its contents are arranged in alphabetical order according to several kinds of material, along
with insertions of supplements in rather abbreviated form and excerpts, sometimes annotated with commenta-
ries. This particular copy of the Summa Pisana could provide very substantial assistance in the administration of
penance. The marginal notes of this copy inform us about the basic activity of the Norbertine community. It can
be clearly seen that the fourteenth century Ermit. lat. 11 was an important source for the religious community
as a reference book concerning the preparation of marriage, the goods of marriage, the defense of ecclesiastical
temporal goods, and priestly service in territories under interdict.

Introduction
The Medieval Latin collection of the National Library of St. Petersburg has some re-
markable manuscripts from the seventh to the fourteenth centuries. Since 1795, volumes
that were transferred by the Russian Army during the Napoleonic War, for instance,
from Warsaw, arrived in St. Petersburg.1 According to the decision of Catherine II, with
the approval of the Cabinet, the library of St. Petersburg was enriched by numerous
collections of volumes in 1796 and 1797.2 The continuously arriving books forced Ale­
xander I to establish a new library, which was erected on October 14, 1810 and named
Imperial Public Library of St. Petersburg (Императорская Публичная Библиотека).3 A
significant part of this collection therefore belongs to the Hermitage Collection, which
contains several codices from the Norbertine monastery library of Weissenau, including
canonical sources.4

* This paper has been written with the generous support of the ‘Insituto de Derecho Europeo Clásico’
(IDEC) in Las Palmas. I should express my thanks to Prof. José Miguel Viejo-Ximénez (IDEC) and to A. B.
Лихоманов (St. Petersburg, Rossiyskaya Nationalnaya Biblioteka). This publication is supported also by the
TÁMOP 4.2.2 project.
1 Cf. Путеводитель по Императорской Публичной Библиотекь, Санкт-Петербург 1860, 2.
2 Сотрудники российской национальной библиотеки – деятели науки и культуры, I: Императорская
Публичная Библотека 1795 – 1917, Санкт-Петербург 1995, 8 – 9.
3 Отчеть Императорскою Публичною Библиотекою представленный за 1814 годь, Санкт-Петербургь
1815; cf. Императорская Публичная Библиотека за 100 лет. 1814 – 1914, Санкт-Петербургь 1914,
239 – 241.
4 Рукописний каталог латинских рукописей Эрмитажного собрания, Ленинград 1959; P. Lehmann,
Verschollene und wiedergefundene Reste der Klosterbibliothek von Weissenau, in: Zentralblatt für Bib-
liothekwesen 49, 1932, 1 – 11. Cf. H. Binder, Bibliotheca Weissenaviensis. Aus der Geschichte der Klos-
terbibliothek, in: P. Eitel (Ed.), Weissenau in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Festschrift zur 700-Jahrfeier der
Übergabe der Heiligblutreliquie durch Rudolf von Habsburg an die Prämonstratenserabtei Weißenau,
Sigmaringen 1983, 231 – 244, especially 233, 241; E. Wenzel, Die mittelalterliche Bibliothek der Abtei
Weißenau, Frankfurt am Main 1998 (Europäische Hochschulschriften, Reihe XV: Klassische Sprachen und
Literaturen, 73), 114 – 119.
 The Context of Transmission of the Decretum Gratiani in
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 673 (= Sg):
An Investigation of pp. 201a–246b
Philipp Lenz
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 673 (= Sg) contains an early version of the Decretum Gratiani (pp. 3a –
201a) and an appendix with 20 further texts (pp. 201a – 203a) in part 1 and numerous patristic, homiletic,
canonistic and other excerpts (pp. 203a – 246b) in part 2. The investigation of the appendix and of part 2 shows
that they not only share some of the scribes, rubricators and annotators with the Decretum, but also some of its
content. Indeed, the appendix and part 2 contain 58 texts which can be found, in one form or another, in the
vulgate Decretum. 17 of these 58 texts appear in the Decretum in the first part, too, but always in different ver-
sions, thus excluding any direct textual dependency. For the canonistic texts, the compiler of the second part of
Sg probably used the Panormia, the Collectio 3 librorum or the Collectio 9 librorum, and the Collectio 5 librorum.
Other likely formal sources include Burchard’s or Ivo’s Decretum or the Polycarpus together with the Collectio 2
librorum / 8 partium. The most recent datable texts in part 1 (1146) and part 2 (1139) suggest that the latter was
compiled or actualized at about the same time as the former.
I. Introduction
Shortly after the ground-breaking discovery of three first recension manuscripts of the
Decretum Gratiani by Anders Winroth,1 Carlos Larrainzar discovered another early ver-
sion of the Decretum Gratiani in St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 673, pp. 3a – 201a.2
Since then, this manuscript (henceforth called Sg) has continuously attracted the interest
of scholars. However, with the exception of two articles by Enrique De León,3 their in-
terest has been limited to the copy of the Decretum,4 leaving the rest of the manuscript
largely unexplored. This article tries to fill this gap.

1 At present, four manuscripts (Aa, Bc, Fc, P) and a fragment (Pfr) of the first recension are known. See Anders
Winroth, The Two Recensions of Gratian’s Decretum, in: ZRG Kan. Abt. 83, 1997, 22 – 31; Anders Win-
roth, Les deux Gratiens et le Droit Romain. In memoriam Rudolf Weigand, in: RDC 48, 1998, 285 – 299;
Anders Winroth, The Making of Gratian’s Decretum, Cambridge 2000, based on his Ph.D. Dissertation at
Columbia University in 1996; Rudolf Weigand, Chancen und Probleme einer baldigen kritischen Edition
der ersten Redaktion des Dekrets Gratians, in: BMCL 22, 1998, 53 – 75; Carlos Larrainzar, El Decreto de
Graciano del códice Fd (= Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Conventi Soppresi A.I.402). In memori-
am Rudolf Weigand, in: Ius Ecclesiae 10, 1998, 421 – 489.
2 Carlos Larrainzar, El borrador de la ‘concordia’ de Graciano: Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek MS 673 (= Sg),
in: Ius Ecclesiae 11, 1999, 593 – 666.
3 Enrique de León, Collectio Sangallensis, in: BMCL 27, 2007, 57 – 70; Enrique de León, Textos de los
Excerpta Sangallensis, in: Bernard d’Alteroche et al. (Ed.), Mélanges en l’honneur d’Anne Lefebvre-Teillard,
Paris 2009, 333 – 340.
4 The literature exploring the early textual history of the Decretum Gratiani in general and its version in Sg in
particular over the past two decades is reviewed by José Miguel Viejo-Ximénez, La composición del decreto
de Graciano, in: Ius Canonicum 45, 2005, 431 – 485, here especially 432 – 442, 456 with earlier studies
cited in n. 3–26, 46; by Anders Winroth, Recent Work on the Making of Gratian’s Decretum, in: BMCL
26, 2004 – 2006, 1 – 30, and by Carlos Larrainzar, Métodos para el análisis de la formación del Decretum
Gratiani. ‘Etapas’ y ‘esquemas’ de redacción, in: Proceedings Esztergom 2008, 85 – 116, here especially 85 –
95 with references to previous studies in n. 9, 11, 12, 14 – 16, 20, 22, 25, 31. The most recent publications
considering Sg are by Kenneth Pennington, Roman Law, 12th-Century Law and Legislation, in: Gisela
Drossbach (Ed.), Von der Ordnung zur Norm: Statuten in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, Paderborn 2010,
17 – 38, here 25 – 38 and n. 45 – 46; José Miguel Viejo-Ximénez, Non omnis error consensum euacuat. La
C. 26 de los Exserpta de Sankt Gallen (Sg), in: Janusz Kowal / Joaquín Llobell (Ed.), ‘Iustitia et Iudicium’.
Gratian’s ‘Tract on Monks and the Outside World’ and Its Sources
Travis R. Baker
Research on the formal sources of the Decretum Gratiani has never been better. Thanks to the work of a host of
scholars, our knowledge of Gratian’s immediate sources has increased significantly over the last thirty years. But
as much progress has been made, much work remains to be done. One such area ripe for investigation is what I
call Gratian’s ‘Tract on Monks and the Outside World,’ Causae 16 to 20. Though a number of individual canons
have received competent scholarly attention, there exists no systematic study of the formal sources of these causae
as they appear in either the first or second recension. This paper then provides a summary of the results of my
research on the formal sources of the first recension of Causae 16 to 20, with particular attention paid to the
Collectio III librorum and the Collectio IX librorum.
Research on the formal sources of the Decretum Gratiani has never been better.1 Thanks
to the work of a host of scholars, particularly that of Peter Landau and Titus Lenherr,
our knowledge of Gratian’s immediate sources has increased significantly over the last
thirty years.2 But as much progess has been made, much work remains to be done.3 One
such area ripe for investigation is what I call Gratian’s ‘Tract on Monks and the Outside
World,’ Causae 16 to 20, or what some scholars call the causae monachorum. Though a
number of individual canons have received competent scholarly attention, there exists no
systematic study of the formal sources of these causae as they appear in either the first or
second recension.4 What follows then is a summary of the results of my research on the

1 The formal sources are the immediate sources from which a given canon derives (e.g. Anselm II of Lucca’s
Collectio canonum). They are not to be confused with the material source, that is, the original source of a
given canon (e.g. St Augustine), though in some cases the material source also served as the formal source for
a given canon.
2 For a helpful overview of research on Gratian’s formal sources up until 2001, see José Miguel Viejo-Ximénez,
La investigación sobre las fuentas formales del Decreto de Graciano, in: Initium 7, 2002, 217 – 239. Al-
though many important studies have appeared since Viejo-Ximenez’s article, John Wei’s work on the theo-
logical sources of the De penitentia (C. 33 q. 3) deserves special mention. Wei has argued convincingly that
Gratian most likely used the sentence collection known as Deus itaque summe in composing Distinctions
2 and 3 of C. 33 q. 3, especially its tracts on charity and penance. On this point, see John Wei, Gratian
and the School of Laon, in: Traditio 64, 2009, 279 – 322. For an edition of Baptizato homine, the tract on
penance known and used by Gratian, see John Wei, Penitential Theology in Gratian’s Decretum: Critique
and Criticism of the Treatise Baptizato homine, in: ZRG.KA 95, 2009, 78 – 100. For a critical edition of
Deus non habet, which essentially contains the contents of Deus itaque summe before it was reworked, see
John Wei, The Sentence Collection Deus non habet initium uel terminum and Its Reworking, Deus itaque
summe atque ineffabiliter bonus, in: Mediaeval Studies 73, 2011, 1 – 118. For a critical edition of ‘Vt autem
hoc euidenter,’ the tract on charity known and used by Gratian, see John Wei, A Twelfth-Century Treatise on
Charity: The Tract ‘Vt autem hoc euidenter’ of the Sentence Collection Deus itaque summe atque ineffabi-
liter bonus, in: Mediaeval Studies 74, 2012, 1 – 50.
3 On this point, see Peter Landau, Apokryphe Isidoriana bei Gratian, in: Franz J. Felten / Nikolas Jaspert
(Ed.), Vita Religiosa im Mittelalter: Festschrift für Kaspar Elm zum 70. Geburtstag, Berlin 1999, 837 – 844,
at 844; Titus Lenherr, Langsame Annäherung an Gratians Exemplar der Moralia in Job, in: BMCL 28, 2008,
71 – 96, at 71.
4 For C. 16 q. 1 c. 9 (c. 11), see Peter Landau, Seelsorge in den Kanonenssammlungen von der Zeit der gre-
gorianischen Reform bis zu Gratian, in: La pastorale della Chiesa in Occidente dall’età ottoniana al concilio
lateranense IV, Milan 2004, 93 – 123, at 103, n. 51; for C. 16 q. 1 c. 66, see Ermenegildo Lio, Le Obbligazi-
oni verso i poveri in un testo di S. Cesario riportato da Graziano (can. 66, C. XVI, q. 1) con falsa attribuzione
A. S. Agostino, in: Giuseppe Forchielli / Alfons Stickler (Ed.), Studia Gratiana 3, Bologna 1955, 53 – 81.
For most of the canons in C. 16 q. 7, see Peter Landau, Das Dominium der Laien an Kirchen im Decretum
 The Later Development of Gratian’s Decretum
John C. Wei
Thanks to the research of Peter Landau, Titus Lenherr, Anders Winroth, and other scholars, we now know a con-
siderable amount about the early stages of Gratian’s Decretum, particularly how the first recension was compiled
and then expanded into the second recension. Much less, in contrast, is known about how the second recension
developed into the vulgate text(s), i.e., the text(s) of the Decretum disseminated by the pecia system and found in
early modern printed editions. The present paper attempts to summarize, supplement, and, where necessary, cor-
rect the research to date on this question. It focuses particular attention on manuscripts and manuscript families
from the last quarter of the twelfth century, which seem to have played a pivotal role in shaping the Decretum’s
later textual tradition.
Over six hundred manuscripts of Gratian’s Concordia discordantium canonum or Decre-
tum survive from the Middle Ages.1 Four manuscripts and one fragment preserve the
first recension.2 With two exceptions,3 the remaining manuscripts contain the second
recension or some abbreviation/transformation thereof.4 Perhaps unsurprisingly given
the interest in origins, research since the discovery of the first recension has focused on
the first recension and the process by which it was revised into the second recension. The
later development of the Decretum, once the object of considerable study, has since then
largely been neglected. In this paper, I would like to summarize, supplement, and, where
necessary, correct the results of research to date on how the Decretum developed from the
textual form it had as it left the redactor of the second recension’s pen to the form en-
shrined in manuscripts produced according to the pecia system, which came to dominate
university book production from the thirteenth century onward. While slow and tedious,
the identification of later redactional stages and manuscript families has three potential
benefits. First, it can help with the selection and evaluation of manuscripts for editing the
Decretum, whether the original form of the second recension or the later vulgate texts.
Second, it can help to date and localize canonistic works. Third, at least some textual
changes may be doctrinally significant or provide insight into the contrasting character-
istics and approaches to legal study of different legal centres.

1 For lists and descriptions of most of the extant medieval Gratian manuscripts, see Stephen Kuttner, Reper-
torium der Kanonistik (1140 – 1234). Prodromus corporis glossarum I, Città del Vaticano 1937 (Studi e
testi 71), 1 – 122; Anthony Melnikas, The Corpus of Miniatures in the Manuscripts of Decretum Gratiani,
Città del Vaticano 1973 – 1975 (SG 16 – 18); Rudolf Weigand, Die Glossen zum Dekret Gratians. Studien
zu den frühen Glossen und Glossenkompositionen, vol. 2, Roma 1991 (SG 26), 661 – 1004.
2 For a description of the manuscripts of the first recension, see Anders Winroth, The Making of Gratian’s
Decretum, Cambridge 2000, 23 – 33.
3 The exceptions are: Mw = München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 22272, fols. 117r – 121r, which
contains an abbreviation of the first recension; Sg = Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 673, which contains an
abbreviation of the first recension with interpolations from a manuscript of the second recension. On Mw,
see the analysis by Atria A. Larson, An Abbreviatio of the First Recension of Gratian’s Decretum in Munich?,
in: BMCL 29, 2011 – 2012, 51 – 118. I find unlikely Larson’s suggestion on 77 – 78 that Mw may be an
abbreviation of a pre-first recension form of Gratian. On Sg, see John C. Wei, A Reconsideration of St. Gall,
Stiftsbibliothek 673 (Sg) in Light of the Sources of Distinctions 5 – 7 of the De penitentia, in: BMCL 27,
2007, 141 – 180.
4 On abbreviations and transformations of the Decretum, see Kuttner, Repertorium (n. 1), 257 – 271.
 The Summa Quoniam in omnibus Revisited
José Miguel Viejo-Ximénez*
The paper revises common explanations about the Summa Quoniam in omnibus (SQO) on the Decretum Grati-
ani: its making, its authorship and its date of composition. SQO is a School work, a compendium of teachings
assembled by an anonymous author in the mid-fifties of the twelfth century.

I.
Johannes Friedrich von Schulte did not try to make a critical edition of the Summa Quo-
niam in omnibus (SQO) traditionally attributed to Paucapalea. He did not observe his
own criteria of collating the written witnesses of this commentary on Gratian‘s Decretum
(DG) either.1 After reading the 1890 printed edition, a modern scholar would probably
draw two conclusions: a new edition of the Summa is necessary and common explana-
tions about Paucapalea‘s (P) book deserve a revision.2 Today, I want to share with you
a hypothesis on the writing of this early product of the Bolognese decretists: Quoniam
in omnibus is a School work, a compendium assembled by an anonymous author in the
mid-fifties of the twelfth century. The summa is a mosaic of teachings from the making
of Gratian‘s Decretum to the early circulation of its final version.3

* The Author thanks the Staff of the Biblioteca de la Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas and the Biblioteca General
of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria University, as well as the Fundación Derecho y Europa (A Coruña, Spain).
1 J. F. von Schulte (Ed.), Die Summa des Paucapalea über das Decretum Gratiani, Giessen 1890 (reprint Aalen
1965): manuscripts, iv – vii; criteria, especially nn. 2, 4 – 6 and 8, xx – xxi. Schulte did not observe his
criteria 7 and 9: his footnotes do not identify all the formal sources (7), nor do they reflect all the variants
from the main manuscript (9).
2 The common opinion can be summarized as follows: SQO, the first Summa on DG, was written by P
at the end of the forties or the begining of the fifties of the twelfth century, and was used by Rufinus,
master Roland, Etienne de Tournai, the anonymous author of the Summa Parisiensis and others: cf. F.
Maassen, Paucapalea. Ein Beitrag zur Literaturgeschichte des canonischen Rechts im Mittelalter, Wien 1859
(SBWAW Phil.- Hist.- Classe 31), 450 – 516; F. Thaner (Ed.), Papst Alexander III. Summa Magistri Rolandi,
Innsbruck 1874 (reprint Aalen 1973), xviii; J.F. von Schulte, Die Geschichte der Quellen und Literatur
des Canonischen Rechts von Gratian bis auf die Gegenwart. Erster Band. Einleitung. Die Geschichte der
Quellen und Literatur von Gratian bis auf Papst Gregor IX, Stuttgart 1875 (reprint New Jersey 2000),
108 – 114; J.F. von Schulte, Die Summa (n. 1), xiv; J.F. von Schulte (Ed.), Stephan von Doornick (Étienne
de Tournai, Stephanus Tornacensis), Die Summa über das Decretum Gratiani Giessen 1891 (reprint Aalen
1963), x – xi; H. Singer (Ed.), Die Summa Decretorum des Magister Rufinus, Paderborn 1902, cxii; S.
Kuttner, Repertorium der Kanonistik (1140 – 1234). Prodromus Corporis Glossarum, Città del Vaticano
1937 (Studi e testi 71), 125 – 127; T.P. McLaughlin (Ed.), The Summa Parisiensis on the Decretum Gratiani,
Toronto 1952, xxvi; K. Pennington / W.P. Müller, The Decretists. The Italian School, in: W. Hartmann / K.
Pennington (Eds.), The History of Medieval Canon Law in the Classical Period, 1140 – 1234. From Gratian
to the Decretals of Pope Gregory IX, Washington, D.C. 2008, 121 – 173, esp. 128 – 131; and J.M. Viejo-
Ximénez, Paucapalea, in: J. Otaduy / A. Viana / J. Sedano (Eds.), Diccionario General de Derecho Canónico
VI, Pamplona 2012, 42 – 45.
3 Cf. J.M. Viejo-Ximénez, La ‘Summa Quoniam in omnibus’ de Paucapalea: una contribución a la historia
del Derecho romano-canónico en la Edad Media, in: Initium 16, 2011, 27 – 74 (= Folia Canonica et Theo-
logica 1, 2013, 151 – 196); J.M. Viejo-Ximénez, Una composición sobre el Decreto de Graciano: la summa
Quoniam in omnibus rebus animaduertitur atribuida a Paucapalea, in: Helmantica 190, 2012, 419 – 473
(= M.A. Pena González [coord.], De la primera a la segunda ‘Escuela de Salamanca’, Salamanca 2012, 197
– 251). Here the word ‘mosaic’ is used in the same way as in L. Loschiavo, Summa Codicis Berolinensis,
 Alcune note sulla Abbreviatio Dunelmensis
della Summa Simonis Bisinianensis
Pier V. Aimone
The article is a brief analysis of a text known as the Summa of Simon of Bisignano. It deals with a very particular
abbreviation of the text of Simon’s Summa (the abbreviation is kept in a manuscript of the Library of Durham,
in northern England), in which, in addition to different passages being taken directly from the Summa Simonis,
there are interposed annotations and excerpts that are not directly connected to the Summa. These have been
transcribed and duly presented.
I. Introduzione
Gli studi che accompagnano una edizione critica offrono talora la possibilità di presen-
tare testi utilizzati nel lavoro preparatorio che non rientreranno in seguito nell’edizione
del testo principale.
Si tratta nel caso specifico dell’edizione della Summa in Decretum di Simon da Bi-
signano, pubblicata nel 2014 dalla Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana nella serie A Corpus
Glossatorum dei Monumenta Iuris Canonici, (vol. 8) ed il testo utilizzato è l’Abbreviatio1
della Summa stessa, contenuta nel manoscritto conservato in una biblioteca della città
di Durham, nel Nord-Est dell’Inghilterra, quasi ai confini con la Scozia. In Durham
esistono due biblioteche, quella della Cattedrale, ben nota agli studiosi di storia di diritto
canonico medievale, e quella dell’Università. Il manoscritto contenente l’Abbreviatio è
conservato proprio in questa seconda biblioteca, in quanto al momento della fondazione
della locale Università nella prima metà del secolo XIX, alla stessa fu attribuita la biblio-
teca privata di John Cosin, vescovo di Durham nel xvii secolo.

II. Il manoscritto Univ. Cosin. V. III. 3

Si tratta di un codice manoscritto dalle dimensioni di mm. 230 x 160, contenente 93
fogli in pergamena, per lo più assai ben conservati. Il manoscritto va diviso in due sezioni,
la prima (foll. 1 – 29) risale al XIV secolo, la seconda (foll. 30 – 93) va riferita, a nostro
parere, alla prima metà del sec. XIII piuttosto che al XII secolo, come invece indica una
descrizione provvisoria dattilografata del manoscritto, disponibile presso la biblioteca
dell’Università di Durham.
Giustamente ivi si ritiene che in origine le due sezioni fossero inserite in ordine in-
verso e solo nel corso della rilegatura effettuata nel XVI/XVII secolo (restaurata nel XIX
secolo) si sia proceduto all’inversione delle sezioni. La provenienza del manoscritto non
è nota; esso fu acquistato per la biblioteca privata (cfr. fol. 3r margine superiore destro:
Liber Bibliotheca Episcopalis Dunelm.) di John Cosin, vescovo di Durham dal 1660 al
1672, dal suo cappellano Geo. Davenport nel 1663. Al fol. 27 si trova una annotazione
di Thomas Swalwell monaco di Durham nel 1500.

1 Rinvenuta da P. Legendre, Miscellanea Britannica, in: Traditio15, 1959, 491 – 497, 494.
 The Summa Queritur cuius sint hec uerba
Bruce C. Brasington1
Largely unstudied by modern scholars, the Summa Queritur cuius sint hec uerba, preserved in a single manuscript
of the Leipzig university library, offers an interesting commentary on Gratian’s Decretum from around 1200.
From the question of whether slavery is natural to the legal status of the pope-elect, the Summa not only consi-
ders earlier decretist commentaries, for example by Rufinus and Huguccio, but also offers unique perspectives.
While a brief text, and possibly fragmentary, this summa adds to our knowledge of decretist commentary prior
to the composition of the glossa ordinaria on the Decretum

The Summa Queritur cuius sint hec verba preserved in a single Leipzig manuscript, pro-
vides a brief, but rich, commentary on Gratian’s Decretum.2 Since its listing in the ‘Re-
pertorium der Kanonistik’,3 apparently only from a catalogue description, it has recei-
ved little attention. In 1956, Professor Fransen announced his intention to publish a
transcription. As far as I know, it has never appeared.4 A decade later, Professor Weigand
cited it twice in his ‘Naturrechtslehre’, noting its discussion of prescription in light of
natural law.5 There is much more to be said about this Summa, which comments on
subjects as diverse as slavery to the legal status of the pope-elect.
Written largely by one hand, the summa’s origins are unknown.6 The script suggests
a dating to around 1200. It appears to be fragmentary.7 Its echo of Gratian’s opening
dictum suggested to Professor Kuttner that it might be connected to another summa,
for example the commentary of Simon of Bisignano or Dubitatur a quibusdam.8 It may
also echo Huguccio.9 The Summa refers to other Bolognese decretists such as Rufinus,
Rolandus, and Iohannes Faventinus. There is also a reference to a Master ‘P,’ whom I have

1 I thank Dr. Mackert of the Sondersammlung of the Universitätsbibliothek for the opportuntity to examine
this manuscript and others in 2010, 2011, and 2013.
2 Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, 247, fol. 11 – 12v. A brief description is available at: http://www.uni-leipzig.
de/~jurarom/manuscr/Can&RomL/shelfmrk/12037.HTM (last visit: 2012 June 19).
3 Stephan Kuttner, Repertorium der Kanonistik. 1140 – 1234. Prodromus Corpus Glossatorum I, Vatican
City 1936 (rp. Rome 1972) (Studi e testi 71), 154.
4 Stephan Kuttner, Work in Progress, in: Traditio 12, 1956, 558 – 559, at 559.
5 Rudolf Weigand, Die Naturrechtslehre der Legisten und Dekretisten von Irnerius bis Accursius und von
Gratian bis Johannes Teutonicus, Munich 1967, 360, 441, also Jacoba J. H. M. Hanenburg, Decretals and
decretal collections in the second half of the Twelfth Century, in: TRG 34, 1966, 552 – 599.
6 A second, contemporary hand, adds this conclusion: Cum enim leges institute fuerint non est enim litem iudi-
cari de eis set secundum eas iudicari oportet peccatis exigentibus homo homini donantur diuina uero institutione
homo piscibus maris et uolantibus celi § omnis sapientia eorum deuorata est.
7 Kuttner, Repertorium (n. 3), 154, questioned the catalogue’s dating to s. xiii – xiv.
8 Kenneth Pennington, Medieval and Early Modern Jurists: A Bio-Bibliographical Listing Collections and
Jurists: 1140 – 1298, online http://faculty.cua.edu/pennington/1140a-z.htm (last visit: 2012 May 31):
Summa Dubitatur a quibusdam (Arras, BM 271, fol. 162 – 77v), ends at De Cons. D. 4 c. 150. This Bolog-
nese commentary on the Decretum depends heavily on the Summa of Simon of Bisignano (1177 – 1179).
See also Stephan Kuttner / Eleanor Rathbone, Anglo-Norman Canonists of the Twelfth Century, in: Traditio
7, 1949 / 51, 314 n. 66, 343 (also in: Stephan Kuttner, Gratian and the Schools, London, 1983, Nr. VIII)
and Weigand, Naturrechtslehre (n. 5), 174, 286.
9 Huguccio, Summa ad Decr. Grat., D. 1 d. a. c. 1 ad hinc: Set queritur, cuius sint uerba ista (Huguccio Pisa-
nus, Summa Decretorum, vol. 1: Distinctiones I – XX, ed. Oldřich Přerovský, Vatican City 2006 (MIC A /
6,1), 18.4).
 Processus iudiciarius secundum stilum Pragensem
of Nicolaus Puchnik: Analysis of the Preserved Manuscripts
Dominik Budský1
The author of this study deals with the canon procedural law in Prague at the turn of the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Century. There exists a treatise called Processus iudiciarius secundum stilum Pragensem written by the
general vicar of Prague, Nicolaus Puchnik, in the second half of the ninth decade of the Fourteenth Century. The
main purpose of this study is to make a filiation diagram and paleographical, codicological and content analysis
of all the preserved manuscripts (13 copies) of this Processus. Close attention is paid to the differences between
personal and local names in the manuscripts which contributes to the analysis of their origin and filiation. All
these names and dates are emphasized because the author considers them to be very important for determining
provenance. Two filiation diagrams are presented. The article contains a chart with chronological order of all the
manuscripts.
The treatise of Nicolaus Puchnik Processus iudiciarius secundum stilum Pragensem, togeth-
er with the treatises Antequam dicatur and John Urbach’s ‘Process’2 were frequently used
as procedural handbooks in Middle Europe in the late Fourteenth and Fiftenth Century.
This fact could be supported with the considerable extent of the preserved manuscripts,
with regard to deperdits, whose extent we can hardly specify. Miroslav Boháček3 knew
just four manuscripts of this work (Leipzig 922, Kaliningrad LXXXIX, Wroclaw BU II O
1 and Gdansk Mar F 30–full citations below) in his time. His knowledge was taken over
by Theodor Muther4 and he himself is the discoverer of the manuscript Olomouc 309.
Pavel Spunar5 had knowledge of twelve manuscripts, but most of them he did not study
personally (in some cases he used incorrect foliation). However, what did not survive is
the autograph of the work that is placed by Boháček6 to the period starting at the end of
February 1386 and ending in mid-October 1389.
Thanks to the modern advancements of literature search, especially the database
Manuscripta Mediaevalia,7 it was possible to enlarge the list of the preserved manuscripts
to fourteen, which are deposited in eleven different European libraries. It is obvious
that it was very exhausting and time consuming to acquire all copies of Puchnik’s trea-
tise (all these following manuscripts) and to acquire reports on the unavailability of the

1 This paper is a part of PhD thesis, which is written by the author under the supervision prof. PhDr. Zdeňka
Hledíková, CSc. at the Catholic Theological Faculty of Charles University in Prague. The research was sup-
ported by the grant nr. 285 111 GAUK.
2 Theodor Muther / Ernst Landsberg, Johannes Urbach, Breslau 1882.
3 Miroslav Boháček, Processus iudiciarius secundum stilum Pragensem, in: Akademiku Václavu Vojtíškovi k
75. narozeninám pracovníci Archivu ČSAV, Práce z archivu ČSAV [The Workers of Archives of Czechos-
lovak Academy of Sciences to Academic Václav Vojtíšek for his 75th Birthday, The Work from the Archives
of Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences], Prague 1958, 5 – 35.
4 Theodor Muther, Zur Geschichte des römisch-canonischen Prozesses in Deutschland, Rostock 1872, 32 –
33.
5 Pavel Spunar, Repertorium auctorum Bohemorum provectum idearum post Universitatem Pragensem con-
ditam illustrans, Warsaw 1985, 158.
6 Boháček, Processus iudiciarius (n. 3), 16.
7 www.manuscripta–mediaevalia.de [online database], Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin / Bayerische Staatsbibliothek
München.
 Le Libellus super electionibus de Guillaume de Mandagout
(1286/1287). Histoire d’un succès dans l’Occident médiéval
Fabrice Delivré*
Written in the years 1286 / 1287, during the pontificate of Honorius IV (1285 – 1287), the Libellus super electio-
nibus faciendis et earum processibus ordinandis by William of Mandagout († 1321), then papal chaplain and arch­
deacon of the cathedral church of Nîmes, is by far the most successful among the medieval treatises devoted to
election within the Church and, in particular, election of bishops. The study of the manuscript tradition enables
us to discover the forms in which the Libellus was widely disseminated (as a single roll or the many codices, libelli
or associated items, luxury or poor copies, etc.), the authoritative texts (iura) invoked by the author to instruct
those who are unlearned in the law and in electoral practice such as the constitutions Quia propter (1215) and
Cupientes (1279), and the doctores, such as Innocent IV, Hostiensis and Bernardus Compostellanus the Younger
who commented on the title de electione of the Liber Extra (1234). Such a study also reveals the general arrange-
ment of the work, which clearly distinguishes between textus and glosa, deals with the matter in an extensive way
(part I, chapters 1 – 58) and offers an important set of formulae ready for use, regarding electoral process (part II,
chapter 59, formae 1 – 18) and appeal to the apostolic see (part III, chapter 60, formae 1 – 7).

Œuvre de Guillaume de Mandagout († 1321),1 le Libellus super electionibus est le plus

illustre représentant d’un filon de la littérature canonique, exploité à partir de la fin des
années 1170, qui traite de l’élection dans l’Église et, en premier lieu, de l’élection des
évêques.2 Relevant d’un genre qui s’est développé à l’ombre des collections de décrétales
et qui participe de la confection de manuels – comme il en existe, depuis les dernières
décennies du XIIe siècle, sur le mariage, la pénitence ou la confession –, le Libellus a été
écrit avant 1294 puisque son destinataire Bérenger Frédol (†  1323), maître de Guil-

* Le présent article s’inscrit dans une étude générale des summae / summulae de electione (fin XIIe – milieu XIVe
siècle), à la croisée des approches documentaires, intellectuelles et sociologiques.
1 Sur G. de Mandagout: QL II, 183 – 185,  §  47, n°  54;  P. Viollet, Guillaume de Mandagout, canoniste,
in: HLF 34, Paris 1914 – 1915, 1 – 61; T. Boespflug, La Curie au temps de Boniface VIII. Étude prosopo-
graphique, Rome 2005, 182 – 183, n° 365. Pour les trajectoires parallèles de Mandagout et de Bérenger
Frédol, replacées au sein du haut clergé provençal et de la construction politique angevine, T. Pécout, Ultima
ratio. Vers un État de raison. L’épiscopat, les chanoines et le pouvoir des années 1230 au début du XIVe siècle
(provinces ecclésiastiques d’Arles, Aix et Embrun), Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches de l’Université
de Paris 1, Paris 2011 (dactyl.), 417 – 426. Pour le dernier examen du Libellus au rythme de la procédure
électorale, sur la base de Paris, BN, lat. 15415 (fol. 209va – 229ra) et de l’édition de Cologne (1574), P.
Viollet, Les élections ecclésiastiques au Moyen Âge d’après Guillaume de Mandagout, in: Revue catholique
des Églises 4, 1907, 65 – 91 (66 – 91) dont la substance est reprise dans Viollet, Guillaume de Mandagout
(n. 1), 27 – 51.
2 Si l’on connaît le Liber de electionibus episcoporum (835) de Florus de Lyon – A. Thier, Hierarchie und
Autonomie. Regelungstraditionen der Bischofsbestellung in der Geschichte des kirchlichen Wahlrechts bis
1140, Francfort 2011 (Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte 257 / Recht im ersten Jahrtausend 1), 367
– 370 –, la solution de continuité entre l’époque carolingienne et l’âge classique est indiscutable: R. Benson,
The Bishop-Elect. A Study in Medieval Ecclesiastical Office, Princeton 1968, 99 (et n. 22), 114 – 115 (n.
18 – 19), 196 (n. 18); R. Benson, Elections by Community and Chapter. Reflections on Co-Responsability
in the Historical Church, in: The Jurist 31, 1971, 54 – 80 (67 – 68, 75, 79 et n. 61); B. Schimmelpfennig,
Papst- und Bischofswahlen seit dem 12. Jahrhundert, in: R. Schneider / H. Zimmermann (éd.), Wahlen und
Wählen im Mittelalter, Sigmaringen 1990, 174 – 195 (également in: B. Schimmelpfennig / G. Kreuzer (éd.),
Papsttum und Heilige. Kirchenrecht und Zeremoniell. Ausgewählte Aufsätze, Neuried 2005, 231 – 256
(249 – 256)); J. Peltzer, Canon Law, Careers and Conquest. Episcopal Elections in Normandy and Greater
Anjou, c. 1140-c. 1230, Cambridge 2008, 8 – 9, 40, 49.
 Les origines doctrinales du Liber Sextus de Boniface VIII.
Une première ébauche
Michèle Bégou-Davia
This paper deals with the making of the Liber Sextus. Since it has been previously shown that only a part of the
decretals included in the Liber Sextus come from the predecessors of Boniface VIII or from the early years of the
pontificate, it seems that the others are new, and had been written especially for the compilation; therefore it
is likely that the members of the commission appointed by pope Boniface VIII had used all sorts of materials,
and especially the works of the great commentators of the Liber Extra. This is precisely the purpose of this paper
which is just a first step in a larger research: only a few of these decretals which could be ‘new’ have been consi-
dered, and the result must be confirmed. Nevertheless, a doctrinal influence cannot be denied: sometimes it is
obvious, when the words or formulas used by one canonist have been nearly reproduced, sometimes it is more
subtle, for instance when the compilators have taken exactly the opposite view to that espoused by a canonist.
Cet intitulé ne doit pas faire illusion, le propos sera beaucoup plus modeste, et se bor-
nera à présenter quelques éléments d’une recherche menée depuis longtemps; il s’agit
d’un travail de longue haleine sur la « fabrication » du Sexte, et donc sur les sources et
les origines de cette petite compilation, comprenant 359 chapitres, publiée le 3 mars
1298.1 Dans un premier temps, nous avons étudié l’utilisation faite par les compilateurs
des extravagantes des papes antérieurs à Boniface VIII émises depuis la publication du
Liber Extra (septembre 1234),2 et dans un second temps nous avons suivi le sort des
décrétales de Boniface VIII émanées des premières années du pontificat non seulement
pour savoir si elles avaient été ou non reprises dans le Liber Sextus, mais surtout pour ten-
ter d’appréhender les raisons de leurs éventuelles modifications ou de leur élimination.3
Nous voudrions évoquer ici l’influence de la doctrine canonique sur la composition des
décrétales bonifaciennes figurant au Sexte, en nous limitant à quelques exemples puisque
nous ne sommes pas encore en mesure de tirer des conclusions générales. Mais pour com-
prendre la perspective dans laquelle cette recherche se situe, il nous faut rappeler un point
essentiel, que nous avons explicité antérieurement: le Sexte n’est pas une compilation
du même genre que les Décrétales de Grégoire IX, non pas tant parce que les rédacteurs
(Bérenger Frédol, Guillaume de Mandagout et Richard Petroni de Sienne) ont rendu
méconnaissables les textes qu’ils compilaient, comme cela a souvent été dit,4 mais parce
qu’un certain nombre de capitula bonifaciens ne reposent pas en réalité, directement ou
indirectement, sur des matériaux normatifs préexistants. Nous voulons dire par là qu’au
lieu d’utiliser des extravagantes des pontifes précédents en les reprenant telles quelles ou

1 359 capitula, sans compter toutefois les 88 Regule juris, qui formaient un appendice; parmi les ouvrages clas-
siques d’histoire des sources du droit canonique évoquant le Sexte, voir par exemple A. M. Stickler, Historia
juris canonici latini, tom. I: Historia fontium, Turin 1950, 257 – 264; A. Van Hove, Prolegomena, Mâlines
/ Rome 1945, 363 – 365; G. Le Bras / C. Lefebvre / J. Rambaud, L’âge classique (1140 – 1378). Sources et
théorie du droit, Paris 1965 (Histoire du Droit et des Institutions de l’Eglise en occident VII), 247 – 251.
2 M. Bégou-Davia, Le Liber Sextus de Boniface VIII et les extravagantes des papes précédents, in: ZRG Kan.
Abt. 121, 2004, 77 – 191.
3 M. Bégou-Davia, La première législation bonifacienne, in: RHD 2009, 365 – 389.
4 Le Bras, Lefebvre, Rambaud, L’âge classique (n. 1), 249.
 On the Tracks of the Liber Septimus of Gregory XIII
Lorenzo Sinisi
In 1585, when Gregory XIII died, a new official collection of church laws, made by the pope, himself a jurist,
with the help of few cardinals and experts, was almost ready to be printed and promulgated. Gregory XIII’s
successor, pope Sixtus V, did not follow the example of John XXII in promulgating the collection made under
his predecessor, but ordered the resumption of work from the beginning and appointed a new committee. This
choice caused the loss of the definitive text of pope Gregory’s collection which, divided into five books in the
same order as the previous medieval collections and inappropriately titled Liber Septimus, collected the main
sources of the “jus novissimum” represented by the disciplinary canons of the Council of Trent and by the most
important constitutions promulgated by subsequent popes in order to implement the conciliar reform. On the
basis of some unpublished and until now unknown documents, this paper will offer a hypothesized reconstruc-
tion of the contents and peculiarities of this collection and attempt to clarify the reasons for the final failure to
realize the plan of a new official text of Canon Law between the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries.

I. Foreword
When Gregory XIII died in April 1585, after about thirteen very demanding years as
Pope and a brief period of illness, a new collection of church laws had for some time
been almost ready for publication. In drawing up this collection, the elderly jurist Pope,
aided by a few cardinals and expert canonists, had expended considerable energy almost
until his death. His successor, Pope Sixtus V, however, did not follow the example of
John XXII, who in 1317 promulgated, under the title of Clementinae constitutiones, a
slightly amended version of an official collection inherited from his predecessor.1 Instead,
the new Pope unexpectedly decided to resume the task from the beginning and duly
appointed a new committee. This decision probably compromised the real possibility of
having a new official compilation of Canon Law drawn up in the modern age, after the
memorable achievements of the late medieval period. Moreover, it also paved the way for
the subsequent loss of the traces of the Gregorian text until today. Subdivided into five
books in accordance with the model of the previous medieval collections of papal law
and entitled Liber Septimus, the Gregorian text was to have completed the newly revised
Corpus iuris canonici by gathering the most significant innovations produced in Canon
Law in the previous two centuries, innovations that were constituted chiefly by the Tri-
dentine decrees.
Until a few years ago, the only available sources of information on this text were
constituted exclusively by a few sporadic and meager references to the ‘antiqua com-
pilatio Gregorii XIII’ present in the long-known Vatican manuscripts dealing with the
Sistine and Clementine phases of the work. Consequently, the historiography of the early
Gregorian phase saw very few, fleeting notices. Indeed, as recently as 2002, Elisabeth

1 On the complex issue of John XXII’s publication of the revised text of the compilation inherited from his
predecessor, cf. S. Kuttner, The date of the Constitution “Saepe”, the Vatican manuscripts and the Roman
edition of the Clementines, in: Mélanges Eugène Tisserant IV, Città del Vaticano 1964, 427 – 452; it is
perhaps not inappropriate to add that this compilation (far more justifiably than the one dealt with in this
study) was originally to have been entitled Liber Septimus (in this regard, cf. A. M. Stickler, Historia juris
canonici latini, I, Historia fontium, Augustae Taurinorum 1950 [repr. Romae 1985], 265 – 266).
 Taking Inventory of Juridical Manuscripts.
Survey of Tasks Achieved, and Tasks to Do
Gero R. Dolezalek
Medievalists’ work would often be greatly enhanced if there existed a computerized general index to extant copies
of juridical literature from the Middle Ages. In 1972 the Max-Planck-Institute of European Legal History made
a first big step in this direction: it published a computerized index to 6764 manuscripts with texts on Roman
law. Following this model, Stephan Kuttner organised parallel initiatives for manuscripts of canon law and for a
general bibliography of publications on medieval juridical literature. These activities brought some progress but
eventually came to a standstill. In the last fifteen years, however, various internet sites have taken up the idea, and
they will be surveyed in this paper. Furthermore, the paper will deal with general data bases of manuscripts set
up by librarians either for one individual library or for a group of libraries. All such data bases are of course very
useful. Nevertheless we cannot dispense with specific legal-historical tools of the kind because librarians usually
lack specific training to identify juridical texts as closely as legal historians would, and their various data bases
vary in standardising titles of items and legal author’s names.

Scholars interested in medieval manuscripts need multifunctional ‘finding aids’. This is

obvious if one considers the rationale given below. The demands of legal historians in this
regard overlap for the most part with those of manuscript-oriented historians of other
fields. For this reason the existing general catalogues of manuscripts and their computer-
ized ‘finding aids’ are of course also very useful for legal historians. It must be observed
that palaeographers and codicologists who supply the data for catalogues have for the
most part not undergone specific legal historical training. The focus of their knowledge
lies on liturgy and theology because a very high percentage of medieval texts belong to
these fields. Therefore they usually do not take notice of peculiarities which concern le-
gal historians in particular. Moreover they often do not identify items as closely as legal
historians would and do not apply the respective standardisations for titles of items. The
essence of the above observation is that – notwithstanding the usefulness of the general
computerized ‘finding aids’ – we also need specific legal historical ones. In the follow-
ing pages I shall comment on various internet sites offering computerized ‘finding aids’
for legal historians. I shall present in the first place the data base ‘Manuscripta Juridica’
of the Max-Planck-Institute of European Legal History because it was purposefully put
together on occasion of this Congress and published just in time for this Congress.

I. Eight Demands of Manuscript-Oriented Scholars Which Should Be Met

(1) Someone interested in a particular text will usually not be content to look up just any
manuscript which happens to be in reach, or of which a microfilm or a digitised photo-
graph is available – because random text retrieval of such kind is often not sufficient for
research purposes. Scholars rather like to have a list (as complete as possible) of all extant
copies of the text in question which are so far known, together with a precise indication
of such copies’ present location, and of their age and other characteristics which might be
relevant for the research undertaken.
(2) Statistics of extant copies, together with their age and a geographical mapping
of their locations, may enable scholars to make an approximate rating of the esteem in
 Contextualizing the Council of Tours (567)
Gregory I. Halfond
The Council of Tours (567) assembled amidst a worsening conflict between the Merovingian king Charibert I
(r. 561 – 657) and the bishops of the regnum of Paris. Shortly before the council’s convocation, the king married
his mistress and sister-in-law, Marcovefa, in an uncanonical and polygamous union condemned by the leading
prelates of his kingdom. The Council of Tours, convoked with Charibert’s permission, was intended to reconcile
the monarch and the episcopate, although ultimately the king rejected its sincere efforts at correctio, leading
eventually to his excommunication. The Council’s acta reflect the context of its assembly in both their content
and style, aiming at persuasion rather than further antagonism. The several unusually lengthy canons contained
in the acts, which quote liberally from both secular and canonical legal sources, are elaborate exercises reflecting
their controversial nature. Ultimately, however, the context-specific nature of a number of these canons, even
more so than their length, limited their relevancy for future canon lawyers.

In late 567, nine bishops of the regnum of Paris gathered in the Basilica of Saint Martin
in Tours, ostensibly to discuss their plans for more effective episcopal oversight of ec-
clesiastical discipline, as well as their desire to restore patristic legal standards no longer
being enforced.1 The prelates explicitly acknowledged in their published acts, dated to
November 18, that they had gathered with the permission (coniventia) of King Charibert
I, who would be dead by the end of the year.2 Similar to his brothers Sigibert, Guntram,
and Chilperic, Charibert had long courted the support of influential bishops within
his kingdom through grants of political and fiscal patronage, while demonstrating little
patience with those prelates who rejected his generous overtures.3 For the bulk of his
reign, the king managed to maintain sociable, if not warm, relations with most of the

1 Tours (567), Praefatio: Ecclesiasticae disciplinae debet esse suffragium congregatio sacerdotum nec aliud suae
sollicitudinis tam peculiare conscribere, quam id, quod a fundamentum religionis pro culmine per Dominum
recognoverit, operari non cesset, ut, cum pastoralis cautela propagatur in ovilis custodia, paucorum veneranda
decreta sint salutis publicae documenta. Et quoniam, quod omitti non decet, oportet implere, praesertim cum ad
salutem animarum intellectualium, de quibus Deo cura est, in cuius traditione ad pontifices lex manavit, forma
processit: necesse est vigilantissime providere repulso torpore, ut, quidquid ab antiquis patribus statutum de tra-
mite canonico quarundam personarum temeritate cernitur imminutum, revocandum in statum pristinum possint
admissa corrigi et non admittenda damnari. Magna est enim in ipsa severitate pietas, per quam tollitur peccandi
facultas; nam ubi insana libertas generat vulnera, sacerdotalis districtio dat medelam. Quapropter Christo auspice
in Turonica ciuitate consilio concordante iuxta coniuentiam gloriosissimi domni Chariberthi regis adnventis co-
adunati pro pace et instructione ecclesiae opportunum credidimus subter annexa decreta conficere et subscrip-
tionibus propriis roborare, ut retundantur noxia, propagentur optata, ne taciturnitate silentii viciosorum crimi-
num nutriti videretur licentia, non abscidi, et, quae opportuna erant pro qualitate temporis adici, non paterentur
neglegi, sed procurarentur impleri. The council’s acts are cited from the edition of Concilia Galliae A. 511 –
A. 695, ed. Charles de Clercq, Turnhout 1963 (CCL 148A).
2 On the dating of Charibert’s death, see Bruno Krusch, Computationes et adnotationes regnum Francorum
vetustae cum commentariis, Hanover 1920 (MGH SRM 7), 485 – 512, at 488; Eugen Ewig, Die Namenge-
bung bei den ältesten Frankenkönigen und im merowingischen Königshaus in: Hartmut Atsma / Matthias
Becher / Theo Kölzer / Ulrich Nonn (Eds.) Spätantikes und fränkisches Gallien, Munich 1976 – 2009, 3.163
– 211, at 3.198 – 199.
3 Gregory Halfond, Sis Quoque Catholics Religionis Apex: The Ecclesiastical Patronage of Chilperic I and
Fredegund, in: Church History 81, no. 1, 2012, 48 – 76; Gregory Halfond, Charibert I and the Episcopal
Leadership of the Kingdom of Paris (561-567), in: Viator 43, no. 2, 2012, 1 – 28; Gregory Halfond, All the
King’s Men: Episcopal Political Loyalties in the Merovingian Kingdoms, in: Medieval Prosopography 27,
2012, 76 – 96.
 Zur Entstehungszeit der Kanones der angeblichen Konzilien
von Nantes und von Rouen
Wilfried Hartmann
In the recent literature on councils in the early Middle Ages one can find the assertion that the councils of Nantes
and Rouen, whose canons were first included in the Collection of Regino of Prüm (ca. a. 906), took place in
the seventh century. As the synods of Nantes and Rouen are now edited in the new volume 5 of Concilia of the
Monumenta Germaniae Historica (pp. 580 – 594), the editor tries to demonstrate that these interesting canons
cannot have been written in the seventh century, because their content fits better into the second half of the ninth
century. But one cannot be certain that the councils in Nantes and Rouen could have taken place in the late ninth
century. Regino might have taken the texts from diverse sources which are otherwise unknown, or perhaps he
invented new texts and gave some of the chapters false inscriptions.

I. Einleitung
In den Konzilienausgaben des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts tauchen seit Surius (1567) Ka-
nones einer frühmittelalterlichen Synode von Nantes auf, die er ins ausgehende 9. Jahr-
hundert setzte, und seit Hardouin (1714) werden Beschlüsse einer Synode von Rouen
gedruckt; sie erscheinen in den Konzilienausgaben als Texte aus der Mitte des 7. Jahrhun-
derts.1 Am Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts (1901 bzw. 1910) hat Emil Seckel nachgewiesen,
dass die Kanonesreihen, wie sie in den Konzilienausgaben erscheinen, nichts anderes sind
als eine Zusammenstellung von Kapiteln, die in den Kanonessammlungen Reginos von
Prüm (Nantes) bzw. Burchards von Worms (Rouen) als Beschlüsse dieser Synoden in-
skribiert sind.2 Eigenständige Überlieferungen der Kanones dieser Synoden gibt es nicht;
jedoch wird in einer heute in Salzburg liegenden kanonistischen Sammelhandschrift (St.
Peter a. IX. 32) je ein Kapitel ebenfalls einer Synode von Nantes und von Rouen zu-
geschrieben; diese beiden Kapitel finden sich weder bei Regino noch bei Burchard; sie
fehlen daher in den Konziliensammlungen.3
Nach Seckel hat sich vor allem die französische Forschung mit den Synoden von
Nantes und von Rouen befasst: 1975 hat Jean Gaudemet über das „Pseudo-Concile des
Nantes“ geschrieben und behauptet, dass Regino Texte aus Bischofskapitularien als Sy-
nodalkanones inskribiert und sich daher als Fälscher betätigt habe.4 1989 hat Odette
Pontal in der französischen Ausgabe ihres Werks über die Synoden des merowingischen
Frankenreichs mit inhaltlichen Argumenten versucht, die beiden Synoden dem 7. Jahr-
hundert zuzuweisen.5 Vor kurzem (2010) hat dann Gregory Halfond diese Einschätzung

1 In der bis heute zu benutzenden Konzilienausgabe von Giovanni Domenico Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum
nova et amplissima collectio sind die Kanones von Nantes in Band 18 A, Florenz 1773, auf Sp. 165 – 172 am
Ende des 9. Jh. eingeordnet; die Kanones von Rouen sind in Band 10, Florenz 1764, auf Sp. 1199 – 1203
zum Jahr 660 gedruckt.
2 Vgl. Emil Seckel, Studien zu Benedictus Levita. 1. Teil: Benedictus Levita und das Concil von Nantes, in:
NA 26, 1901, 39 – 62 und Emil Seckel, Die ältesten Canones von Rouen, in: Historische Aufsätze Karl
Zeumer zum sechzigsten Geburtstag dargebracht, Weimar 1910, 611 – 635.
3 Vgl. Georg Phillips, Der Codex Salisburgensis S. Petri IX 32. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der vorgratia-
nischen Rechtsquellen, Wien 1864, 65 – 67.
4 Jean Gaudemet, Le Pseudo-Concile de Nantes, in: RDC 25, 1975, 40 – 60.
5 Odette Pontal, Histoire des concilies mérovingiens, Paris 1989, 235 – 243.
 A Synod of Ravenna Confirming the Cadaver Synod (?)
William S. Monroe
According to Flodoard of Reims, Pope Stephen VI sent a letter to the archbishop, Fulk, urging him to come to
Rome for a council to be held in September of 896. Shortly afterward, Stephen authorized Fulk to stay in his
province of Reims, but asked him to send two of his suffragan bishops to a synod to be held in Ravenna. While
modern historians have questioned whether such a synod was ever held, I would like to suggest that we actually
have the acts of this synod, which have long been thought to be those of a later synod of Ravenna, overturning
Stephen’s Cadaver Synod. The manuscript sources for the 898 Synod of Ravenna are very confused, and exist in
two quite different versions which overlap in part. I would like to examine a portion that is transmitted in only
one version, and will propose that it is a record of an earlier council held by Pope Stephen VI to confirm the acts
of the Cadaver Synod of Rome, which condemned Pope Formosus.

I.
It is unfortunate that we do not have a direct witness for the Synod of Rome of 896 or
897, commonly known as the Cadaver Synod for its trial of the corpse of Pope Formo-
sus.1 This is because a later synod held in Ravenna in 898, under the leadership of Pope
John IX, overturned the acts of the Roman Synod, and ordered them to be burned. So
we must be content with the indirect witnesses that remain, the Synod of Ravenna being
among the most important. I have treated the sources for the Synod of Ravenna in earlier
papers, and they are a confusing lot.2 In one earlier paper3 I made a suggestion on which
I would now like to expand: that a portion of the acts of the Synod of Ravenna of 898
actually belongs to a slightly earlier synod held by Pope Stephen VI.

II.
I must begin with some explanation of the manuscript sources for the Synod of Ravenna
of 898. These come down to us in two versions, but to be entirely accurate, we should
say three versions, because we must include the best known version, that which appears
in the great collection of Mansi, which adds to what otherwise might be only a minor
confusion.4 But we must begin with the manuscripts. The manuscript record of the 898

1 On Pope Formosus, the most thorough and up-to-date resource is the biography by Jean Sansterre, Formoso,
papa, in: DBI 49, 1997, 55 – 61. For the Cadaver Synod, there is a thorough treatment, with reference to the
important sources in Harald Zimmermann, Papstabsetzungen des Mittelalters, Graz 1968, 47 – 76). Most
accounts are based upon much older research of a century ago, which is not very reliable, and none refers to
the manuscripts. Since this paper was delivered, there has also appeared a reasonable summary of the incident
by Marie-Luise Heckmann, Der Fall Formosus: Ungerechtfertigte Anklage gegen einen Toten, Leichenfrevel
oder inszenierte Entheiligung des Sakralen?, in: Stefan Weinfurter (ed.), Päpstliche Herrschaft im Mittelalter,
Ostfildern 2012, 223 – 238.
2 William S. Monroe, The Synod of Ravenna of 898 and the Rehabilitation of Pope Formosus (paper deliv-
ered at the 37th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, May 2002); and The Synod of
Ravenna of 898 as a Witness to the Cadaver Synod (paper presented at the 45th International Congress on
Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 2010). These and the present article form part of my doctoral
dissertation, The Trials of Pope Formosus, which I am writing at Columbia University.
3 Monroe, The Synod of Ravenna of 898 and the Rehabilition of Pope Formosus (n. 2).
4 Giovani Domenico Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova, et amplissima collectio (Florence and Venice, 1759-
1798) vol. 18A, 221 – 234. Since this paper was delivered at the Congress, we have been blessed with a
 Quelle hiérarchie d’après la législation conciliaire
du IV° au VIII° siècle, en Occident?
Brigitte Basdevant-Gaudemet1
During this long period, conciliar legislation shows a strenghtening of the hierarchy of the secular clergy. How-
ever, the search for provisions allowing us to identify specific attributes of the canonical status of the priest, the
deacon or the sub-deacon – whether it deals with the qualifications required for an appointment, disciplinary
rules or sometimes entrusted functions – is in vain. Even if the superiority of the bishop, ordinary of the diocese,
is constantly asserted, it is only a disciplinary power, a power of surveillance, injunction or sanction, which does
not make him a legislator or a supreme judge. The bishop remains dependent on the principle of collegiality in
the provincial council or the diocesan synod. Archdeacons and archpriests, auxiliaries of the bishop, effectively
serve the government of the local church, but sometimes blur the visibility of its hierarchical organisation.

Progressivement, l’Église s’est dotée d’une hiérarchie, établie selon des modalités diverses
en fonction des régions et circonstances, et selon aussi l’influence de l’organisation admi-
nistrative des provinces romaines.2 Parmi les clercs, dans chaque communauté, un person-
nage supérieur s’impose, l’évêque, qualifié dans l’Église primitive d’épiscope c’est-à-dire de
surveillant. Certaines situations sont bien établies dès le IV° siècle: toute circonscription
a, à sa tête, un évêque; l’épiscopat monarchique, dont parlait Ignace d’Antioche au début
du II° siècle pour la Syrie, et par la suite Cyprien pour l’Afrique s’est généralisé. Dans
l’Église primitive, l’évêque gouvernait avec son presbyterium, assemblée des clercs réunis
autour de lui. Dans ces premiers temps, le chef de la communauté envoyait un prêtre, ou
un diacre en un lieu, pour une célébration liturgique donnée, ou un acte pastoral ponc-
tuel, mais sans ‘établir’ le clerc en ce lieu. Les membres du presbyterium demeuraient dans
la ville où résidait l’évêque, chaque clerc ne s’éloignant que pour peu de temps.
Le développement de l’évangélisation et des lieux de culte conduit le chef du diocèse à
nommer des clercs non plus pour une célébration liturgique ou un acte pastoral ponctuel,
mais pour qu’ils restent en un lieu afin d’y assurer la vie religieuse de façon stable. Cette
pratique confère automatiquement plus d’autonomie à ces clercs qui deviennent respon-
sables d’un troupeau à eux confié, dans une circonscription aux dimensions réduites,
souvent dans le cadre d’une ancienne villa. L’essor de ces lieux de culte et d’un clergé qui
les dessert est net dès la reconnaissance du christianisme par Constantin (314), décision
qui facilite tout naturellement le développement de la vie religieuse locale. Certes, il
n’y a pas encore de paroisse au sens actuel du terme, mais les clercs ne vivent plus tous
dans l’entourage immédiat du responsable local. Cette distance géographique modifie les
1 Ce travail rejoint et complète l’article que nous avons rédigé pour les Mélanges en hommage à Chris
Coppens, cf. Brigitte Basdevant-Gaudemet, L’autorité épiscopale, évêques, prêtres, diacres dans la législation
conciliaire IV° – VII°s, in: L. Berkevens / J. Hallebeek / G. Martyn / P. Nève (éd), Rector ordine, proce-dit
magister: Liber amicorum E.C. Coppens, Brussel 2012 (Iuris Scripta Historica XXVIII), 37 – 54. La pre-
mière partie de l’article ici publié correspond à une problématique assez semblable que celle choisie pour la
précédente étude, tout en confortant les recherches par d’autres sources. La seconde partie analyse la place
de l’évêque dans l’ensemble des structures hiérarchiques, dans son diocèse ou au-delà, question que nous
n’abordions pas du tout dans l’étude en hommage à notre collègue C. Coppens.
2 Alexandre Faivre, Ordonner la fraternité; pouvoir d’innover et retour à l’ordre dans l’Église ancienne, Paris
1992.
 The Council of Basle, the Rise against King Erik of Pomerania
and the Last Provincial Statute of Norway
Eldbjørg Haug
The last provincial statute of the Nidaros church, dated 20 December 1436, is this paper’s point of departure. The
aim is to show that Archbishop Aslak Bolt’s tenure (1428 – 1450) was the period of greatest church freedom in
the Norwegian church. However, around 1430, the province was about to disintegrate due to papal centralisation
and illegal foreign trade in stockfish from Iceland and Northern Norway. The archbishop of Nidaros was favo-
urably disposed towards the Council of Basle and responded quickly to its decree to summon provincial coun-
cils. The actual statute reacted to the murder of the bishop of Skálholt, the illegal English trade with Northern
Norway and Iceland and issues of relevance to the Council of Basle. The provincial council should have finished
their deliberation in August 1436 in Bergen, but the Norwegian uprising against Erik of Pomerania interrupted
the meeting, which had to reconvened in Oslo and issued their statutes in midwinter. The decree concerning
episcopal elections by the Council of Basle and its authorisation of the metropolitan and the chapter of Nidaros
to elect and consecrate bishops to the insular bishoprics meant a reintegration of the province. The Norwegian
church never had greater freedom than during Archbishop Aslak Bolt’s tenure.

In 1955, Professor Lars Hamre presented the tenure of Archbishop Aslak Bolt of Nidaros
(1428 – 1450) as ‘the period of the great church freedom’ in his contribution to the his-
tory of the Norwegian archiepiscopal see. Around 1430 the church province was about
to disintegrate. This development was due in no small part to papal provisions of bishops.
But a tendency towards a regal church came to a halt during this period. Neither before
nor subsequently was the Norwegian church closer to implementing the ideas of Grego-
rianism, partly due to the Council of Basle (1431 – 1449). Conciliarism now became a
part of society, politically as well as ecclesiastically.1 Hamre’s portrait of the archbishop
and the state of the Norwegian church is not thoroughly reflected in the historiography;
an outdated view of Aslak Bolt as counting up small coins and the Norwegian church as
in a state of decline still holds sway.
The aim of this paper is to go further in revising the view of the Nidaros church
during the nearly concurrent Council of Basle and Aslak Bolt’s archiepiscopate. The point
of departure is the provincial statute, of 20 December 1436, issued by Aslak Bolt, his suf-
fragans from Bergen, Stavanger and Hamar, and eight authorised canons at a provincial
council in Oslo.2 This paper will address the political aspects of the statute in respect of
the relationship between the Nidaros church and the Council of Basle, and the uprising
against Erik of Pomerania, which finally resulted in his deposition as king of Sweden,
Denmark and Norway. The choice of this statute is not arbitrary; it is the last provincial
statute that has come down to us. It consists of 21 regulations on different matters and
thus provides an opportunity for a retrospective glance over several issues. Some rules
echo deliberations of the Council of Basle, like the reference to good, old custom when

1 Lars Hamre, Unionstiden 1450 – 1523, in: Arne Fjellbu (Ed.), Nidaros erkebispestol og bispesete 1153 –
1953, Oslo 1955, 458 – 467.
2 AM fasc. 15 no. 28 (The Norwegian National Archives), best edited in Norges gamle Love (NGL) 2nd Ser.,
vol. i, no. 307, 549 – 556.
 How Carolingians Learned Canon Law
Abigail Firey
Abstract: Much of our understanding – or rather, our lack of understanding – of the legal environment of the
Carolingian Empire has been shaped by presumptions that formal traditions of jurisprudence were absent or
unformed in the period before the eleventh century. While valuable work has been done on the role of orality
in early medieval legal processes, and on the complex synthesis of social norms and use of secular law in civil
disputes, the implications of that research for Carolingian recourse to canon law are still unclear. By taking a so-
mewhat more oblique approach to the questions of how written law was applied and interpreted in ecclesiastical
cases, or what sources of law were privileged, this paper seeks to investigate more fundamental questions, such
as where and how Carolingian readers would have had access to legal texts, who those readers might have been,
and how we can learn about the extent and nature of their reading. Using the glosses in a number of Carolingian
canon law manuscripts, references in documentary and narrative sources, codicological evidence for provenance
and transmission, and indications that some precepts were cited as regulae iuris, this paper attempts to probe the
larger issue of legal competence in the early middle ages, as well as to test methods for identifying specific sites
and methods of legal education, whether auto-didactic or institutionally supported.

I.
I cannot express adequately how honoured I am to be speaking to this assembly of schol-
ars, for whom I have inestimable respect. The work of those gathered here has always ed-
ified and challenged me to think harder, to look at more manuscripts, and to puzzle over
the historical continuities and discontinuities between Carolingian and Classical Canon
Law. It is a special pleasure to present my ideas in Toronto, where I had the privilege of
studying under the direction of a scholar who has contributed enormously to the field
of early medieval canon law, Professor Roger E. Reynolds (†). We may hope that one of
the benefits of the new world of digital resources will be even greater appreciation for his
work, as full-text searching will lead to the shelfmarks of many manuscripts, discussed in
articles with unassuming titles. I would also like to thank Professors Joseph Goering and
Giulio Silano, who offered the best combination of friendship and criticism, and who
both tried, against all odds, to get me to make sense. I would like to express my thanks as
well to Dr. Michael Elliott, whose enthusiasm and dedication have greatly advanced the
Carolingian Canon Law project.
My remarks today will have no references to ‘jurists’. I have tried in the past to use
the word in its simplest sense: ‘One who professes or treats of law; one versed in the sci-
ence of law; a legal writer’ [OED, 2]. My assertion that we should dignify with this title
the Carolingians who read, disseminated, and interpreted law has, however, made both
Carolingianists and scholars of canon law unhappy, for different reasons. The current
generation of Carolingianists, for the most part (there are exceptions!) would prefer not
to have lawyers soiling the Carolingian landscape. The legal scholars have asked whether
the people I called ‘jurists’ had any acquaintance with Roman law, and whether they
used citations, and so forth. One may suspect that for this audience, before the appear-
ance of Pepo of No Name in the eleventh century, only eight figures meet the criteria
to be called ‘jurists’: Gaius, Paul, Modestinus, Sabinus, Iulianus, Marcellus, Ulpian, and
Papinian. And perhaps the compilers of the Carolingian era would not only agree, but
 Lanfranc’s Readings on Canon Law
Nicolás Álvarez de las Asturias
In Lanfranc’s own manuscript of the Collection that held his name, there are some marks attributed to him and
done in different periods. By following these indications, we can see Lanfranc’s canonical interests in two diffe-
rent stages of his life: as a famous teacher at Bec and as reforming bishop at Canterbury. This paper will only deal
with Lanfranc’s annotations of Pope Leo’s decretals.

I.
Lanfranc’s contribution to the history of Canon law is much more modest than is his
place in the history of Theology, and less discussed. However, during his pontificate in
Canterbury he was relentless in using Canon law, both in his synods and in his relations
with bishops, particularly with York.1 Since Zachary Brooke published his monograph
on the Church in England after the Norman Conquest in 1931, it has also been clear that
in the application of Canon law Lanfranc played a fundamental role in the dissemination
of a canonical collection brought by him from Normandy and generally known as the
Collectio Lanfranci.2 The study of such a collection allows one to know in greater depth
Lanfranc’s relationship with that canon law which he did not hesitate to apply when he
was appointed Archbishop. In particular, and even if this cannot be proved fully until the
critical Edition is finished, the studies I have done so far lead me to the conviction that
the work of abbreviation of the decretals’ section of the Collection must be attributed to
Lanfranc itself.3
On the other hand, the study of marginal annotations of the Collectio’s Ur-
Manuskript (kept at the Cambridge Trinity College Library), mainly the small ‘a’ marks
already noticed by Brooke, is now easier thanks to Michael’s Gullick paleographical
study. Now three groups of ‘a’ marks can be clearly distinguished on the ground of paleo-
graphical evidence: a first group could be dated in the time when Lanfranc exercised his
magisterium in Bec; a second can be referred to his time as Archbishop of Canterbury,
and the third to some time certainly after Lanfranc’s death.4 The comparison between the
annotated texts of the first two groups allows us to perceive the evolution in Lanfranc’
canonical interests, first as magister and afterwards as Archbishop. It is a study which I

1 Cf. the two main recent biographies on Lanfranc: M. Gibson, Lanfranc of Bec, Oxford 1978 and H. E. J.
Cowdrey, Lanfranc: Scholar, Monk and Archbishop, Oxford 2003. On his place in the history of Theology
see as an example, G. D’Onofrio (ed.), Storia della Teologia Medioevale, Vol. I: I principi, Casale Monferrato
1996, 450 – 460.
2 Z. N. Brooke, The English Church and the Papacy from the Conquest to the Reign of John, Cambridge
1931.
3 Cf. especially, N. Álvarez de las Asturias, La Collectio Lanfranci: Origine e influenza di una collezione della
Chiesa Anglo-Normanna, Milano 2008.
4 M. Gullick, Lanfranc and the Oldest Manuscript of the Collectio Lanfranci, in: B. C. Brasington / K. G.
Cushing (Ed.), Bishops, Texts and the Use of Canon Law around 1100. Essays in Honour of Martin Brett,
Aldershot 2008, 79 – 89.
 Master Peter of Louveciennes and the Origins of the
Parisian School of Canon Law around 1170
Peter Landau
Rather than the Summa Parisiensis, we should probably consider the Summa Monacensis and the circle of wri-
tings related to this work as closest to the origins of canon law teaching in Paris. Prior to the publication of a
critical edition of the relatively short text – which was never completely edited until now – this paper explores
the relationship between the Summa Monacensis and other works; the problem of dating it; and the problem of
its author. The conclusion is that the Summa Monacensis was written between 1172 and 1175 by Master Peter of
Louveciennes (d. 1185), also known for his impressive Prologue to the Decretum Gratiani; in fact, this separate
Prologue is nothing but a longer version of the Summa Monacensis. Peter of Louveciennes’ text bears obvious
traces of Bolognese influence (for example concerning the newly developed ideas on advowson), but it also put
its own distinctive stamp on twelfth-century canonistic doctrines: the later French and Anglo-Norman canonists
followed the doctrines on conditional marriage elaborated by the Summa Monacensis and its ideas on ignorantia
iuris versus ignorantia facti were taken over by Huguccio. In short, Peter of Louveciennes fulfilled a pioneering
role in the development of canonistic science in the twelfth century and a critical edition of his Summa Mona-
censis will enable us to distinguish much better than in the past the contribution of different canonistic schools
in Europe to the doctrines of classical canon law.

Introduction
In 1937 Stephan Kuttner, at that time 30 years old, published his famous ‘Repertorium
der Kanonistik’1 and read one of his papers, entitled ‘Les débuts de l’école canoniste
française’ during the Journées d’Histoire du Droit in Paris. The paper was published
one year later in ‘Studia et Documenta historiae et iuris’.2 It was among the fruits of his
‘Schuldlehre’ from 1935,3 and was included in his comprehensive ‘Repertorium’. The
Parisian lecture was a pioneering article, not more than eleven pages; it was an initial step
in ending the previous exclusive concentration on Bologna in the history of medieval
canon law. Kuttner saw the origins of a proper school of Canon law in France only after
the reception of Gratian’s Decretum in France, despite of the earlier importance of the
canonistic work of Ivo of Chartres,4 and he gave as the earliest testimony for knowledge
of Gratian the date of the Abbreviatio Quoniam egestas, written in the Provence region
around 1150.5 He could date the first French example of a true scientific penetration of
1 S. Kuttner, Repertorium der Kanonistik (1140 – 1234). Prodromus Corporis Glossarum I, Città del Vatica-
no 1937 (Studi e Testi 71).
2 S. Kuttner, Les débuts de l´école canoniste française, in: SDHI 4, 1938, 193 – 204; also in: S. Kuttner,
Gratian and the Schools of Law 1140 – 1234, London 1983, no. VI.
3 S. Kuttner, Kanonistische Schuldlehre von Gratian bis auf die Dekretalen Gregors IX., Città del Vaticano
1935 (Studi e Testi 64).
4 Kuttner, Les débuts (n. 2), 193: „Mais on ne peut considérer ces auteurs – sc. Yves de Chartres (P.L.) – com-
me représentants d´une école canoniste: il n´y a école que du moment que se trouve professé un enseigne-
ment destiné à transmettre la tradition d´une doctrine.”
5 Kuttner, Les débuts (n. 2), 194. For the Abbreviatio Quoniam egestas see mainly R. Weigand, Die Dekret­
abbrevatio ‘Quoniam egestas’ und ihre Glossen, in: W. Aymans / A. Egler / J. Listl (Eds.), Fides et Ius.
Festschrift für Georg May zum 65. Geburtstag, Regensburg 1991, 249 – 265; and A. Gouron, Le manuscrit
de Prague, Metr Knih. J. 74: à la recherche du plus ançien décrétiste à l´Ouest des Alpes, in: ZRG Kan.
Abt. 83, 1993, 223 – 248; also in: A. Gouron, Pionniers du droit occidental au Moyen Âge, Aldershot 2006
(Variorum Collected Studies Series 865), no. I.
 Notes on the Origin of Damasus,
a Thirteenth Century Canonist in Bologna
Gergely Gallai
Damasus stands out among contemporary canonists in Bologna in the first third of the thirteenth century. The
list of his works includes individual glosses on Gratian’s Decretum and apparatuses on the first three Compilationes
as well as on the constitutions of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and the Arbor consanguinitatis. In addition,
his Quaestiones, Brocarda and Summa titulorum appear in the company of various Notabilia and Casus as well as
Tancred’s monographs on procedural and marriage law in a number of manuscripts, which has been interpreted
as strongly indicative of the existence of a generally accepted contemporary canon of introductory works to
jurisprudence in the early-thirteenth century. As fruits of educational activity, they still remained in use until
the sixteenth century, which is attested by the fact that Damasus’s Brocarda and Summa were published several
times by early printers. In spite of the fact that Thomas Diplovatatius, the Renaissance biographer of Roman and
medieval jurists, clearly refers to Damasus as being of Hungarian origin, Damasus’s national identity and social
background have since continued to be the subject of scholarly debate. By examining the contents of Damasus’s
works and using contemporary documentary, genealogical and even linguistic evidence, my paper attempts to
clarify some obscurities surrounding Damasus’s origin.
Damasus, an early thirteenth-century canonist, has long constituted a subject of scholarly
interest, which may be sufficiently evidenced by the extensive list of academics who have
investigated or drawn on his works through the centuries. In contrast, barely anything is
known for sure about his national identity, the details of his biography and social back-
ground. Involving contemporary documentary, genealogic and even linguistic evidence,
my paper seeks to clarify these obscurities, even though in most cases it will not be able
to go beyond proposing hypotheses because of the lack of authoritative historical sources.
Despite the fact that Damasus taught in Bologna in a period when the fledgling insti-
tutions and ideas of new decretal law were still being formed, his literary legacy attracted
scholarly interest even after the promulgation of Pope Gregory IX’s Liber Extra. Among
Damasus’s contemporaries, Raymond of Penyafort, the redactor of the fundamental col-
lection published in 1234, makes sporadic references to Damasus’s Quaestiones in his own
Summa iuris canonici.1 The outstanding fourteenth century canonist Joannes Andreae is
also one in a relatively long list of jurists who have cited and drawn on Damasus’s works.
In fact, in his Commentaria Novella on the Liber Extra and his Additiones to the Speculum
iudiciale by Guilelmus Durantis, Joannes mentions Damasus among those prominent
scholars who had commented on the first three Compilationes antiquae.2 In addition,
the Questiones Mercuriales by this brilliant fourteenth-century canonist bears witness to
the high degree of his reliance on Damasus’s work in the same genre. Unfortunately,
only Damasus’s Brocarda or Brocardica has ever been printed, albeit several times in the
sixteenth century.3 However, he earned a brief but influential entry in Diplovatatius’s

1 Xaverio Ochoa / Aloisio Diez (Eds.), S. Raimundus de Pennaforte, Summa de iure canonico, Roma 1975
(Universa Bibliotheca Iuris, Vol. 1, Tomus A), 83, 189, 192.
2 Ioannes Andreae, In Novella super Decretalibus, a. ad prooemium libri primi; in additionibus ad Guilelmi
Speculum iudiciale, in: Bernard of Pavia, Summa decretalium, ed. E. A. T. Laspeyres, Graz 1860 (reprint
Graz 1956), 359 – 360, 361 – 363.
3 Stephan Kuttner, Repertorium der Kanonistik (1140 - 1234). Prodromus corporis glossarum I., Città del
Vaticano 1937 (Studi e Testi 71) (reprint Città del Vaticano 1981), 420 – 421.
 Un canoniste montpelliérain oublié: Étienne de Clapiers,
abbé de Saint-Victor de Marseille
Nicolas Laurent-Bonne*
The National Library of France has in its collection of Latin manuscripts (ms. lat. 4036), a Lectura on books I and
II of the Liber Extra, attributed to Stephanus de Daperiis. Until now, scholars have not been able to find evidence
to identify this author. Analysis of this manuscript shows that when it entered the library of Colbert, his librarian,
Baluze, made a mistake in his reading of the colophon. Once that the manuscripts of the well known minister of
Louis XIV had passed into the royal collection, the same mistake was made in the catalogue of royal manuscripts,
preventing the attribution of this Lectura to its true author : Stephanus de Claperiis, the abbot of Saint-Victor de
Marseille. Étienne de Clapiers deserves recognition. In his Lectura, the author uses many different sources, which
he criticises and comments on. His commentary on books I and II of the Liber Extra offers a priceless witness of
the teaching of canon law in Montpellier in the first decades of the fourteenth century.
Le fonds latin des manuscrits de la bibliothèque nationale de France renferme sous la cote
4036, une lectura sur les deux premiers livres du Liber Extra de Grégoire IX. Décrit som-
mairement dans le catalogue des manuscrits de la bibliothèque royale, le volume apparaît
sous le titre de Stephani de Daperiis commentarius in primum et secundum librum Decre-
talium.1 Ce manuscrit, qui n’a que rarement retenu l’attention des historiens du droit,
n’est pas indiqué par Schulte dans son manuel d’histoire sources du droit canonique, ni
par Kenneth Pennington dans sa liste bio-bibliographique des canonistes médiévaux.2
Le codex se présente comme un important volume in-folio de parchemin de 492
feuillets, dont le texte est transcrit sur deux colonnes de quarante lignes chacune.3 L’ini-
tiale de chaque décrétale est ornée alternativement d’une lettrine de couleur rouge ou
bleue. L’ensemble est relié en maroquin rouge aux armes de Colbert. Le manuscrit avait
en effet été acquis par le ministre de Louis XIV auprès des moines de l’abbaye Saint-Pierre
de Moissac. Le texte a été rédigé par une main méridionale de la première moitié du XIVe
siècle: des rondeurs, tout à fait caractéristiques des écritures livresques utilisées en Italie
et dans le Sud de la France, s’observent pour les lettres b, c, d, e, h, o, p et q.4 Quelques
notes marginales ont par ailleurs été ajoutées par une main plus tardive et dans une écri-
ture cursive. Les 387 premiers folios du manuscrit contiennent une lectura sur les deux

* L’auteur de ces lignes remercie tout particulièrement le professeur Franck Roumy (Université Panthéon-As-
sas, Paris II) pour ses conseils dans l’élaboration de cet article, ainsi que les conservateurs du cabinet de
manuscrits de la bibliothèque nationale de France.
1 Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum bibliothecæ regiæ, Pars tertia, Parisiis 1744, t. III, 539.
2 J. F. von Schulte, Die Geschichte der Quellen und Literatur des kanonischen Rechts von Gratian bis auf die
Gegenwart, 3 vol., Stuttgart 1875-1880 ; K. Pennington, Bio-Bibliographical Guide of Canonists. 1140 –
1500, online: http://faculty.cua.edu/Pennington/biobibl.htm (dernière consultation: 12 novembre 2012).
3 De grande taille, les feuillets mesurent 340 x 225 mm. La réglure, tracée à la pointe sèche, assure une justifi-
cation des deux colonnes de texte de 260 x 170 mm.
4 Il nous faut savoir gré aux conservateurs du cabinet des manuscrits de la bibliothèque nationale de France
qui nous ont à plusieurs reprises renseignés sur cette question ; voir par ailleurs A. Derolez, The paleography
of gothic manuscript books. From the twelth to the early sixteenth century, Cambridge 2003, 102 – 117.
Derolez reproduit notamment une planche du Speculum sanctorale de Bernardus Guidonis, rédigé à Toulouse
entre 1329 et 1331, dont l’écriture est tout à fait semblable au ms. lat. 4036 (Ibid., pl. 53).
 La coscienza del giurista:
Gli scrupoli patrimoniali di Baldo degli Ubaldi
Osvaldo Cavallar*
Brilliant and unabashed, Baldus de Ubaldis is a jurist who can surprise even the more consummate modern
historian. It is known that his activity as jurisconsult, as well as his services to a despot, allowed him to make
substantial patrimonial investments in his home town, Perugia. Less known is that in the last years of his life,
just around the time he prepared his last will, he started to have doubts about the acquisition of his most prized
investment, the estate of Carestello. A nepotistic prelate bought some monastic property with money belonging
to his church and transferred its ownership to his blood-related kin. Baldus, knowing that doubts existed about to
whom the money belonged, had bought the property from the bishop’s kin, paying them the just price. Despite
that he had paid a price higher than that which any other purchaser would have been willing to pay, he could not
avoid the question whether or not a bonus vir (he himself ) should restore the goods. The paper focuses on the
unusual way in which Baldus solved the conundrums of his conscience. First he asked two of his colleagues at
the University of Pavia to write a consilium on his dilemma and then, unsatisfied with their answers, he himself
took up the issue in a series of substantial opinions and also in two places of his commentary to the Decretals.
The rights of the church whose money was used to buy the property was not the sole issue that bothered Baldus.
The goods, when they had been bequeathed to the monastery, had a burden, a fictus perpetuus. The prelate and
his kin claimed that, due to the monks’ negligence, the fictus had fallen into prescription. Again, in a triptych of
consilia Baldus set himself out to clear his conscience and to explore a series of fascinating legal-moral issues such
as prescription and the conditions of its possibility under civil and canon law, and whether or not the extinction
of the civil obligation brought about that of the natural one. The case of a jurist who asked for, and wrote his own,
consilia on his own scruples of conscience is certainly unique in European continental legal history.

Che Baldo degli Ubaldi, brillante prima donna sul palcoscenico della giurisprudenza
per tutta la seconda metà del Trecento, sia stato un giurista tormentato e riluttante è
una delle acquisizioni della recente storiografia giuridica e non. La sua riluttante adesi-
one a tesi conciliariste, a parte la tralatizia imputazione di essere stato inconsistente nei
due momenti che caratterizzano l’attività dei giuristi del diritto comune, l’elaborazione
dottrinale e la consulenza e, se si vuole, anche nello stesso momento della consulenza, è
stata una delle prime istanze a essere individuate.1 In seguito, Pennington2 ha richiamato
l’attenzione sulla tormentata redazione dei consilia stesi a favore di Giangaleazzo Visconti
e i poteri quasi-imperiali vantati da quest’ultimo dopo l’agognata concessione del titolo
ducale del 1395/96 da parte del ‘Rex Romanorum’, Venceslao.3 Se le specifiche circostan-
ze che hanno propiziato questo gruppo di testi attendono nuove precisazioni e un più ap-

* Questa ricerca è stata resa possibile dal generoso finanziamento della Nanzan University di Nagoya (Japan),
Pache I-A 2011. Una più elaborata discussione di questo caso, accompagnata dall’edizione critica dei consulti
in questione, apparirà in seguito. In questa sede propongo solo una versione leggermente ampliata e tradotta
in italiano della relazione presentata al XIV International Congress of Medieval Canon Law tenutosi a To-
ronto dal 5 al 12 agosto 2012.
1 James A. Wahl, Baldus de Ubaldis: A Study in Reluctant Conciliarism, in: Manuscripta 18, 1974, 21 – 29.
2 Kenneth Pennington, The Authority of the Prince in a Consilium of Baldus de Ubaldis, in: Studia in
Honorem Eminentissimi Cardinalis A. M. Stichler curante Rosalio Iosepho Card. Castillo Lara. Studia
et textus historiae iuris canonici 7, Roma 1992, 483 – 515; Id., Allegationes, Solutiones, and Dubitationes:
Baldus de Ubaldis’ Revisions of his Consilia, in: Die Kunst der Disputation: Probleme der Rechtsauslegung
und Rechtsanwendung im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert. A cura di Manlio Bellomo, München 1997, 29 – 72.
3 Sull’interpretazione di questa concessione, Jane Black, Absolutism in Renaissance Milan: Plenitude of Power
under the Visconti and the Sforza 1329 – 1535, Oxford 2009.
 Proprium est iudicis finem controuersiis imponere.
Les limites de la justice chez John Ayton
Yves Mausen
John Ayton’s commentary on the Legatine Constitutions proved very popular in the Middle Ages which lead
to interpolations in later manuscripts and in the printed editions. The present paper tries to show how Ayton
worked and also what kind of changes were introduced into his work. This study cannot be a comprehensive
one. Instead it will focus on six constitutions which also demonstrate Ayton’s views on justice. The ideal justice
appears to be one which need not be rendered. The judge is to help the litigators to reach an agreement rather
than to try to impose his own sentence. Otherwise he will be considered as one who seeks discord whereas his
duty is to put an end to quarrels. In this respect observing certain moral rules is of the utmost necessity. In his
commentary, Ayton draws heavily on canonical sources as well as on biblical texts. He also knows how to use
Roman law and endeavors to have the learned law match the realities of English practice and social life. He con-
siders the hierarchical relationship between the Church’s constitutions and royal legislation and decides that the
latter has to prevail as establishing privileges for English clerics. Concerning the binding force of the constitutions
per se, he also believes that the judge is free not to follow the rules on the written character of a lawsuit insofar as
the particular nature of the English institutions allows. A later addition to Ayton’s text tries to found the judge’s
freedom on the civil law.
En 1237, suite à la demande d’Henri III l’année précédente, Grégoire IX envoie le car-
dinal Otto di Monferrato en Angleterre, qui y organise, en novembre, un concile pour
la réforme de l’Eglise d’Angleterre et de Wales. Son œuvre est complétée en avril 1268,
par un nouveau concile, réuni sous l’autorité du cardinal Ottobuono dei Fieschi (le futur
pape Adrien V).1 L’ensemble de ces textes constitue la collection individuelle la plus
importante de droit local pour l’Eglise anglaise. Près d’un siècle plus tard, au cours des
années 1330 – 1340, ils reçoivent – chose rare s’agissant de constitutions provinciales
– un commentaire intégral signé John Ayton.2 Celui-ci réalise ainsi le premier traité de
droit canonique anglais de quelque envergure, et certainement le plus important jusqu’au
Prouinciale de William Lyndwood (auquel le relient d’ailleurs les éditions imprimées des
XVIe et XVIIe siècles). Le texte édité comporterait, d’après F. W. Maitland,3 suivi en cela
par J. H. Baker,4 nombre d’interpolations; l’auteur serait quant à lui, toujours d’après
Maitland, ‘a little too human to be strictly scientific’, ce qui en ferait ‘very much Lynd-

1 V. F. M. Powicke / C. R. Cheney, Councils and Synods with Other Documents Relating to the English
Church, vol. 2 (A. D. 1205 – 1313), partie 1 (1205 – 1265) resp. partie 2 (1265 – 1313), Oxford 1964;
D. M. Williamson, Some Aspects of the Legislation of Cardinal Otto in England, in: EHR 64, n° 251, avril
1949, 145 – 173; D. M. Williamson, The Legate Otto in Scotland and Ireland, 1237 – 1240, in: The Scot-
tish Historical Review 28, n° 105, p. 1, avril 1949, 12 – 30.
2 V. F. W. Maitland, Roman Canon Law in the Church of England. Six Essays, I., London 1898, 6 – 8; A.
B. Emden, Acton, John de, in: A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A. D. 1500, vol. 1,
Oxford 1957, 11 – 12; J. H. Baker, Famous English Canonists: III. John Ayton (or Acton) U.J.D. († 1349).
Professor of Law, Cambridge University. Canon of Lincoln, in: Ecclesiastical Law Journal 2/8, 1991, 159 –
163; R. H. Helmholz, The Oxford History of the Laws of England, vol. 1: The Canon Law and Ecclesiastical
Jurisdiction from 597 to the 1640s, Oxford 2004, 202 – 203.
3 Maitland, Roman Canon Law (n. 2), 7. Maitland se prononce cependant uniquement d’après le MS Cam-
bridge, University Library, Li. 3,14, et ne relève que des ‘references to books that were not written until after
his day’, non des ajouts substantiels.
4 Baker, Famous English Canonists (n. 2), 162.
 The Social Status, Education, and Benefices of Gilbert Rothbury,
a Clerical Common Law Justice (1295 – 1321)
Ryan Rowberry*
King Edward I (1272 – 1307) transformed the English Common Law through procedural reforms and a raft of
statutes. The judicial contingent of the King’s Council bore the primary task of drafting these statutes, and these
same justices interpreted and applied the laws during trial. Yet, we know relatively little about the lives of Edward
I’s judges. This article seeks to reanimate Gilbert Rothbury, one of Edward I’s justices who was simultaneously a
priest and a Common Law judge, by examining in detail three aspects of his life that likely influenced his work
as a judge: his social standing; his education; and his financial relationships with the church. Examination of a
range of unpublished archival sources and published primary sources suggests several broad conclusions. First,
perhaps unique among central royal court judges, Rothbury came from an extremely humble background which
may have made him more attuned to poorer litigants in a society separated sharply by class. Second, Rothbury
received some education in the learned law at Oxford University that influenced his Common Law decisions. Fi-
nally, Rothbury’s pecuniary ties to abbots, priors, and bishops dwarfed his annual royal salary, making it possible
that friendship or funding shaped the outcome of his decisions.

I. Introduction
King Edward I (1272 – 1307), called ‘our Justinian’ by the eminent English jurist Ed-
ward Coke,1 transformed the Common Law through procedural reforms and a raft of
statutes, whose number and importance went unrivalled until Henry VIII’s sweeping
reforms in the sixteenth century.2 The judicial contingent of the King’s Council, judges
from the King’s Bench, Common Bench, and Exchequer, bore the primary task of draft-
ing these statutes, and these same justices interpreted and applied the laws during trial.3
Yet, we know relatively little about the lives of Edward I’s judges and even less about
their attitudes toward the laws they were shaping and administering.4 This article seeks to
reanimate Gilbert Rothbury, one of Edward I’s more intriguing justices, who was simul-
taneously a priest and a Common Law judge, by examining in detail three understudied

* I would like to thank Charles Donahue Jr., Paul Brand, Travis Baker, Melodie Eichbauer, Paul Lombardo,
Courtney Anderson, and the respondents at the Fourteenth International Congress on Medieval Canon Law
for their incisive and helpful comments to earlier drafts of this article. Any mistakes or infelicities are mine
alone.
1 The Selected Writings of Sir Edward Coke, vol. 2, ed. Steve Sheppard, Indianapolis 2003, 927.
2 Parliament began to meet with regularity in the reign of Edward I, and Paul Brand has shown that Edwardian
reforms also contributed to the development and professionalization of the higher royal judiciary in four
important ways: the addition of several permanent royal courts run by permanent staff; prolongation of
judicial careers in the royal courts; regular judicial remuneration; and powerful upgrades in judicial ethics.
See P. Brand, The Making of the Common Law, London 1992, 135 – 168.
3 See J. R. Maddicott, Law and Lordship: Royal Justices as Retainers in Thirteenth and Fourteenth Century
England, Past & Present, Supplement 4, London 1978, 4, 24, 81 – 83; G. O. Sayles, The King’s Parliament
of England, New York 1975, 74 – 75; T. F. T. Plucknett, The Legislation of Edward I, Oxford 1949, 72 – 74,
132 – 135, 158 – 159.
4 Two royal justices appointed by Edward I who have been thoroughly examined are Thomas Weyland, a Chief
Justice of the King’s Bench who was dismissed from service and convicted of a felony for being an accessory
to murder, and Harvey Stanton, who served in the King’s Bench, Common Bench, and Exchequer under
Edward I and Edward II. For Weyland see Brand, Making of the Common Law (n. 2), 45 – 68; for Stanton
see G. W. Keeton, Harvey the Hasty: a Medieval Chief Justice, London 1978.
 Quo iure non video - Guillelmus de Montelauduno († 1343)
über die Benefizialpraxis seiner Zeit
Kerstin Hitzbleck
Whereas in the official collections of medieval canon law hardly any hint of the competences and mandate of the
executors of papal provisions can be found, there is quite a lot of canonical deliberation on this very special type
of papal judge delegate in the canonistic commentaries of the 13th and 14th centuries. The essay asks why these
executors somehow escaped papal regulation, even though their role in the so called papal beneficial system was
crucial. Following the commentary of Guillelmus de Montelauduno on the Decretal Sedes (Extr. comm. 1.6.1),
the article tries to illuminate the practical problems that arose in the daily work of the executors, and points out
that there has been juristic regulation below the level of the official papal collections of church law.

I. Einleitung
Was ist ein Exekutor? Dieser tatsächlich zentralen Frage bezüglich der Exekutoren päpst-
licher Benefizialreskripte widmet der südfranzösische Kanonist Guillelmus de Montelau-
duno in seinem Kommentar zur Dekretale Sedes (Extr. Joann. XXII 3.4.1; Extr. comm.
1.6.1)1 Papst Johannes‘ XXII. eine mehrere Spalten umfassende Glosse. Er traktiert da-
mit ein Problem, das für jeden theoretisch oder praktisch an der Materie interessierten
Zeitgenossen von allergrößter Relevanz war, denn die korrekte Arbeit der Exekutoren
konnte über den reibungslosen und erfolgreichen Ablauf des Provisionsprozesses ent-
scheiden. Allein: keine päpstliche Dekretale behandelt die Rechte, Pflichten, ja nur die
Amtskompetenzen jener päpstlichen Mandatsträger, die als executores bezeichnet wer-
den, und auch die Kanzleiregeln schweigen sich weitgehend über sie aus. Das in diesem
Bereich auffällige Desinteresse der Päpste, die mit dem Benefizialwesen seit dem 12.
Jahrhundert eines der folgenreichsten Instrumente päpstlicher Herrschaftsausübung ge-
schaffen haben, stellte jedoch nicht nur die Rechtspraktiker der Zeit vor ein Problem.
Auch die neuere Forschung zum Provisionswesen blieb von dieser Regelungslücke nicht
unberührt, denn das Fehlen von Informationen zu den Kompetenzen und der Rolle
der Exekutoren im Provisionsprozess hat das Bild dieses neu entstehenden Rechtsgebiets
geprägt. So ist es in der Forschung in den letzten Jahrzehnten zwar zum locus communis
geworden, dass die päpstlichen Provisionen in keiner Weise Ausdruck herrscherlicher
Willkür und päpstlichen Zentralismus‘ sind, sondern nach dem Beispiel des spätantiken
kaiserlichen Reskripts eher ein Angebot und die Antwort auf ein lokales Bedürfnis dar-
stellen.2 Doch blieb das Bild, das sich die Forschung vom tatsächlichen Kollationsprozess
1 Die hiesigen Ausführungen und Zitate folgen der Version des Kommentars in der Glossa ordinaria zu den
Extravagantes communes. Es wurde die Ausgabe des Liber VI und der späteren Dekretalensammlungen
genutzt, welche im Jahre 1559 bei Hugo a Porta und Antonius Vincentius in Lyon erschienen ist. Eine
Gegenkontrolle des Textes erfolgte an der Ausgabe Antwerpen, Christophorus Plantinus, Iohannes Stelsius
Erben und Philippus Nutius. Größere Unterschiede im Text waren nicht festzustellen.
2 Die Literatur, welche diese Erkenntnisse aufnimmt, ist mittlerweile abundant. An dieser Stelle sei deshalb
nur auf die Pionierarbeit von Andreas Meyer hingewiesen, der sich, ausgehend von seinen Arbeiten zum Zür-
cher Grossmünster, intensiv mit den Fragen um Bedeutung und Durchsetzbarkeit päpstlicher Provisionen
beschäftigt und den Reskriptcharakter dieser Urkunden herausgestellt hat. Siehe dazu auch Andreas Meyer,
Attention, No Pope! New Approaches to Late Medieval Papal „Litterae“ (in diesem Band); außerdem And-
 La profession monastique au temps de la réforme d’Aix
(816 – 819) et les formules de voeux, de petitio des novices
et d’oblation des enfants
Philippe Depreux
This article deals with the question of whether there was a model for entering into a monastery in the period of
the Carolingian monastic reform. The way someone became a monk is known through many sources: ordines,
commentaries of the Benedictine Rule, capitularies, monk-lists and formularies. All of these show that the ‘three
vows’ were not clearly defined until the middle of the ninth century. It is especially the content and the ma-
nuscript transmission of the Carolingian formularies that will be investigated here. Their content is more various
than was suggested by Karl Zeumer in his edition of the formulae: it is for instance possible to distinguish three
(not only two) variants of the model Nr. 42 from Flavigny / Formulae extravagantes II, Nr. 28 (petitio monacho-
rum). Although Josef Semmler did not consider the models of petitio for adults and traditio for children as a part
of the capitulary production of the Aniane-reform, I argue that they are closely connected with the normative
texts of the reform and therefore may have been diffused together with them as part of the official documents
issued in Aachen during the years 816 – 819.

Outre la Règle bénédictine, qui prévoit au chapitre 58 les modalités d’accueil des frères au
sein d’une communauté monastique (et leurs incidences juridiques) et, au chapitre 59,
les modalités d’offrande de l’enfant de nobles ou de pauvres,1 la manière dont on faisait
profession monastique au haut Moyen Âge nous est connue par divers biais. D’une part,
nous tenons notre information sur la manière dont les moines qui s’étaient coulés dans
le moule de la réforme d’Aniane concevaient cet engagement grâce aux commentaires
de la Règle ; celui de Smaragde de Saint-Mihiel, rédigé vers 820, et celui d’Hildemar
de Corbie, probablement une décennie plus tard, sont de première importance pour
l’époque carolingienne.2 D’autre part, nous sommes assez bien informés grâce aux docu-
ments de la pratique: les recueils de professions monastiques, dont on ne conserve que
de rares épaves, et les formulaires. Certains textes revêtent la forme d’ordines: c’est le cas
de la Forma profitentium secundum antiquos3 du manuscrit de Vienne no 2232 (fol. 60v –
61v), originaire d’Allemagne du Sud (probablement de la Reichenau), un ‘cérémonial de
profession suivant la lettre du chap. 58 de RB’4 dans lequel on a proposé de reconnaître

1 La Règle de saint Benoît, éd. Adalbert de Vogüé / Jean Neufville, tome 2, Paris 1972 (Sources chrétiennes
182), 626 – 635.
2 Smaragdi abbatis expositio in regulam s. Benedicti, éd. Alfred Spannagel / Pius Engelbert, Siegburg 1974
(Corpus consuetudinum monasticarum 8); Expositio regulae ab Hildemaro tradita et nunc primum typis
mandata, éd. Rupertus Mittermüller, Regensburg 1880 (Vita et Regula ss. P. Benedicti cum expositione
regulae 3), 546 – 547.
3 Marquard Herrgott, Vetus disciplina monastica …, Paris 1726, 590 (Fragmenta …, n° 9); Edmund Schmidt,
Ein sehr alter Ritus profitendi, in: Wissenschaftliche Studien und Mittheilungen aus dem Benediktiner-Or-
den mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Ordensgeschichte und Statistik 2/1, 1881, 173 – 174 (il y est
affirmé à tort que M. Herrgott n’a pas reproduit ce texte).
4 La Règle de saint Benoît, tome 3: Jean Neufville, Instruments pour l’étude de la tradition manuscrite, Paris
1972 (Sources chrétiennes 183), 404. Sur ce manuscrit, cf. Benedikt Paringer, Cod. Lat. Vindobonensis
2232, in: Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktinerordens und seiner Zweige 58, 1940,
68 – 81; Suso Brechter, Schriftprovenienz und Bibliotheksheimat des Codex lat. Vindob. 2232, in: Studien
und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktinerordens und seiner Zweige 58, 1940, 82 – 106.
 Three Abbatial Elections During the
Regency of Suger of St Denis
Giles Constable
This study focuses on three elections in royal abbeys in the twelfth century, which were held during the regency
of Suger of St Denis, while king Louis VII was absent on the Second Crusade, and analyzes the elections of the
abbot of Bourgueil, St Riquier and St Cornelius (Compiègne). It highlights the central role in abbatial elections
of the monarch, who approved every step of the way. The liberty of abbatial election is shown as a façade behind
which the real decision was made by the king or his regent.
The superiors of religious houses in the Middle Ages were chosen in many ways. Accord-
ing to most monastic and canonical rules, after the death, resignation, or dismissal of a
previous incumbent, the members of a community, after obtaining if necessary the per-
mission of the patron – the so-called licentia eligendi –, proceeded to choose a successor,
or a group of electors who made the decision, sometimes in the presence and with the
participation of the local bishop. Other superiors, however, were designated or appointed
by their predecessor or by an outside authority, including the king or the abbot of the
mother-house, if the house belonged to an order or congregation. One of the most cher-
ished prerogatives of Cluny was its control over the superiors of dependent houses. Some
abbots were in charge of more than one house. In the first half of the ninth century at
least ten unelected abbots, including Benedict of Aniane, ruled over thirty monasteries.1
Occasionally an abbot appointed himself, or tried to, like Megenardus, whose efforts to
get himself elected abbot of St Père at Chartres in 1004, while his predecessor was still
living, were recorded by Fulbert of Chartres.2 The superior was sometimes chosen by
lot, or inspiration, as it was called. In an unnamed monastery described in the Vita of St
Servatius, all the monks, including those living outside the community, gathered after the
death of the superior and stood holding new candles and praying until one candle was
lighted, of which the holder became abbot.3 The ultimate purpose of all these procedures
was to discover the will of God.
There has been endless scholarly discussion over the meaning of the phrases pars par-
va and sanior consilium in the rule of Benedict, which established that the abbot could be
elected by a small part of the community acting by wiser counsel, and over the relation
of the concept of sanioritas – wisdom, as I shall call it here – to maioritas and unanimitas
– majority and unanimity.4 These terms, and those in other rules, could be interpreted in

1 Dieter Geuenich, Zur Stellung und Wahl des Abtes in der Karolingerzeit, in: Gerd Althoff / Dieter Geuenich /
Otto Gerhard Oexle / Joachim Wollasch (Ed.), Person und Gemeinschaft im Mittelalter. Karl Schmid zum
fünfundsechzigsten Geburtstag, Sigmaringen 1988, 171 – 186, at 176, 184.
2 The Letters and Poems of Fulbert of Chartres, ed. Frederick Behrends, Oxford 1976 (Oxford Medieval
Texts), 2 – 9, Ep. 1.
3 Jocundus, Vita Servatii, 19 – 20, in: Jocundus, Biographe de saint Servais, ed. P. C. Boeren, The Hague,
1972, 145. Servatius was bishop of Tongres, whose biography was written probably in the third quarter of
the eleventh century.
4 Regula Benedicti, 64. Among many other relevant works see the two articles by Herbert Grundmann, Pars
quamuis parva. Zur Abtwahl nach Benedikts Regel, in: Festschrift Percy Ernst Schramm, Wiesbaden 1964, I,
237 – 251, and Zur Abt-Wahl nach Benedikts Regel. Die ‘Zweitobern’ als ‘sanior pars’?, in: ZKG 77, 1966,
 Episcopus, conservator et iudex.
Bishops as Protectors of Religious Orders
Hans-Joachim Schmidt
The institution of delegate judges invested by the papacy gave them the opportunity to intervene in any juridical
affairs throughout occidental Christianity. Combined with the papal task to protect the victims of injustice, this
contributed to the creation of the institution of the conservatores. The office was held by bishops who extended
their range of competence outside their own dioceses. The aim the conservatores were intended to accomplish was
ambiguous: some papal bulls demanded the protection of the mendicant friars, others of the secular clerics. In the
end, the real action of the conservatores seemed quite limited. There are few sources related to their activity. The
canonists who commented on the office, clearly established in the Liber Sextus and in the papal formula books,
were sceptical about their real juridical competence. Thus, the canonists were closer to the reality than the popes
and their chancery which continued to deliver investiture bulls of the conservatores. Actually the mendicant orders
couldn’t expect much help from them.

Diocesan bishops and religious orders in the Middle Ages belonged to distinctive legal
areas. Both were regulated by the canon law, but they were both integrated in different
hierarchical structures, especially since highly organized orders, such as the mendicant
orders, established in the thirteenth century, created a scheme of provincial and general
chapters with their own legislation, which directed the life of the friars, their relationship
and the competence of the superiors, and introduced a distinctive geographical structure
to the Church. The gap between the diocesan authority and that of the religious orders
was widened by conflicts which were caused by the claim of the mendicant friars to be in-
volved in the pastoral care of the laity and thus by the challenge to the hitherto exclusive
competence of the secular clergy. The establishment of distinctive schemes of competenc-
es based on a territorial pattern enhanced the competition between bishops, who were
threatened with losing their monopoly on the care of souls, and the mendicant orders,
which were also exercising these activities. In order to assure their respective prerogatives,
both sides solicited popes to define the lines of competence. Actually, many papal decrees
were issued on this matter without being able to bring the long-term conflicts to an end.
The general tendency of papal interventions was to protect the mendicant orders; quite
often they charged the bishops to guarantee the friars the undisturbed use of the privileg-
es that popes had granted them.
I will not describe the well-studied conflicts between bishops and mendicant friars,
but direct my inquiry into the procedures that helped create tensions between the legal
domains of each side. The legal instrument employed by the popes was that of the iu-
dices delegati, sent and invested by them to inquire, to sentence, and to resolve conflicts
between opponents, even when they had not asked for papal arbitration and even while
they were sometimes reluctant to accept the papal power of interfering in local affairs.
The competence of the iudices legati was based on the papal plenitudo potestatis, which
gave the pope the right to interfere in every matter and to decide each argument wherev-
er it occurred in Christendom. The persons invested with this task were mostly learned
jurists, members of cathedral or canonical chapters, well implanted in the region where
conflicts had arisen. They were supposed to be able to get the information needed to de-
 A Cistercian Statute of 1188 AD and
the Promulgation ‘ante et retro oculata’ of Gratian’s Decretum
Antonina Sahaydachny
In 1188, the annual General Chapter of all Cistercian abbots met at Cîteaux and, for the first time, voted to de-
signate a location in their book collections for the Decretum Gratiani. This vote was memorialized in a Cistercian
statute mandating that Cistercian abbeys were to keep the Decretum separate from the common book repository
in a location reserved for readers who could consult the Decretum, on a need-to-know basis. This 1188 statute
has since generated much scholarly controversy about the Cistercian attitude to the Decretum. In response, this
paper sets forth a useful paradigm for understanding what the 1188 statute and the Cistercian General Chapter
procedure for its enactment reveal about the compilation and the promulgation of the Decretum in twelfth
century context. Using the contemporaneous Cistercian reform principle, ‘ante et retro oculata’, this paper (1)
discusses the Cistercian General Chapter procedure used to enact the 1188 statute which, in 1215, was adopted
as a legislative model by conciliar decree; and then (2) proposes that the Decretum, like other twelfth century
compilations of specialized knowledge, was, in effect, a ‘community source book’ compiled and promulgated
following a procedure similar to that used by the Cistercian General Chapter. With reference to (1) and (2), a
community source book functions as an open source project; that is, as a repository of information circulated
for use by the community and by visitors, and ultimately shaped and augmented by the work and contributions
of specialists both within and without the monastic network. Notably, this ‘open source’ character of the com-
munity source book provides a straightforward answer to those questions about attribution, about chronology,
about seemingly uneven quality, and about apparently inconsistent content of the Decretum which curiously defy
the understanding of modern scholars. This community source book paradigm also embodies the idea supported
by patristic and conciliar sources that knowledge contained in sources is patrimony. Anticipating the later idea
of patrimony found in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, this earlier Cistercian idea of patrimony is tempered by a
corresponding fiduciary duty whereby each generation must preserve, protect, augment, and carry forward for
the benefit of posterity, the patrimony of its Cistercian founders.

I. Introduction
In 1188, Cistercian abbots from monasteries throughout the Latin West congregated for
the annual General Chapter at the Abbey at Cîteaux. Here, for the first time, they voted
to assign a location to the Decretum Gratiani within their vast network of monastic book
collections.1 The statute which they enacted is memorialized in the legislation of the
General Chapter of 1188 A.D.2 This statute (hereinafter referred to as the ‘1188 statute’)
merits particular attention because, beyond simply establishing a place for the Decretum
1 For a description of the arrangement of books in Cistercian abbeys, see J. W. Clark, The Care of Books:
An Essay on the Development of Libraries and Their Fittings, from the Earliest Times to the End of the
18th Century, Cambridge 1901, 74 – 82, 97 – 100 et passim. See also: D. Knowles, The Monastic Order
in England: A History of Its Development from the Times of St. Dunstan to the Fourth Lateran Council,
940 – 1216, Cambridge 1963 (reprint Cambridge 1976), 526 – 527; M. Carruthers, The Book of Memory:
A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, Cambridge / New York 1990 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval
History 10), 37 et passim; D. H. Williams, The Cistercians in the Early Middle Ages, Leominster 1998, 99
– 101 et passim; T. N. Kinder, Cistercian Europe: The Architecture of Contemplation, Grand Rapids 2001,
286 et passim.
2 Statutes enacted by the General Chapter were formulated for publication by a committee called the definito-
rium consisting, at this time, of four abbots: (1) the abbot president of the Chapter; (2) the abbot of Cîteaux;
(3) one abbot from among the ‘First Four Abbots’, i.e., from la Ferté, Pontigny, Clairvaux, and Morimund,
respectively, who served on a rotating basis; and (4) two additional abbots chosen ‘de aliis discretionibus’, who
possibly rotated from Chapter to Chapter or, alternately, among sessions of a given Chapter. See: C. Waddell
(Ed.), Narrative and Legislative Texts from Early Cîteaux, Cîteaux 1999, 16 – 17. The definitorium itself was
 An Anonymous Eleventh-Century Doctor of Charity:
Additions to the Holy Rule of Saint Benedict
Charles Hilken
The subject of this study is a copy of the Rule of Saint Benedict with other texts contained in a chapter room coll-
ection, now Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Barb. lat. 421. The chapter book gives evidence
of creative and thoughtful monastic leadership in a house of men somewhere in southern Italy, who were familiar
with the texts and practices of Montecassino. Of the several most fascinating features of the codex, the one that
makes it of interest to historians of canon law are three interpolations of varying length woven seamlessly into the
copy of the Rule and a version of a letter of Gregory the Great which had made its way into canonical collections
including Decr. Grat. C. 18 q. 2 c. 3. The interpolations are in part ones used in pre-Gratian canonical collections
pertaining to monastic life. The study demonstrates the affinities of the capitular texts to Montecassino and with
respect to the texts in common with eleventh-century canon law collections of southern Italy a parallel use of
sources rather than a direct borrowing from canon law books.

The subject of this study, a copy of the Rule of Saint Benedict (hereafter the Rule) with
other texts for use in the chapter room (see Table I), belongs to the era of monastic
culture between the Cluniac reforms and the new monastic movements of the twelfth
century.1 It gives evidence of creative and thoughtful monastic leadership in a house of
men somewhere in southern Italy, as one can tell by the script, but otherwise not yet da-
ted or located with any certainty except that it can be assigned to some time in the early
eleventh century in a scriptorium familiar with the texts and practices of Montecassino.2
Of the several most fascinating features of the codex, Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apo-
stolica Vaticana, Barb. lat. 421 (hereafter Barb. lat. 421), the one that makes it of interest
to historians of canon law are three interpolations of varying length woven seamlessly
into the copy of the Rule (see Table III) and a version of a letter of Gregory the Great
which had made its way into canonical collections.3 The interpolations will be familiar to
historians of canon law, for they are in part ones used by pre-Gratian canonists, whence
the reference to a ‘doctor’ in the title of this essay. The further appellation of ‘charity’
comes from the scribe’s singular additions to the Rule that point to a leader who valued
the monastic experiment as a place where charity is not forsaken (Rule 4, 26). I imagine
him — and the evidence of the necrology of the chapter book suggests the gender of the
community — to have been the master of the scriptorium, someone with wide influence
in the handing on of the monastic tradition by writing and by the formation of the
young. The following points are intended to demonstrate the affinities of the capitular
texts to Montecassino, and with respect to the texts in common with eleventh-century

1 The makers of the chapter book drew on a rich tradition of monastic learning from north of the Alps and
from the Italian peninsula. For current study of monastic writings before the turn of the second millennium,
see the Monastic Manuscript Project, Albrecht Diem (Ed.), online: http://www.earlymedievalmonasticism.
org (last visit: 2013 September 27).
2 Montecassino (following the Italian orthography) stood as a symbol and a place of pilgrimage for those as-
piring to the monastic life in the early Middle Ages. It was also a point of dissemination of monastic learning
at the time of its origin and after its two-fold re-founding in the middle of the eighth century and at the end
of the tenth century.
3 The letter is found in pre-Gratian collections (see below) and then in Decr. Grat. C. 18 q. 2 c. 3.
 William of Pagula’s Speculum religiosorum:
A Legal Compendium in a Work of Monastic Formation
Tristan Sharp
This essay investigates the role of canon law in a fourteenth-century guide to the monastic life, the Speculum
religiosorum of William of Pagula. William’s Speculum is unique in that it includes a compendium of monastic
law within a work of monastic edification that draws heavily on the Bible and the Fathers. After a brief discussion
of William’s career and the structure and contents of the Speculum, the paper places the legal compendium in
the context of other collections of monastic law in fourteenth-century England, and demonstrates that William’s
work is larger and more sophisticated than other compendia. The final section of the paper argues that William
intends his monastic audience to read canon law in a meditative and ‘performative’ manner, much as they would
read the Bible or the Fathers. The paper concludes with examples of a similar approach to canon law by the
Franciscan Agnellus of Pisa and the Cistercian Peter of Ceffons.
This essay will investigates the place of canon law in the culture of late medieval male mo-
nasticism through a fourteenth-century guide to the monastic life, the Speculum religioso-
rum of William of Pagula. The Speculum stands out among monastic treatises, because it
includes a large compendium of canon law pertaining to monks and regular canons. Its
authorship is also rather unusual. William of Pagula was a secular cleric, doctor of canon
law, and perhaps the most important writer on pastoral care in late medieval England.1
His reputation rests largely on a pastoral treatise, the Oculus sacerdotis, which circulated
in about sixty manuscripts and influenced writers such as John Mirk and Richard Rolle.2
It was unusual for a secular cleric to write for the religious, the more so because William
writes as an insider; his authorial voice is not that of a preacher or a confessor, examining
monastic conduct from without, but of a master of the religious life, offering guidance
to beginners. William of Pagula’s Speculum, a guide for monks written by a legal scholar,
containing a compendium of canon law, offers a remarkable starting point for consider-
ing the place of law in late medieval monasticism.
Scholarship on monasticism and law in the later Middle Ages has tended to fall into
two categories. One looks at law under the rubric of monks as students in the schools and
universities, and the subsequent careers of scholastically-trained monks as administrators.
These studies provide a general picture of monks embracing scholastic learning and legal

1 For the biography and works of William of Pagula, see Leonard E. Boyle, A Study of the works of William
of Pagula with Special Reference to the ‘Oculis sacerdotis’ and ‘Summa summarum’, DPhil diss., University
of Oxford, 1956; Leonard E. Boyle, The Oculus sacerdotis and Some Other Works of William of Pagula, in:
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 5, 1955, 81 – 110 (also in: Leonard E. Boyle, Pastoral
Care, Clerical Education and Canon Law, 1200 – 1400, London: Variorum Reprints 1981, Nr. IV); Leonard
E. Boyle, The ‘Summa summarum’ and Some Other English Works of Canon Law, in: Proceedings Boston
1963, 415 – 456 (also in: Boyle, Pastoral Care, Nr. XIV). Boyle does not discuss the Speculum religiosorum
at length.
2 There are four fourteenth-century works that follow the Oculus sacerdotis closely, with varying degrees of
supplementation and reorganization: Cilium oculi; Regimen animarum; Ranulph Higden, Speculum curato-
rum; John de Burgh, Pupilla oculi. The Oculus also influenced John Mirk’s Instructions for Parish Priests and
Richard Rolle’s Iudica me deus. See Boyle, Works of William of Pagula (n. 1), 372 – 387; W. A. Pantin, The
English Church in the Fourteenth Century, Cambridge 1955, 202 – 205, 213 – 217.
 Reconsidering the Sacra Romana Rota in the Late Middle Ages
Kirsi Salonen
This contribution presents the main results of a research project which studied the role and significance of the
Sacra Romana Rota on the basis of the source material of the Rota in the Vatican Secret Archives. This article
provides answers to three central questions: 1) what kinds of cases did the Rota deal with? Here the results confir-
med the earlier common assumption that most of the cases handled in the Rota were litigations over benefices; 2)
what was the geographical provenance of the Rota litigations? Here the project noticed that the majority of Rota
processes originated from central territories of the Latin West: Italy, Iberian Peninsula, France and Germany; 3)
how long did the Rota processes last? Here the results showed surprisingly that the litigations did not last for
eternity, as earlier has been assumed, but that a large number of litigations were very short indicating that the
plaintiffs never intended to carry on the litigation but rather to intimidate their adversaries. All in all, the project
concluded that it is necessary to re-evaluate the role and significance of the Rota in solving litigation processes.

Introduction
This contribution presents the main results of a research project called ‘The Role of Papal
Justice in the Late Middle Ages’.1 The project aimed at studying the role and significance
of the most important and influential papal tribunal called Audientia Sacri Palatii, more
commonly known as the Sacra Romana Rota, or just the Rota. The three main questions
the project has tried to answer were: 1) How did the Rota function, and what kinds of
issues did it handle? 2) What was the legal background of the processes handled by the
Rota? 3) What was the significance of the Rota for Christians? The main source material
for the project was the archives of the Rota, kept in the Vatican Secret Archives.2
This contribution is structured so that the previous research regarding the Rota is
outlined first after which are presented the general results of the research project based on
quantitative and qualitative analysis of the source material in the Rota archives.

I. The Supreme Tribunal of the Sacra Romana Rota

The Sacra Romana Rota was one of the most important papal medieval tribunals together
with the Audientia litterarum contradictarum. The Rota functioned mainly as a tribunal
of appeal for any Christian, but it could also be used as the tribunal of first instance by
residents of the Papal States or those living in the territory of the diocese of Rome. The
competency of the tribunal included matters such as benefice litigations, property or
monetary disputes, marriage problems and many other different kinds of juridical issues.
The birth of the tribunal has been traced to the twelfth century but the Rota continued
developing little by little until it became the most influential ecclesiastical tribunal by the
mid-fifteenth century.

1 I wish to thank the Academy of Finland for a generous financing for the project. Until now, the results have
been published in Finnish in Kirsi Salonen, Kirkollisen oikeudenkäytön päälähteillä – Sacra Romana Rotan
toiminta ja sen oikeudellinen tausta myöhäiskeskiajalla ja uuden ajan alun taitteessa, Helsinki 2012. The
results will be published in English in: Papal Justice in the Late Middle Ages, forthcoming 2016.
2 Archivio Segreto Vaticano (ASV), S. R. Rota, Commissiones; ASV, S. R. Rota, Decisiones; ASV, S. R. Rota,
Manualia Actorum; ASV, S. R. Rota, Sententiae. Especially the series Manualia Actorum has been extensively
used in the project.
 Silentium perpetuum et absolutio ab impetitione.
L’expression de la sentence définitive et de la requête irrecevable
dans la procédure canonique des XIIe et XIIIe siècles
Franck Roumy*
Before the twelfth century, silence was only used by canon law as a punishment for verbal crimes like calumny
or heresy. The expressions silentium perpetuum imponere and absolvere ab impetitione appear in judicial practice of
the Church during the twelfth century, in order to express the inadmissibility of the claim or the binding force
of the res judicata. When silence is imposed on the plaintiff, the clause imponere silentium means the dismissal of
his claim by the judge. When silence is imposed on the two parties or on any future plaintiff, the phrase indicates
the binding force of the res judicata. In both cases, silence becomes a procedural tool to close the cases. After be-
coming a common practice in the ecclesiastical courts, the clause was adopted by the secular courts in the second
part of the thirteenth century.

Analysant le rôle du parlement de Paris dans la construction d’un État de droit au Moyen
Âge central, Jean Hilaire, dans un livre paru en 2011, a mis au jour une technique procé-
durale jusqu’alors méconnue.1 Le procédé apparaît au milieu du XIIIe siècle, tandis que le
Parlement, se détachant progressivement de la curia regis, devient la plus haute juridiction
d’appel du royaume de France.2 À la demande d’une des parties en procès ou, parfois, de
sa propre initiative, la cour ‘impose silence’ aux plaideurs. La formule silentium imponere
ou perpetuum silentium imponere se rencontre ainsi une centaine de fois dans les sentences
du Parlement, entre le milieu du XIIIe siècle et le début du XIVe siècle; la seconde des deux
expressions devient plus fréquente à la fin de cette période, sous le règne de Philippe le
Bel.3 Examinant minutieusement les décisions dans lesquelles ces formulations étaient
employées, Jean Hilaire a pu relever que celles-ci étaient utilisées dans deux hypothèses:
soit pour exprimer l’irrecevabilité d’une action intentée devant la cour; soit pour procla-
mer la force de la chose jugée prohibant tout recours sur la même cause.4 Dans les deux
cas, le silentium impositum produisait alors le même effet, interdisant aux litigants d’agir
en justice sur l’objet déjà présenté au tribunal. En imposant le silence, les juges formu-
laient aussi une injonction à l’égard des procéduriers. Ceux qui abusaient des voies de
recours offertes par le droit pour multiplier les actions en justice ou retarder le règlement
des litiges se voyaient écartés du prétoire.
Au XIIIe siècle, le personnel du parlement de Paris était presque exclusivement clé-
rical. Jean Hilaire a donc émis l’hypothèse que le système consistant à imposer silence à
des justiciables pouvait avoir été emprunté par la cour royale à la procédure canonique.
L’historien a effectivement relevé l’expression imponere silentium un siècle avant que les
juges séculiers français n’en fassent usage, dans une décrétale de Clément III.5 Le même

* Le présent article est également publié dans le BMCL 31, 2014, 125 – 145.
1 Jean Hilaire, La construction de l’État de droit dans les archives judiciaires de la Cour de France au XIIIe
siècle, Paris 2011.
2 Cf. Charles-Victor Langlois, Les origines du parlement de Paris, in: Revue historique 42, 1890, 74 – 114.
3 Hilaire, La construction (n. 1), 170.
4 Hilaire, La construction (n. 1), 171 – 179.
5 Michael (1187 – 1191) JL 16616 = 2 Comp. 1.9.4 = X 1.17.13.
 Old Customs and New Trends – Legal Procedure between
Ecclesiastical Ideology and Secular Practice in Medieval Denmark
Per Andersen
In 1254, when the newly appointed Archbishop Jakob Erlandsen arrived to his diocese, the terminology and
practice of learned law defined the concept of ‘knowing’ and ‘witness’ and ‘to prove’ as the core of legal procedu-
re, focusing not on formal proofs, but on substantive, material evidence and proofs of the matter disputed. The
terminology of the Church Law for Scania had, apparently, always been the counter-concepts of withi and dyli,
of ‘knowing’ and ‘denying’, but the way things were practiced was quite the opposite, Jakob experienced. This
probably just encouraged him even more to use his newly acquired authority to settle things, bringing the legal
procedural practice in accordance with the new understanding of the terminology used in the Scanian Church
Law. The new Archbishop must have found that almost everything was wrong: in Scania a bad custom had
developed, setting the development within contemporary canon law of proof aside, and the terminology used
indicated a learned contemporary level which not at all corresponded to the practice he experienced. Thus, he
set out to change things.

Something was going on in the province of Scania in the beginning of the 1250s. In an
amendment to a manuscript containing the Church Law for Scania, it is said that Niels
Erlandsen – the royal prefect in the town of Lund since the rule of King Abel (1250 –
1252) – had this law copied from the old law. The old law which Archbishop Eskil (1137
– 1177) and Bishop Absalon (Bishop of Roskilde in the island of Zealand 1158 – 1192,
Archbishop of Lund 1178 – 1201) had given to the inhabitants of Scania with the ap-
proval of King Valdemar I (1157 – 1182). The royal prefect had done so in order to have
the law distributed to the peasants in every district of Scania to make it possible for them
to defend themselves lawfully.1
With this statement, the royal prefect placed himself – and thereby the king – in a
central position when it came to discussing, negotiating and settling the law of Scania;
even when it came to the Church Law. Thus, the Church Law for Scania became an
important component in the political power struggle between King Christoffer I (1252
– 1259) and Archbishop Jakob Erlandsen (Bishop of Roskilde in Zealand 1250 – 1254,
Archbishop of Lund 1254 – 1274). This power struggle could almost be called ‘consti-
tutional’, as it concerned the rights and duties of the church towards the king, with the
amendment also involving the interests of the local peasants. Archbishop Jakob, whose
brother as royal prefect supported the king, fought for greater autonomy for the church
than had previously been the case for his predecessors in the Danish Church province.
However, the files for the case later raised before the Pope also shows that the Archbishop
at the same time wanted to modernize the customs, supplementing the old Church Law
dating back to the end of the twelfth century – and maybe even the rules in the Church
Law itself – in order to bring it in accordance with contemporary canon law in the mid-
dle of the thirteenth century. Therefore, in order to get the inhabitants of Scania on

1 The Church Law for Scania is, together with the secular Danish provincial laws and the Church Law for Zea-
land, published in Danmarks gamle Landskabslove med Kirkelovene I – VIII, ed. Johs. Brøndum-Nielsen /
Poul Johs. Jørgensen, København 1933 – 1961 [hereafter DGL]. The Church Law for Scania is published in
DGL I.2, 819 – 878 (text 1 – 3, different editions). For the amendment, see DGL I.2, 878.
 L’aveu civil erroné et ses conséquences
dans la procédure romano-canonique (XIIe – XIIIe siècle)
Nicolas Pose
The confessio in jure has been the subject of much analysis and commentary by medieval jurists, both civilians and
canonists, between the XIIth century and the XIIIth century. The rules issued during this period have given the
judicial confession a prominent place in the hierarchy of evidence and have established the strict conditions of
its validity. Among these requirements, the error committed by the defendant or one of his legal representatives,
remained a recurring theme, especially in procedural treaties, glosses and commentaries dealing with the confessio
in jure. The frequent use of the term sciens shows how medieval jurists intend to affirm that, on the one hand,
the words pronounced must not be vitiated by error and, on the other hand, the defendant, his procurator or his
advocatus, are allowed to correct or to withdraw the confession. However, some restrictions have been imposed
by civilians and canonists, especially on the basis of the Roman jurisconsults’ works, regarding the nature of the
error (error facti or error juris), the reasons for this erroneous belief (error in proprio facto or error in alieno facto)
and the period of time during which the confession could be withdrawn. These questions set off intense contro-
versies among glossators and commentators. If they have admitted unanimously the importance of truth-seeking
in criminal cases, some dissensions appeared about civil matters. The interest of these rich and complex debates
lies in the evocation and the accurate description of certain technical aspects of the romano-canonical procedure
in a decisive period marked by the development of the ecclesiastical courts and the emergence of an objective
evidence law.

La question de l’aveu judiciaire, fréquemment débattue, contribue à éclairer l’histoire du

développement et de l’unification du système probatoire en Occident. Outre l’abondante
bibliographie consacrée à la procédure et à la preuve en générale,1 les rares études portant
sur la confessio in jure, tant en droit romain que dans la doctrine médiévale, ont révélé sa
force probante et mis en exergue le statut particulier qui lui a été conféré tout au long de
l’histoire.2

1 Pour le droit romain, voir notamment: Giovanni Pugliese, La preuve dans le procès romain à l’époque clas-
sique, in: La preuve, Première partie: l’Antiquité, Bruxelles 1964 (Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin pour
l’histoire comparative des institutions 16), 277 – 348; Gian Gualberto Archi, Les preuves dans le droit du
Bas-Empire, in: La preuve, Première partie: l’Antiquité, Bruxelles 1964 (Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin
pour l’histoire comparative des institutions 16), Bruxelles 1964, 389 – 414; Max Kaser / Karl Hackl, Das rö-
mische Zivilprozessrecht, München 1996; pour le droit savant: Paul Fournier, Les officialités au Moyen Âge.
Étude sur l’organisation, la compétence et la procédure des tribunaux ecclésiastiques ordinaires en France,
de 1180 à 1328, Paris 1880; Jean-Philippe Lévy, La hiérarchie des preuves dans le droit savant du Moyen
Âge depuis la renaissance du droit romain jusqu’à la fin du XVIe siècle, Paris 1939 (Annales de l’Université
de Lyon, 3e série 5); Raoul van Caenegem, La preuve dans le droit du Moyen Âge occidental: rapport de
synthèse, in: La preuve, Deuxième partie: Moyen Âge et temps modernes, Bruxelles / Gent 1965 (Recueils
de la Société Jean Bodin pour l’histoire comparative des institutions 17), 691 – 753.
2 Le mémoire de Jean-Philippe Lévy sur la hiérarchie des preuves en droit savant offre un aperçu général très
complet du régime de l’aveu dans la doctrine médiévale. Voir également: André Giffard, La confessio in iure,
Paris 1900; Paul Collinet, L’histoire de la confessio in iure, in: RHD 29, 1905, 171 – 194; Jacques Tardiveau,
Étude historique sur l’aveu judiciaire en matière civile, Tours  1908; Yan Thomas, Confessus pro iudicato.
L’aveu civil et l’aveu pénal à Rome, in: L’aveu. Antiquité et Moyen Âge. Acte de la table ronde: Rome,
28 – 30 mars 1984, Rome 1986, 99 – 117; Jacques Chiffoleau, Avouer l’inavouable: l’aveu et la procédure
inquisitoire à la fin du Moyen Âge, in: L’aveu. Histoire, sociologie, philosophie, Paris 2001, 57 – 97; Mathias
Schmoeckel, Die Entwicklung der confessio als Beweismittel, in: Mathias Schmoeckel / Orazio Condorel-
li  / Franck Roumy (éd.), Der Einfluss der Kanonistik auf die europäische Rechtskultur, t.  III: Straf-und
Strafprozessrecht, Köln / Weimar / Wien 2012 (Norm und Struktur 37/3), 427 – 455.
 ‘Our letters have not usually made law (legem facere) on such
matters’ (Alexander III, 1169): A New Look at the Formation of
the Canon Law of Marriage in the Twelfth Century
Anne J. Duggan
This paper is a follow-up to ‘Making Law or Not,’ presented at Esztergom in 2008. There the spotlight was on the
character and use of papal decretals in general; here the emphasis is on the interplay between the theological, le-
gal, and practical influences that contributed to the development of a more coherent marriage law between 1100
and 1215. Among the topics examined are consent, consanguinity / affinity / spiritual relationship, incest, and
the complex antecedents of the Fourth Lateran Council’s canon 50, which reduced the range of kinship within
which marriage was prohibited, from seven degrees of consanguinity to four.

Introduction
I argued at Esztergom in 2008 that the overwhelming mass of papal decretals issued in
1

the twelfth century were responses to episcopal consultations or to judicial appeals from
individuals or institutions. It was from these materials that bishops and their lawyers con-
structed their own dossiers of authorities for later use—as support for synodal decrees,
for example, or even as authorities in judicial cases. Such matters as court procedure, the
examination of witnesses, the requirement of iuramenta to tell the truth without fear
or favour or profit, the right of litigants to recuse judges or to appeal, and much, much
more, including aspects of marriage law, were thrashed out in these exchanges. Few, if
any, were designed as legislative acts, but many acquired authority by being received,
circulated, and ultimately inserted into the Liber Extra in 1234.
In a paper presented in Copenhagen in 2011,2 I showed how the four paragraphs
on marriage in Alexander III’s Licet preter solitum to Romuald II of Salerno in 1177 were
informed by critical debates in and between the schools on such matters as the place of
consent in the making of marriage and the impediment of spiritual relationship; and here
I should like to present similar evidence of the contribution of theological debates to the
shifts in the treatment of consent, consanguinity, affinity, incest, and spiritual relation-
ship under Innocent II, Alexander III, Celestine III, and Innocent III.

I. The Primacy of Consent in the Formation of Marriage

The question of which action amid the plethora of customary procedures, like gifts,
rings, dowry, dower, priestly blessing, etc. constituted marriage was raised in spectacular
fashion in a celebrated case in England in the 1130s. Albereda de Tresgoz believed that

1 A. J. Duggan, Making Law or Not? The Function of Papal Decretals in the Twelfth Century, in: Proceedings
Esztergom 2008, 41 – 70.
2 A. J. Duggan, The Nature of Alexander III’s Contribution to Marriage Law, with Special Reference to Licet
preter solitum in: P. Andersen / K. Salonen, et al. (Eds.), Law and Marriage in Medieval and Early Modern
Times, Proceedings of the Eighth Carlsberg Conference on Medieval Legal History 2011, Copenhagen
2012, 45 – 65. For a broader examination of Alexander’s contribution, see A. J. Duggan, The Effect of Alex-
ander III’s ‘Rules on the Formation of Marriage’ in Angevin England, The R. Allen Brown Memorial Lecture
2010, in: Anglo-Norman Studies 33, 2011, 1 – 22.
 The Hot and the Cold Language: Incest Discourses in the
Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
Christof Rolker
Throughout the Middle Ages marriage prohibitions on grounds of kinship (by blood, affinity or spiritual kinship)
commonly referred to as ‘incest legislation’ were talked about in rather different terms; there was a ‘hot’ discourse
on the horror of incest, and a ‘cold’ discourse on the advantages of exogamy. In the eleventh, twelfth and thir-
teenth centuries, the availability of both discourses was crucial for the development of the law. As an analysis
of pre-Gratian canon law, Gratian’s Decretum and contemporary theology shows, the possibility to discuss the
marriage prohibitions in rather neutral terms certainly helped to prepare the eventual reduction of these prohibi-
tions in 1215. Turning to widely-read theological and penitential summae of the thirteenth century, the ‘hot’ and
the ‘cold’ language can be shown to have persisted well after 1215, and being used by different authors mainly
depending on context. When discussing the prohibited degrees, the choice between different modes of speaking
continued to be as meaningful as the choice of the right proof-texts.

The medieval canon law on marriage, and in particular the large set of marriage prohibi-
tions have long puzzled canon lawyers and historians, and in all likelihood will continue
to do so. For good reasons, scholars have concentrated on the early Middle Ages, asking
why the prohibited degrees and the way to count them evolved in such a way as to finally
exclude such an extreme number of potential marriage partners.1 In its most extreme
form, this excluded all relatives by blood in the seventh degree of canonical computation,
that is, any of the great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren of any of one’s great-great-
great-great-great-grandparents. In addition, one should not forget that blood relations
were only one of three affinitates as defined by canon law; inlaws and spiritual relatives
were also prohibited for marriage. Until 1215 at least, affinitates secundi and even tertii
generis further added to the complexity of the law, and excluded even more potential
marriage partners. All in all, the high medieval marriage prohibitions were more complex
than any other legislation on this matter known from European or, for that matter, extra-
European history.
In the following, I will not ask why it was possible that the law developed in such
an extreme way as to exclude such an excessive number of people as potential marriage
partners. Rather, my interest is focussed on what I call the incest discourses in the twelfth
and thirteenth century.2 How was this legislation talked about? As I want to argue, me-
dieval authors were capable of discussing the prohibited degrees in rather different terms.
On the one hand, the prohibited degrees could be talked about in biblical terms of purity
and pollution, so that even marriage to very distant relatives could be called ‘incest’, and
thus as a very serious sin indeed. On the other hand, there were also traditions of discuss-

1 See most recently Karl Ubl, Inzestverbot und Gesetzgebung: Die Konstruktion eines Verbrechens (300 –
1100), Berlin 2009. Probably the best known (though highly controversial) model remains that of Jack
Goody, The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe, Cambridge / New York 1983, esp. 133 –
156.
2 For an earlier version of this paper, focused on eleventh-century canon law, see Christof Rolker, Two Models
of Incest: Conflict and Confusion in High Medieval Discourse on Kinship and Marriage, in: Peer Andersen
/ Mia Münster-Swendsen / Helle Vogt (Eds.), Law and Marriage in Medieval and Early Modern Times,
København 2012, 139 – 159.
 Si fornicatio clerici est publica: La fornication publique
des clercs dans le droit canonique classique
Bernard d’Alteroche1
The practice of celibacy and continence gradually won acceptance among clerics in the Latin Church and the
principle was codified by the Council of Elvira in the fourth century. However, these principles were challenged
from time to time, and during the Gregorian Reform they were fought over once again. Gratian’s Decretum
echoed the earlier commitment and papal legislation increased the committment to celibacy and continence.
Various principles were elaborated and defined, especially in the title De cohabitatione clericorum and mulierum
(X 3.2) of the Liber Extra. The doctrine will be developed somewhat, particularly in the analysis of the sin of
fornication and the punishment of clergy who are found to be public fornicators. The requirement of celibacy
and continence among the higher clergy, however, will not prevent breaches of the rule, and discussions of the
desirability of maintaiing the rule will continue.
Au printemps 2007, les médias français ont fait un large écho à l’histoire du père Léon,
curé d’un petit village de deux mille âmes qui pendant près de vingt ans, a entretenu
une relation amoureuse avec une veuve, mère de trois enfants. Cette histoire a été une
nouvelle fois l’occasion pour certains de poser la question de l’obligation du célibat et de
la chasteté des prêtres.2 Celle-ci, qui a toujours fait l’objet de débats, refait régulièrement
surface, notamment depuis la deuxième moitié du xxe siècle. Aussi, la huitième session
du concile Vatican II a-t-elle été l’occasion pour l’Église de réaffirmer sa position officielle
dans le décret Presbyterorum Ordinis (n° 16) du 7 décembre 1965.3 De nombreux rappels
de cette doctrine sont intervenus depuis4 d’autant que, comme le précise Vatican II, les
Églises orientales5 et l’Église latine n’ont pas, sur cette question, la même doctrine.

1 Une version plus développée de cet article est parue dans B. Basdevant-Gaudemet / Fr. Jankowiak / Fr.
Roumy (éd.), Plenitudo Juris. Mélanges en hommage à Michèle Bégou-Davia, Paris 2015, 29-64.
2 Les études consacrées au célibat et à la chasteté des prêtres sont considérables et il n’est pas possible d’en
donner ici la liste exhaustive. Outre la bibliographie indiquée par J. Gaudemet, Église et cité. Histoire du
droit canonique, Paris 1994, 491, on peut citer, pour des études d’ensemble: E. Jombart, Célibat des clercs,
in: DDC III, 1942, 132 – 145; E. Jombart, Chasteté, in: DDC III, 1942, 665 – 675; E. Vacandard, Célibat
ecclésiastique, in: DThC II, 1923, 2068 – 2088; M. Dortel-Claudot, Le prêtre et le mariage. Évolution de
la législation canonique des origines au xiie siècle, in: L’Année Canonique 17 (Mélanges offerts à Pierre An-
drieu-Guitrancourt), 1973, 319 – 344. Pour une recherche plus poussée sur les xie-xiiie siècles voir J. Gaude-
met, Le célibat ecclésiastique. Le droit et la pratique du xie au xiiie siècle, in: ZRG Kan. Abt. 68, 1982, 1 – 31
(réimpr.: Église et société en Occident au Moyen Âge, Londres 1984 (CS 187), n° XV). On peut trouver
également une présentation plus historique que juridique dans E. Abbott, Histoire universelle de la chasteté
et du célibat, Québec / Paris 2003.
3 Les conciles œcuméniques, éd. G. Alberigo et alii, Les Décrets, t. II/2, Paris 1994, 2153.
4 Cette position est reprise par le pape Paul VI dans son encyclique du 24 juin 1967 Sacerdotalis cælibatus (Acta
Apostolicae Sedis 59, 1967, 673). Elle est à nouveau rappelée par Jean-Paul II dans son encyclique Redemptor
hominis publiée le 4 mars 1979 (Acta Apostolicae Sedis 71, 1979, 276 – 277). En 2007, le cardinal Cláudio
Humes, Préfet de la congrégation pour le Clergé, a publié une Réflexion à l’occasion du 40e anniversaire de
l’encyclique Sacerdotalis cælibatus, dans laquelle il indique que la Congrégation a considéré comme ‘opportun
de rappeler l’enseignement magistériel de cet important document pontifical’, online: http://www.vatican.
va/roman_curia//congregations/cclergy/documents/rc_con_cclergy_doc_20070224_hummes-sacerdota-
lis_fr.html (dernière visite: 2014 July 24).
5 Sur la question du célibat dans les Églises orientales voir, entre autres, É. Herman, Célibat des clercs (en droit
oriental), in: DDC III, 1942, 145 – 156.
 L’abandon des enfants en droit médiéval:
l’apport de la doctrine romano-canonique
Florence Demoulin-Auzary*
If the provisions concerning abandonment of children contained in the Decretum Gratiani and the Liber Extra
seem to follow the path of ancient Roman texts and seem to tolerate this practice, the medieval canonical doc-
trine, so far as it is concerned, considers abandonment as a criminal offence. Equated to a homicide and theo-
retically punished as such, it also triggers the disappearance of the dominium or of the patria potestas upon the
child. The new-born who is abandoned or the infant who is forsaken acquires above all full freedom, which aims
at preserving them from the hold of their finder.

Exposer un enfant après sa naissance est à Rome ‘un acte de souveraineté domestique’,1
dont le père de famille est seul juge. Cette faculté est l’un des attributs de sa puissance,
comme, entre autres, le droit de vendre sa progéniture2 et la potestas vitae necisque. Cette
dernière, pensée in abstracto, n’est appelée à s’exercer que sur les fils de famille;3 l’exposi-
tion en revanche est une réalité frappant les filles comme les garçons. Elle n’a pas néces-
sairement une issue fatale, puisque l’enfant peut être recueilli.4 À l’époque classique, ni
l’un ni l’autre ne font l’objet d’une remise en cause essentielle, à la différence du droit de
vendre.5 Évaluer précisément le nombre d’abandons est impossible, mais l’usage paraît
être répandu dans toutes les couches de la société, notamment, dans les classes aisées,
pour contrôler la transmission du patrimoine.6 D’un point de vue juridique, il est à
noter que l’exposition ne rompt pas le lien qui unit le père à l’enfant. En effet, des textes
montrent que, d’une part, elle n’altère pas la patria potestas7 et que, d’autre part, elle
n’entraîne pas de modification du statut initial de l’enfant.8 À la charnière des iiie et ive

* Cet article est destiné à paraître sous une forme plus étendue dans Mélanges en l’honneur de Michèle Bégou-
Davia, éd. B. Basdevant-Gaudemet / F. Jankowiak / F. Roumy.
1 Y. Thomas, à Rome, pères citoyens et cité des pères (iie s. avant J.-C. – iie s. après J.-C.), in: A. Burguière /
C. Klapisch-Zuber et alii (éd.), Histoire de la famille, t. 1: Mondes lointains, Paris 1986, 255. Sur l’abandon:
L. Lallemand, Histoire générale des enfants abandonnés et délaissés, Paris 1885 et J. Boswell, Au bon cœur
des inconnus. Les enfants abandonnés de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance, trad. P.-E. Dauzat, Paris 1993.
2 Sur cette question, non abordée ici: C. Verlinden, L’esclavage dans l’Europe médiévale, 2 t., Bruges 1955, et
J. Boswell, Au bon cœur (n. 1).
3 Y. Thomas, Vitae necisque potestas. Le père, la cité, la mort, in: Du châtiment dans la cité. Supplices corporels
et peine de mort dans le monde antique, Rome 1984 (Collection de l’école française de Rome 79), 499 –
548, en particulier 507 et 544.
4 M. Memmer, Ad servitutem aut ad lupanar… Ein Beitrag zur Rechtsstellung von Findelkindern nach rö-
mischem Recht, in: ZRG Rom. Abt. 108, 1991, 21 – 93, ici 23 souligne que: ‘Die Aussetzung wurde von
der antiken Gesellschaft als Alternative zum Kindesmord und nicht als eine Form des Kindesmord gesehen.
[…] Freilich war die Weglegung nicht ohne Risiko, aber sie wurde allgemein nicht im Sinne einer Kindestö-
tung geübt’. L’enfant exposé peut éventuellement devenir l’alumnus de celui qui le recueille et entretenir avec
lui des relations teintées d’affection: cf. H. S. Nielsen, Quasi kin, quasi adoption and the roman family, in:
M. Corbier (éd.), Adoption et fosterage, Paris 2000, 249 – 262.
5 P. Bonfante, Corso di diritto romano, t. 1: Diritto di famiglia, Milano 1963, 104 – 107.
6 Sur les raisons de l’exposition: P. Veyne, Famille et amour sous le haut Empire romain, in: Annales ESC 33/1,
1978, 35 – 63 (réimpr. La société romaine, Paris 2001, 88 – 130), spécialement 105 – 107.
7 D. 40.4.29.
8 C. 8.51(52).1. Sur l’analyse de la législation romaine en matière d’exposition: M. B. Fossati Vanzetti, Vendita
ed esposizione degli infanti da Costantino a Giustiniano, in: Studia et documenta historiae et iuris 49, 1983,
 Marriage Impediments in Canon Law and Practice:
Consanguinity Regulations and the Case of Orthodox-Catholic
Intermarriage in Kyivan Rus, ca. 1000 – 1250
Talia Zajac*
The paper explores how the marriage alliances contracted by the Rus nobility with their Catholic neighbours
during the Kyivan period (ca. 1000 – 1250) relate to consanguinity prohibitions in canon law. It tests the hy-
pothesis that Rus princes preferred to marry more distantly related rulers of a different rite rather than violate
consanguinity regulations by marrying closer relatives. The paper begins by briefly surveying methods used for
calculating degrees of consanguinity in both Western and Eastern canon law, including native Rus sources. Then,
the paper examines how this canon law was reflected in practice according to the extant narrative sources, while
acknowledging the interpretative challenges posed by this methodology. The paper concludes that, especially in
their alliances with foreign rulers, Rus princes avoided inter-marriage only with very close relatives, such as first
cousins. It suggests that the concept of necessity in Western canon law and economy (oikonomia) in Eastern
canon law may have shaped the seemingly measured response of clerics to these violations of consanguinity pro-
hibitions. The paper concludes by suggesting that compliance with church regulations should be viewed not as a
single or overriding factor in marriage strategies, but rather as existing within a complex matrix of motivations,
including the need to find a spouse of the same social standing as oneself.

The years 1000 to 1250 were a particularly fruitful time of diplomatic, political, religious,
and cultural interchanges between the Orthodox Riurikid family, the ruling dynasty of
Kyivan Rus, and its Catholic counterparts.1 Although Prince Vladimir the Great of Rus
accepted Christianity from Byzantium in the year 988, he continued to maintain ties
with Catholic Europe, despite the increasing liturgical and theological differences be-
tween Western and Eastern Christianity.2 Indeed, his successors maintained a flexible

* This paper draws on doctoral research on the inter-rite marriage alliances of the Riurikid dynasty funded
by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). I also wish to acknowledge
funds from the University of Toronto School of Graduate Studies Conference Grant that made possible my
attendance at this International Congress. Finally, I would like to thank Drs. C. Rolker and A. Duggan for
generously sharing their research with me, Dr. J. Schallert for his help with the Old Church Slavonic transla-
tion, and Dr. M.A. Johnson for her help in shaping this paper.
1 The adjectives ‘Catholic’ and ‘Orthodox’ are used as terms of convenience. It is a topic of lively debate as to
when the Eastern and Western branches of Christianity formally believed themselves to be in schism. The
significance of the date 1054 has long been questioned; B. Leib, Rome, Kiev et Byzance à la fin du XIe siècle:
rapports religieux des Latins et des Gréco-Russes sous le pontificat d’Urbain II (1088 – 1099), Paris 1925 (re-
print New York 1968); S. Runciman, The Eastern Schism: a Study of the Papacy and the Eastern Churches
during the XIth and XIIth centuries, Oxford 1963. On the use of ‘Kyivan Rus’ instead of ‘Kievan Russia’ see
M. Hrushevsky, The Traditional Scheme of “Russian” History and the Problem of a Rational Organization
of the History of the Eastern Slavs, in: Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United
States 2, 1952, 355 – 364; S. Franklin, The Invention of Rus(sia)s, in: A. P. Smyth (Ed.), Some Remarks
on Medieval and Modern Perceptions of Continuity and Discontinuity in Medieval Europeans: studies in
ethnic identity and national perspectives in Medieval Europe, Hampshire / New York 1998, 180 – 195.
2 On Orthodox-Catholic inter-marriage in Eastern and Western canon law see D. M. Nicol, Mixed Marriages
in Byzantium in the Thirteenth Century, in: C. W. Dugmore / C. Duggan (Eds.), Studies in Church History:
papers read at the first winter and summer meetings of the Ecclesiastical History Society, 1., London 1964,
160 – 172; S. Troianos, Die Mischehen in den heiligen Kanones, in: Kanon 6, 1983, 92 – 101; V. Aleksan-
drov, To zhe i latiny: Zapret brakov s katolikami u pravoslavnykh slavyan v srednie veka, in: Studia Slavica
Hungarica 47, 2002, 101 – 113; A. V Nazarenko, “Zelo nepodobno pravovernym”: Mezhkofessionalnye
braki na Rusi v XI-XII vekakh, in: Drevniaia Rus i Slaviane, Moskva 2009, 269 – 283.
 The Curious Case of Mary Felton
Elizabeth Makowski

The pawns are the soul of the game.

(François-André Danican Philidor, 1726 – 1795)

The Middle English word ‘sometime’ might have been coined for Mary Felton (circa 1356 – 1398). At one point
or another during her short life she was married to Edmund Hemgrave, Thomas Breton, Geoffrey Worsley, and
John Curson, consecutively, though not always exclusively; she was also ‘sometime’ widow, mistress, divorcée,
nun, apostate, and mother. Mary’s story parallels and finally surpasses that of her more famous contemporary, the
Fair Maid of Kent, in terms of matrimonial intrigues and legal entanglements. In this article, I present some of
my findings concerning the ecclesiastical response to Mary’s alleged apostacy in the context of her complex life.

The Middle English word ‘sometime’ might have been coined for Mary Felton (circa
1356 – 1398). At one point or another during her short life she was married to Edmund
Hemgrave, Thomas Breton, Geoffrey Worsley, and John Curson, consecutively, though
not always exclusively; she was also ‘sometime’ widow, mistress, divorcée, nun, apostate,
and mother. Mary Felton was an extraordinary person and she lived in extraordinary
times. The plague which had devastated England just seven years before her birth in
1356, and which broke out five more times before her death, forty-two years later (1361,
1369, 1372, 1375, 1390), left economic and social dislocation in its wake.1 The Hundred
Years’ War claimed its own casualties and required of its combatants a kind of refined
brutality that was not easily confined to the battlefield – facts with which the daughter
of a knight and the wife of several others was only too well aware. Both Mary Felton’s
available options and the decisions she made regarding them were affected by these larger
events.
Yet while her story unfolds against an especially volatile and harsh backdrop, it is not
a completely unique tale. Mary was a lady, and that meant that some of her difficulties
were those commonly encountered by English gentle women. It was a lady’s right to be
protected, but her fate to have that protector chosen by others. Canon law requirements
notwithstanding, the wishes of an heiress were seldom considered in the formation of
matrimonial contracts or religious commitments and her status made her a likely pawn
in the careerist games of kith and kin.2 Fortunately for the historian, those games tended
to be played out in the courtroom.
English nobility and gentry went to court to defend or augment their property and
rights, which included rights of marriage and wardship, with astounding frequency. Be-
cause the King claimed an interest in all the land of the realm, common law petitions,
court rolls, and inquisitions post mortem, abound with examples. And since marriage
contracts, annulments, and the punishment of adultery, “everything, that is, having to
do with marriage except questions of property settlement and inheritance came within
1 Chris Given-Wilson, English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages, London, 1996, 114.
2 Jennifer Ward, Women in the Middle Ages, London 2006, 27 – 31.
 Secret Wedding, Incestuous Marriages and Subornation
of Witnesses in the Tractatus de testibus by Hugolinus da Sesso
Alessandra Bassani
The article studies the tractatus de testibus by an italian jurist, Ugolino da Sesso, who taught in the University of
Palencia in the second half of twelfth century. The study centers around three items, secret wedding, incestuous
marriages and subornation of witnesses, and compares with the solutions offered by other contemporary and
later jurists.

I. Introduction
Hugolinus da Sesso lived at the end of twelfth and the beginning of thirteenth century.
He was born in Italy, in a Ghibelline family which had a fief near Reggio Emilia.1 Linda
Fowler-Magerl for the first time brought him to light when she ascribed to him three
tractatus, de appellatione, de recusatione iudicum and de testibus, which we can find in the
manuscript S. Cugat 55 in the Archivo de la Corona de Aragòn de Barcelona.2 Domenico
Maffei has suggested that probably Hugolinus was Ugo, the bishop of Vercelli between
1214 and 1235. This is a meaningful fact in the history of law because when Hugolinus
was bishop of Vercelli, the Studium of that town succeeded in attracting teachers and stu-
dents from the University of Padua. More recently, the work of Simone Bordini showed
some new aspects of Hugolinus’ ecclesiastical career in Italy and sheds light on his deal-
ings with the German Emperor.3
Hugolinus studied in Bologna. From the quotations he made in his work, we know
that his teachers were Ugo and Baziano.4 They were magistri in Bologna in the eighties
of the twelfth century, so we can assume that Hugolinus was born in the sixties. He was
a teacher in the cathedral of Cremona before going to the University of Montpellier, and
then to the University of Palencia, a studium that was strongly supported by the king
Alfonso VIII of Castilia.
In this period, the nineties of twelfth century, he wrote three treatises5 which were the
outcome of his training. Here he mixed civil and canon law in order to deal with some
problems of the trial. This approach puts Hugolinus in line with a movement which was
common in the European legal culture of the period: the trial radically changed between

1 Paola Maffei, Hugolinus da Sesso, in: Dizionario Biografico dei Giuristi Italiani (XII-XX secolo), ed. Italo
Birocchi / Ennio Cortese / Antonello Mattone / Marco Nicola Miletti, Bologna 2013 (D.B.G.I.), 1994 –
1995 and bibliography.
2 Linda Fowler-Magerl, Ordo iudiciorum vel ordo iudiciarius, Frankfurt am Main 1984, a.i. and Linda Fowl-
er-Magerl, Ordines iudiciarii and Libelli de ordine iudiciorum, Turnhout 1994, a.i.. See also, about the De
testibus, Stephan Kuttner, Analecta iuridica Vaticana in Collectanea Vaticana in honorem Anselmi M. Card.
Albareda a Bibliotheca Apostolica edita, Città del Vaticano 1962, 415 – 452, 430.5.
3 Simone Bordini, Uberto da Bobbio, un giurista tra città e scuole nell’Italia padana del Duecento. Una prima
messa a punto per un profilo biografico, in: P. Gheda / M.T. Guerrini / S. Negruzzo / S. Salustri (Ed.), La
storia delle università alle soglie del XXI secolo, Bologna 2008, 91 – 105, 99 – 100.
4 Gonzálo Martínez Díez, Tres lecciones del siglo XII del Estudio general de Palencia, in Archivo de historia
del derecho español 60, 1991, 391 – 400, 398 – 399.
5 Between 1193 and 1196: Martínez Díez, Tres lecciones (n. 4), 395 – 396.
 À la recherche de l’incorrigibilitas
dans les pénitentiels (VIe – XIe siècle)
Marie-Clotilde Lault
The legal notion of incorrigibility appears from the Sixth Century in Sententiae of Isidore of Seville. However, it
is very uncommon before the Decretum of Gratian. What legal concept is then used by the Church before the
Decretum to describe incorrigibility? Penitentials, dated between the Sixth and Eleventh Centuries, are a good
field of study to answer this question for two reasons. First, penitentials have a legal value as the core of the cano-
nical penal law. Then, as works of law, they are a good indicator of the church’s ability to react effectively against
hardened sinners and obstinate criminals. Thanks to the analysis of penitentials, we can see that the canonical
penal law before the Decretum describes incorrigibility as a consuetudo peccati. It seems that an inversion of legal
qualification occurred before and after the Decretum. Thus, the canonical penal law after Gratian attributes to
itself the notion of incorrigibilitas previously used by the civil law. On the contrary, the civil law attributes to itself
consuetudo peccati previously used by the canon law.

Comme en attestent les paroles de Paul dans son Épître aux Romains, la pénitence doit
s’attacher à la moralité du délinquant: ‘Il est nécessaire d’être soumis, tant par peur de
la colère divine qu’en raison de sa conscience’.1 Ainsi, ce sont les raisons l’inclinant à
rechuter qui guident la répression. Le droit canonique fonde, par conséquent, sa législa-
tion sur la guérison du délinquant affecté par la malice. Tant que la malice est présente
chez le pécheur, il lui est impossible de se corriger. Les canonistes sont alors contraints
de créer une notion juridique qualifiant exclusivement ce type de délinquance. C’est
la notion d’incorrigibilité. Composé du préfixe privatif –in, du substantif cor et enfin
du verbe regere, l’adjectif incorrigibilis décrit ‘le siège de l’âme’.2 Sa signification met en
exergue l’incapacité du pécheur à se corriger et non la nature de son délit. Les Sententiae
d’Isidore de Séville et les Moralia in Job de Grégoire le Grand, datant du VIe siècle, sont
les premiers textes où la notion d’incorrigibilité apparaît.3 Elle y évoque déjà l’exclusion
des pécheurs incorrigibles de l’Église.
Pourtant, la fréquence du terme est très faible avant la compilation de Gratien.4 Le
droit pénal canonique a donc employé d’autres moyens pour réprimer l’obstination dans
le péché. Les pénitentiels,5 datés entre les VIe et XIe siècles, permettent justement de les

1 Rm 13. 5.
2 A. Ernout / A. Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine, 4e éd., Paris 2001, entrée in, 311:
‘In-: préfixe privatif employé pour créer des formes adjectives et adverbiales’; entrée cor, 142: ‘cor: 1° cœur;
2° cœur en tant que siège de l’âme, siège de l’intelligence et de la sensibilité’; entrée rego, 567: rego: diriger
en droite ligne. Sens physique et moral; par suite ‘avoir la direction ou le commandement de’. […] La racine
*reg- indiquait un mouvement en droite ligne’.
3 Isidore de Séville, Sententiae, III.46.4, in: PL 83: Sacerdotes curam debent habere de his qui pereunt, ut ejus
redargutione aut corrigantur a peccatis, aut si incorrectibiles existunt, ab ecclesia separentur et Grégoire le Grand,
Moralia in Job, II.83 et XXXIII. 55, in: PL 75. La bonne entente entre les deux Pères, grâce au frère d’Isidore
de Séville, laisse imaginer une influence réciproque de leurs écrits.
4 R. Génestal affirme que le terme est une innovation de Gratien. Il précise toutefois que, en dépit de cette
apparition tardive dans les sources, le principe existait bien avant le Décret, R. Génestal, Le privilegium fori
en France du décret de Gratien à la fin du XIVe siècle, t. 2, Paris 1924, 11.
5 Sur la définition des pénitentiels, cf. A. Tardif, Histoire des sources du droit canonique, Paris 1887, 130;
G. Le Bras, Pénitentiels, in: Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 12 / 1, 1908, 1161 – 1179; R. Naz, Péni-
tentiels, in: DDC 6, 1949, 1337 – 1343; C. Vogel, Les Libri poenitentiales, Tournhout 1978 (Typologie
 The Meaning of Ecclesiastical Exclusion in the Archdiocese of
Reims, c.1100. The Legal Difference between Excommunication,
Anathema and Interdict
Frederik Keygnaert
Religious penalties entailing ecclesiastical exclusion remain little understood by today’s historians working on the
early and high medieval period. This article aims to compare the terms of excommunication, anathema and inter-
dict within the North-French Archdiocese of Reims during the last stage of pre-Gratian legislation, c. 1100. This
comparison is based on the canons of provincial and diocesan councils for the period 1090 – 1140, as well as on
two of the most important canonical collections, the Decretum by Ivo of Chartres (c. 1094) and its more popular
short version, the anonymous Panormia (after 1095). When analyzing the legal terms on excommunication and
anathema, it is clear that by the end of the eleventh century a legal distinction between both penalties would
have been hard to defend. As a rule, both penalties resulted in full ecclesiastical, social and spiritual separation.
Furthermore, canon law gave little reason to the people living on interdicted lands to distinguish the interdict
from collective excommunication.

I. Introduction
Religious penalties entailing ecclesiastical exclusion remain little understood by today’s
historians working on the early and high medieval period. In sharp contrast to the long
list of monographs entirely devoted to late medieval excommunication, anathema or
interdict,1 book-length works on the period before the middle of the twelfth century are
rare and antiquated. 2 While some recent short studies are a hopeful sign of the changing
tide – particularly in the field of liturgy3 – full-scale inquiries into the penalties’ legal
terms and practical effect have yet to see the light of day. The local interdict has been
studied even less than excommunication. This penalty prohibited (nearly) all religious

1 E.g. F. Donald Logan, Excommunication and the Secular Arm in Medieval England, Toronto 1968; Elisa-
beth Vodola, Excommunication in the Middle Ages, Berkeley 1986; Véronique Beaulande, Le malheur d’être
exclu? Excommunication, réconciliation et société à la fin du Moyen Âge, Paris 2006; Peter D. Clarke, The
Interdict in the Thirteenth Century. A Question of Collective Guilt, Oxford 2007.
2 Henry Charles Lea, Studies in Church History, the Rise of the Temporal Power, Benefit of Clergy, Excom-
munication, Philadelphia 1869, 223 – 487; Paul Hinschius, System des Katholischen Kirchenrechts, mit
besonderer Rücksicht auf Deutschland, Berlin 1888 – 1893 (reprint Graz 1959), Band 4: 691 – 864, Band
5: 1 – 492. One exception is Lester K. Little, Benedictine Maledictions: Liturgical Cursing in Romanesque
France, Ithaca 1999.
3 Christian Jaser, Ritual Excommunication: An “Ars Oblivionalis”?, in: Elma Brenner / Meredith Cohen /
Mary Franklin-Brown (Ed.), Memory and Commemoration in Medieval Culture, Aldershot 2013, 119 –
142; Michel Parisse, Excommunier: exclure de la communauté et de l’eucharistie. Recherches dans les textes
diplomatiques des XIe-XII siècles, in: Nicole Bériou / Béatrice Caseau / Dominique Rigaux (Ed.), Pratiques
de l’eucharistie dans les Églises d’Orient et d’Occident, Paris 2009, 573 – 600; Sarah Hamilton, Absolvimus
vos vice beati petri apostolorum principis: Episcopal Authority and the Reconciliation of Excommunicants
in England and Francia c. 900 – c. 1150, in: Paul Fouracre / David Ganz (Ed.), Frankland. The Franks and
the World of the Early Middle Ages. Essays in Honour of Dame Jinty Nelson, Manchester 2008, 209 – 241;
Sarah Hamilton, Remedies for “Great Transgressions”: Penance and Excommunication in Late Anglo-Sax-
on England, in: Francesca Tinti (Ed.), Pastoral Care in Late Anglo-Saxon England, Woodbridge 2005, 83
– 105; Hans Sauer, Die Exkommunikationsriten aus Wulfstans Handbuch und Liebermanns Gesetze, in:
Clausdirk Pollner / Helmut Rohlfing / Frank-Rutger Hausmann (Ed.), Bright is the Ring of Words: Fest-
schrift für Horst Weinstock zum 65. Geburtstag, Bonn 1996, 283 – 307. See also notes 5 – 7.
 Insanity, Blame, and ‘Quidam Theologi’ in C. 15 q. 1
Brandon T. Parlopiano*
This paper examines the controversies surrounding the insanity defense in twelfth-century canonical jurispru-
dence. The idea that those mentally incapable of forming an intention to commit a sin or crime should not be
held responsible for their actions had a close affinity with contemporary theological ideas on the primacy of
volition in the ethical thought of the twelfth century. This notion existed in tension with a more punitive outlook
that sought to restrict the instances in which a crime might go unpunished. The vibrant debates surrounding
this issue in Causa 15 q. 1 of Gratian’s Decretum drew on a wide range of sources, including Roman legal norms
and contemporary theology and help shed light on the use of multiple systems of thought in twelfth-century
canon law.
The idea that a lack of mental capacity should result in diminished criminal responsibility
has deep roots in Western law stretching back to Greco-Roman notions of intention-
ality. The insanity defense, as it is known today, continues to be a controversial idea,
particularly in Anglo-American jurisprudence. Many opponents see the defense as a way
for the guilty to escape their just punishment, while proponents argue that the insane
cannot truly be guilty of a crime.1 Disputes over the defense in the public sphere tend
to erupt after its use in especially well-publicized or particularly shocking trials. In the
United States, for example, several states went so far as to ban the insanity defense after
the acquittal of John Hinckley after his attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. Bruce
Perlin, a prolific scholar of the insanity defense in the modern United States, locates the
aversion to the defense in a ‘culture of punishment’.2 If we look back to the history of
the insanity defense, however, we find that it was no less controversial when it reemerged
during the twelfth-century renaissance of legal study.
The canonical treatment of the criminal responsibility of the insane provides a win-
dow onto the interaction of canon law, Roman law, and theology in the twelfth century.3
In this essay, I briefly outline the contours of fault and blame with reference to the insane
in the thought of Gratian and the Decretists. In particular, I discuss the notion of culpa
precedens, the idea that an insane person might be responsible for a crime if their insanity
were the result of a prior fault or sin. Stephan Kuttner noted in his famous Kanonistische
Schuldlehre that Huguccio broke with the concept of culpa precedens, which developed in
close connection with theological notions of the moral effects of ignorance.4 I wish to ar-

* A portion of this paper appears in my dissertation, ‘Madmen and Lawyers: The Development and Practice
of the Jurisprudence of Insanity in the Middle Ages’ (The Catholic University of America 2013).
1 Michael Perlin, ‘The Borderline which Separated You from Me’: The Insanity Defense, the Authoritarian
Spirit, the Fear of Faking, and the Culture of Punishment, in: Iowa Law Review 82, 1997, 1375 – 1426.
2 This kind of reaction is typical. The McNaughton Rules, which provide the basis for the modern An-
glo-American insanity defense, were formulated in order to limit the use of the defense after the acquittal of
Daniel McNaughton for the murder of a secretary of the Prime Minister.
3 The vitality of canonical reflections on fault and responsibility should not be surprising. See Pietro Palazzini,
L’Imputabilità dell’atto umano nel periodo pre-Graziano e nel ‘Decretum’ di Graziano, in: SG 7, 1959, 447
– 460, here 450. Canonists, and not theologians, were in the vanguard of moral theology during the twelfth
century.
4 Stephan Kuttner, Kanonistische Schuldlehre von Gratian bis auf die Dekretalen Gregors IX: Systematisch
auf Grund der handschriftlichen Quellen dargestellt, Città del Vaticano 1935, 106 – 108.
 Enclosure as Punishment for Adultery
Sara McDougall
When discussing the consequences of adultery, canonists of the classical period generally endorsed the enclosure
of a guilty wife in a monastery, a punishment first mandated by the Emperor Justinian. This article surveys that
law, but focuses on exploring possible instances of its application in France between the twelfth and fifteenth
centuries. As this article will demonstrate, there is no evidence for the use of enclosure as judicial punishment for
adultery in France before the sixteenth century. In fact, late medieval courts punished adultery quite differently.
This difference reflects an understanding of adultery as just as much of a crime when committed by a husband as
when committed by a wife, and perhaps even a greater crime than a wife’s adultery.

Medieval canonists universally condemned extramarital sex, categorizing it as a violation

of both the laws made by man and God’s divine decrees. This condemnation applied to
the extramarital sex of men as well as women. All sex outside of marriage was considered
a sin against one’s own body and that of one’s spouse. Possible consequences includ-
ed excommunication as well as civil penalties such as a legal separation of the couple,
which entailed a division of marital property – sometimes to the detriment of the guilty
spouse – and an end to cohabitation, but did not allow either party the right to remarry.1
Canonists also discussed the possible criminal punishments for those found guilty of
adultery, recalling, for example, the Old Testament stoning of an adulteress, or the cap-
ital punishment found in the Roman Law of Constantine. As Edward Reno has recent-
ly demonstrated, beginning in the thirteenth century canonists increasingly designated
whipping and enclosure in a monastery as the appropriate punishment for an adulteress,
a punishment first ordered by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century.2 While these
canonists all endorsed the punishment of adulteresses by enclosure they made no men-
tion of how male adulterers should be punished beyond the civil and spiritual penalties
outlined above.
Moreover, when explaining the possible legal consequences for adultery canonists
generally focused almost exclusively on female adultery. One might expect that this pre-
occupation with female adultery reflected a similar emphasis in legal practice, especially
as scholars frequently assume that men in medieval Europe could engage in extramarital
sex much more freely than women. However, as I have argued elsewhere, this assumption
seems to be far from accurate, at least for fifteenth century France and the neighboring
Low Countries.3

1 James Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, Chicago 1987, 347 – 348, 388. For
more information on legal separations, see Giuliano Marchetto, Il divorzio imperfetto: I giuristi medievali e
la separazione dei coniugi, Bologna 2008 (Annali dell’Instituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 48).
2 Edward Reno III, The Authoritative Text: Raymond of Penyafort’s editing of the Decretals of Gregory IX
(1234), PhD Columbia University 2011, 395 – 420; idem, Categories of Coercion: The Administrative
Framework for Heresy and Adultery Legislation under Pope Gregory IX, 1227-41 (paper presented at the
48th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, MI, 2013).
3 Sara McDougall, The Opposite of the Double Standard: Gender, Marriage, and Adultery Prosecution in Late
Medieval France, in: Journal of the History of Sexuality 23:2, 2014, 206-225. See also Vincent Tabbagh,
Recherches sur l’adultère et sa répression par les officialités de France septentrionale a la fin du moyen âge,
in: La petite délinquance du Moyen Age à l’époque contemporaine, ed. B. Garnot, Dijon: Editions univer-
 Escaping the Lion of St. Mark –
Church Asylum in Renaissance Venice
Nicolas Gillen1
The majority of canon law treatises on church asylum concentrate on its personal scope of application, providing
that certain criminals like murderers or highway robbers should be denied any protection. Venetian Church court
records from the pre-tridentine period, however, show that in practice two other questions proved to be vital.
Firstly, who had jurisdiction on the question of church asylum, the ecclesiastical or the secular court? In spite of
the traditional Venetian historiography the court of the patriarch ruled on the question of church asylum in some
cases until the 1530s. Secondly, was a specific site where somebody had been arrested a sanctuary or not? From
the interrogation protocols of witnesses it is possible to conclude which were the decisive features that meant a
site qualified as a sanctuary.

I. Introduction
In the first decades of the fifteenth century the nobility of Venice were deeply concerned
with the state of their monasteries. Monks committing crimes, nuns leading a wanton
life – the lack of discipline seemed to make these institutions anything but a house of
devotion and religion. In these years, the reform of female monasteries in particular was
a primary issue for the patriarch and the secular politicians of Venice.2
Yet not all dangers had their origins inside the walls of the convents. When crimi-
nals and debtors attempted to seek immunity the rough life of the lay world sometimes
physically entered the doors of the holy houses. According to the introduction of a new
statute of September 1521 in Venice, this could pose a serious threat to religious life. All
sorts of outlaws had gathered at the monasteries and used them like camping sites: ‘It has
been reported several times to our public attorneys that many bandits of this city and even of all
countries and locations of our dominion after being banned and having obeyed the ban return
to our city and retreat to various monasteries and other sacred places, staying and living there
just as if they were their own domiciles, in manifest contempt of law, order and convictions
made by our councils, causing much grumbling in the whole country and most importantly
with grave offence to God and in violation of the said sacred places which are refuges in every
year in some necessary and sudden cases, but should not be a host domicile and depository of
the nefarious and convicted for the various errors which they have committed.’3

1 I would like to thank Ms Marie-Louise Lillywhite for her help with English style and grammar.
2 M.  Laven, Virgins of Venice. Broken Vows and Cloistered Lives in the Renaissance Convent, New York
et al. 2004, 45; G. Zarri, Recinti. Donne, clausura e matrimonio nella prima età moderna, Bologna 2000,
74.
3 Leggi criminali venete, ed. E. Della Giovanna / A. Sorgato, Venezia 1980, 126v: Essendo sta molte fiade in-
tender alli Avogadori Nostri di Comun, che molti Banditi di questa Città ac etiam di tutte Terre, & Luoghi del
Dominio Nostro, dapoi che sono Banditi, & stati alli suoi bandi ritornino in questa Città Nostra reducendosi in
diversi Monasterii, & altri Luochi Sacri dimorando, & habitando in essi, come se fossero suoi propri domicilli,
in manifesto contempto delle leze, ordeni, & condemnationi fatte per li Consegli Nostri con grandissima mor-
moratione di tutta la Terra, ac imprimis com grave offension dell’onnipotente Iddio, & violation di detti Luochi
Sacri i quali si sono refugio d’ogni anno in qualche caso necessario, & repentino, però non dieno esser recettaculo
domicilio, & depositario de scelesti, & condannati per diversi errori per loro commessi.
Lawmaking between Burchard and Raymond. The Example of the
Prohibition of Hunting by Clerics in the Twelfth Century
Stephan Dusil
Since the Early Middle Ages, clerics were forbidden from hunting. This contribution traces two conciliar canons
(Agde, 506; Concilium Germanicum, 742) that prohibited clerics from hunting through the Middle Ages to the
Liber Extra (1234). It asks questions about the textual transmission of these canons and their use in pre-Gratian
canonical collections, the Decretum of Gratian and the decretistic literature, as well as in collections of decretals.
In doing so, it examines the authorities used to regulate clerical behavior between 1000 and 1234. This contribu-
tion demonstrates the importance of early medieval canons in the late medieval discourse, since the decisions by
the council of Agde and the Concilium Germanicum became common points of reference around 1200. The de-
cretists and decretalists received these canons directly from the Decretum of Burchard; Gratian (1 and 2) did not
transmit these canons himself. This reveals the importance of pre-Gratian collections in the post-Gratian debates.

I. Introduction
Clerical hunters were surprisingly common in the medieval world – at least, if one is to
believe a well-known literary description of the Late Middle Ages. One of the characters
who go on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Thomas Becket in Geoffrey Chaucer’s four-
teenth-century Canterbury is a monk. This monk was not only fine and handsome, but
also a man ‘who rode in the country; hunting was his sport’.1 The author of this famous
piece of literature casts a critical glance at hunting monks and clerics.2
Hunting by clerics is an issue not only in medieval literature, but also in scientific re-
search. Recent studies have explored the social and theological aspects of hunting as well
as the legal background of the complex relationship between clergy and hunting.3 This
research, however, has focused on legal statements and the development of jurisprudence
rather than on questions of lawmaking. Therefore, this paper investigates the formation

1 Geoffry Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, transl. into modern English by Nevill Coghill, Harmondsworth /
Baltimore 1971, 23 – 24: ‘A Monk there was, one of the finest sort / Who rode the country; hunting was
his sport. / A manly man, to be an Abbot able; / Many a dainty horse he had in stable. / His bridle, when
he rode, a man might hear / Jingling in a whistling wind as clear, / Aye, and as loud as does the chapel bell
/ Where my lord Monk was Prior of the cell. / The rule of good St Benet or St Maur / As old and strict he
tended to ignore; / He let go by the things of yesterday / And took the modern world’s more spacious way.
/ He did not rate that text at a plucked hen / Which says that hunters are not holy men / And that a monk
uncloistered is a mere / Fish out of water, flapping on the pier, / That is to say a monk out of his cloister. /
That was a text he held not worth an oyster.’
2 On Chaucer see B. Rowland, Chaucer, Geoffrey, I. Leben, in: Lexikon des Mittelalters 2, 1983, 1775 – 1776
and on the Canterbury Tales see B.  Rowland  / W. Steppe, Chaucer, Geoffry, II. Werke, III. Literarische
Bedeutung, in: Lexikon des Mittelalters 2, 1983, 1776 – 1779, 1777 – 1778.
3 See Augustine Thompson, Misreading and Rereading Patristic Texts: The Prohibition of Hunting by the
Decretists, in: Proceedings Munich 1992, 135 – 147; Anne Rooney, Hunting in Middle English Literature,
Cambridge 1993, 21 – 55, esp. 39 – 42; Thomas Szabó, Die Kritik der Jagd. Von der Antike zum Mittelalter,
in: Werner Rösener (Ed.), Jagd und höfische Kultur im Mittelalter, Göttingen 1997 (Veröffentlichungen des
Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte 135), 167 – 229; Hubertus Lutterbach, Die für Kleriker bestimmten
Verbote des Waffentragens, des Jagens sowie der Vogel- und Hundehaltung (a. 500 – 900), in: Zeitschrift
für Kirchengeschichte 109, 1998, 149 – 166; Monika Schausten, „dâ hovet ir iuch selben mite“: Höfische
Jagdkunst im Spiegel klerikaler Kritik am Beispiel des Tristan Gottfrieds von Strassburg, in: Zeitschrift für
Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 41 (161), 2011, 139 – 163.
 The Palliated Suffragan
Steven A. Schoenig, S.J.
Medieval popes often granted other bishops the right to wear the pallium, a woolen stole that had been a liturgi-
cal vestment and a papal insignia since late antiquity, as a mark of honor and a sign of closeness to the apostolic
see. Usually those bishops were metropolitan archbishops, the chief churchmen of their provinces, and the pal-
lium became so much a badge of metropolitan authority that they could not exercise their functions until they
had received it from Rome. Nevertheless, for a variety of reasons ranging from the political to the personal, the
popes occasionally bestowed the vestment on suffragan bishops as well. This exceptional phenomenon could up-
set the ecclesiastical hierarchy: fellow suffragans felt envious and strove to achieve similar privileges, and powerful
metropolitans felt threatened and strove to forbid such pretensions. This kind of hierarchical meddling could
advance papal goals, even while it muddled relationships among churchmen. In the end, it served to blur dis-
tinctions among bishops while highlighting the pope as ecclesiastical impresario, which led to a more immediate
subjection of every bishop to the pope, such as is the case today.

Three months before his death in 1978, Pope Paul VI ended a practice that went back
at least fourteen centuries. In his last motu proprio, he restricted the use of a pontifical
vestment called the pallium to metropolitans, as well as the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem.
In effect, he forbade suffragans and other bishops without metropolitan jurisdiction from
wearing it, although he admitted that such had, on occasion, been an ‘ancient custom’ in
the Latin church.1 Why the change? Paul’s letter expressed a desire, spurred by a decree of
the Second Vatican Council, to show more clearly that the pallium was a ‘sign of metro-
politan power’. In support of this interpretation, he cited the 1917 Code of Canon Law
and the letters of the eighteenth-century Pope Benedict XIV, both of which bore witness
to a tradition that portrayed the pallium as the insignia of an archbishop, of one who
possessed the ‘fullness of the pontifical office’. That tradition was long, but it had coexist-
ed paradoxically with the fact that popes had not infrequently granted the vestment even
to simple bishops. The modern desire to clarify and simplify the matter belied a more
complex reality: the often savvy but ambiguous manner in which the papacy had treated
the pallium during most of the Church’s history. To understand this reality, we must look
to the Middle Ages for some illuminating examples.
Late in 1062, during a schism in the Roman church, when the reform candidate
for the papacy, Alexander II, was pitted against a rival, Honorius II, the German court
sent a trusted bishop to Rome to judge between the two claims. Burchard of Halberstadt
determined that Alexander’s election had been regular, and that he ought to be regarded
as the true pope. In exuberant gratitude, Alexander granted Burchard a number of favors
in 1063, including the right to wear the pallium.2 This woolen band decorated with

1 Pope Paul VI, Inter eximia (De sacri pallii concessione moderanda in ecclesia latina), in: Acta apostolicae
sedis 70, 1978, 441 – 442. The earliest evidence of a suffragan wearing the pallium in the Western church,
apart from the special case of the bishop of Ostia when he consecrated the pope, concerned Secundus of
Taormina in 559; see Pope Pelagius I, Quoniam Secundus, JK 1000, IP 10:194 no. 1, ed. Pius M. Gassó
and Columba M. Batlle, Pelagii I Papae: Epistulae quae Supersunt (556 – 561), Montserrat 1956 (Scripta et
Documenta 8), 114 – 115.
2 Pope Alexander II, Inter multa quae, JL 4498, GP 5.2:220-221 no. 36, ed. Joachim Dahlhaus, Zum Privi­
leg Alexanders II. für Burchard II. von Halberstadt, in: Franz-Reiner Erkens / Hartmut Wolff (Ed.), Von
 Unius uxoris vir: Le lien sponsal entre
l’évêque et son Église dans le Décret de Gratien
Thibault Joubert
According to the first letter to Timothy, the future episcopus has to be unius uxoris vir (1 Tm 3, 2). The canonical
tradition has interpreted this requirement of suitability in several ways, from a literal reading of the verse to a
symbolic interpretation; the literal interpretation promoting the domestic monogamy of the bishop and the
symbolic interpretation applying to the relation between him and his Church. The Concordantia discordantium
canonum, or Gratian’s Decretum (ca. 1120 – 1140), is a pivotal text in canonistics, whose scope and especially its
method make it quite exceptional in the history of canon law. The Decretum compiles more than four thousand
auctoritates from the ius antiquum, and, while fully recognizing their diversity, attempts to harmonise them
within a heuristic of discordance. In treating every area of the life of the Church, Gratian constantly refers to the
bishop as the major organizing figure in canon law. Because the Decretum was composed between the Gregorian
Reform and the advent of the pontifical monarchy, its understanding of the episcopal office holds together several
different ecclesiological models in tension. In the light of the discovery of several consecutive recensions of the
Decretum, this paper examines how Gratian receives the different hermeneutics of the adage unius uxoris vir.
Thus, the article traces some characteristic lines of the Gratian’s ecclesiology of the relation between the bishop
and his Church.
‘Elle est sûre cette parole: celui qui aspire à la charge d’épiscope désire une belle œuvre.
Aussi faut-il que l’épiscope soit irréprochable, mari d’une seule femme, qu’il soit sobre,
pondéré, courtois, hospitalier, apte à l’enseignement, ni buveur ni batailleur, mais bien-
veillant, ennemi des chicanes, détaché de l’argent, sachant bien gouverner sa propre mai-
son et tenir ses enfants dans la soumission d’une manière parfaitement digne. Car celui
qui ne sait pas gouverner sa propre maison, comment pourrait-il prendre soin de l’Église
de Dieu?’1 Cette liste de qualités est issue de la Première épitre à Timothée. Faisant partie
du corpus des épitres dites ‘pastorales’, la Première à Timothée a été rédigée entre l’an 80
et l’an 100 par un ou plusieurs disciples de Paul.2 Cette liste témoigne de l’attention de
son auteur, à la fin du Ier siècle, pour la régulation de la fonction d’episcopos qui consiste
alors essentiellement à présider, à la place des apôtres, avec les presbyteroi, à l’annonce de
la Parole et à la prière commune au sein d’une communauté locale.3 Ces qualités trouvent
leur parallèle exprimé pour les diacres dans la même épitre et pour les prêtres dans l’épitre
de Tite qui forme, avec les épitres à Timothée un même ensemble.

1 1 Tm 3, 1 – 5 (Bible de Jérusalem, 2008).

2 À propos des débats sur la pseudonymie et les écrits deutéropauliniens, nous renvoyons à R. E. Brown, Que
sait-on du Nouveau Testament?, Paris 2000, 635 – 639.
3 Concernant la structure presbyteroi / episcopoi à la fin du Ier siècle et notamment dans les épitres pastorales
voir en particulier E. Schweizer, Church Order in the New Testament, London 1961 (Studies in biblical
theology, 32); T. Schnackenburg, The Church in the New Testament, New York 1965; R. E. Brown, Priest
and Bishop: Biblical Reflections, New York 1970; R. E. Brown, Episkopè et Episkopos: The New Testament
Evidence, in: Theological Studies 41, 1980, 322 – 338; B. Holmberg, Paul and Power: The Structure of
Authority in the Primitive Church, Lund 1978 (Coniectanea Biblica, New Testament Series, 11); P. Perkins,
Ministering in the Pauline Churches, New York 1982; D. L. Bartlett, Ministry in the New Testament, Min-
neapolis 1993; R. A. Campbell, The Elders, Edinburgh 1994; J. P. Meier, Presbyteros in the Pastoral Epistles,
in: Catholic Biblical Quarterly 35, 1973, 323 – 345; A. Faivre, De l’apôtre à l’évêque. Naissance et passation
des pouvoirs aux origines de l’Église, in: Chrétiens et Églises, des identités en construction, Paris 2011, 151
– 180 (on trouvera en fin du chapitre d’A. Faivre une bibliographie sélective sur la naissance de l’épiscopat).
 Attention, No Pope!
New Approaches to Late Medieval Papal „Litterae“
Andreas Meyer
In the late middle ages, the apostolic chancery was doubtlessly the major typing pool (Schreibbüro) in the whole
Occident. No other chancery should even come close to the production volume of documents of the Cancellaria
apostolica. Already in the thirteenth century, several hundreds of litterae can be verified for each year, and under
John XXII the detectable annual output of the papal chancery reached several thousands of letters. My paper
pursues the question why there existed such a huge demand for papal letters in the late Middle Ages, how these
demands were met by the Curia and what this meant for the practical papal church government.

Who has never found oneself thinking that a certain person or institution must have
been quite important in its days because of the existence of one or even more papal char-
ters addressed to it? After all, one of the two medieval universal powers has interceded
for this person or institution. When you study the relevant literature, you will frequently
notice that in the eyes of many historians a papal littera kind of hallows the receiving
person or institution. Being a spoilsport, I now want to question the assumption that
late medieval litterae can be understood as an expression of the pope’s will to shape the
future or to intervene personally. I probably will disillusion you completely, because it is
not only not the case, it is even worse.
It has become widely accepted in diplomatics that the so-called litterae communes are
replies to submitted petitions. They are therefore rescripts and hardly imply any papal
will of intervention.1 So, metaphorically speaking, the pope is not the hunter, but the
hunted. It would therefore be better to read the litterae from the other point of view.
Generally, they do not provide information about the wishes of the issuer, but of the
recipient of the charter.2
It becomes obvious that this is true when we take a look at the numbers. Since the
time of Innocent III papal registers of letters are handed down through the centuries in
huge numbers, even though not completely. The registers of Honorius III (1216 – 1227)
include 6288 letters, those of Gregory IX (1227 – 1241) 6183 and those of Innocent IV
(1243 – 1254) 8352 letters. If we recalculate those numbers for one month, they add
up to 49, 35.5 1or 55.5 litterae per month for the pontificates of those three popes.3 In

1 The pope’s will to shape the future is expressed in the signature of the petition, in the concession of certain
clauses, and since the fourteenth century in the papal chancery rules, cf. Paul Kehr, Bemerkungen zu den
päpstlichen Supplikenregistern des 14. Jahrhunderts, in: MIÖG 8, 1887, 84 – 102, here 98 – 102; Til-
mann Schmidt, Benefizialpolitik im Spiegel päpstlicher Supplikenregister von Clemens VI. bis Urban V.,
in: Aux origines de l’état moderne. Le Fonctionnement administratif de la papauté d’Avignon, Rome 1990,
351 – 369; Andreas Meyer, „Dominus noster vult“. Anmerkungen zur päpstlichen Gesetzgebung im Spät-
mitelalter, in: HZ 289, 2009, 607 – 626.
2 Andreas Meyer, Fulda und Rom im Spätmittelalter oder Warum in einer Papsturkunde oft nur wenig „Papst“
steckt, in: Das Kloster Fulda und seine Urkunden. Moderne archivische Erschließung und ihre Perspektiven
für die historische Forschung, ed. Sebastian Zwies, Freiburg im Breisgau 2014, 101 – 118.
3 Petrus Pressutti, Regesta Honorii papae III, 2 vols., Rom 1885 – 1895 (reprint Hildesheim 1978); Les Regis-
tres de Grégoire IX (1227 – 1241). Recueil des bulles de ce pape publiées ou analysées d’après les manuscrits
originaux du Vatican par Lucien Auvray, 4 vols., Paris 1896 – 1955; Les Registres d’Innocent IV (1243 –
 Judicial Inquiry as an Instrument of Centralized Government:
The Papacy’s Criminal Proceedings against Prelates in the Age of
Theocracy (Mid-Twelfth to Mid-Fourteenth Century)
Julien Théry-Astruc*
From the end of the twelfth century until the Great Schism, the papacy prosecuted hundreds of prelates who were
charged with ‘crimes’ (crimina), ‘excesses’ (excessus), or ‘enormities’ (enormia, enormitates), these words being used
interchangeably in the documents. These proceedings were often called inquisitionis negocia. Most of them were
initiated at the papal Curia and sentences were usually reserved to the pope or to a cardinal appointed by the
pope. This article is based on the study of 570 cases between 1198 and 1342. It presents a general introductory
survey of this judicial practice, which has never been studied before and seems curious, because, although serious
and shameful charges were involved, ultimately many processes had minimal consequences for the accused. After
a discussion of the sources which were used to establish the list of cases, a typology of the accusations is proposed.
Finally, after a brief description of the procedures’ general characteristics, the various results of the processes are
discussed.
In August 1308, Pope Clement V wrote to Raymond, abbot of the small Benedictine
monastery of Tourtoirac in Périgord, in southwestern France,1 to inform him that per-
petual silence (silentium perpetuum) had been imposed on a monk of Tourtoirac named
Jean de Chanteyrac. Jean had recently approached the papal Curia, then in Languedoc,
to ‘appeal’ against his abbot and to report ‘several crimes and defects’ he attributed to
him.2 We know nothing more about the nature of these ‘crimes’, which is not specified
in the papal letter. Less than two years before, in 1307, Clement had already ordered an
inquiry into the ‘many crimes’ some monks of Tourtoirac attributed to abbot Raymond’s
predecessor, Adémar; and it is likely that abbot Adémar was deposed as a result of this
procedure.3 This time though, the outcome was different, and the process initiated before
papal justice by Jean de Chanteyrac ended favorably for the abbot. In his letter to Ray-
mond, the pope blessed him, but also instructed him to readmit Jean to the community.
Admonishing Raymond to treat Jean charitably, ‘as a benevolent father’, the pope ordered
him to restore to Jean a church (locus) and the barn (grangia) of Malmont, which Jean
claimed had been unjustly taken from him.4
Consider now another papal inquiry, which took place half a century earlier, in
Bavaria. In the spring of 1258, papal investigators were sent to Regensburg to inquire
into accusations of sodomy against bishop Albert von Pietengau. Before this, a papal

* I am most grateful to Elizabeth A.R. Brown, Sean L. Field and Jonathan Sly for correcting my English at
different stages of the writing of this article.
1 Archivio Segreto Vaticano [ASV], Registra Vaticana 55, fol. 152, c. 738; see the abstract in Regestum Clem-
entis papae quinti, Roma 1885 – 1892, n. 3105.
2 Ibid.: Dudum siquidem, sicut asseritur, frater Johannes de Chanteyraco, monachus tui monasterii, tibi nonnulla
crimina et defectus imponens, contra te super certis articulis ad Sedem apostolicam appellavit...
3 See the abstract in Regestum Clementis papae quinti (n. 1), n. 1838.
4 ASV, Registra Vaticana 55, fol. 152, c. 738: Eidem fratri Johanni super impositione et appellatione hujusmodi
perpetuum silentium duximus imponendum, volentes quod ipse ad monasterium predictum reddeat sub tua, ut
tenetur, obedientia moraturus, ac unacum aliis dicti monasterii monachis perpetuo Domino serviturus. Tu itaque
ipsum tanquam pater benivolus caritative pertractans locum et grangiam predictam ei sine difficultate qualibet
restituere non postponas.
 Redde singula singulis and Suum cuique tribuens:
Re-Thinking Medieval Two-Sword Theory
George Conklin
This paper argues that the terminology of hierocrat and dualist should be abandoned as descriptions for medieval
canonistic political thought. While I want to dispense with these terms, I, more importantly, want to suggest
alternative ways of thinking about medieval political theory, which, I hope, will capture more of its richness and
will result in a more historically accurate portrayal of how the canonists viewed res publica Christiana.

Over the years having read and re-read Stephen of Tournai’s Summa and letters, I no
longer think it possible to fit his political thought into the medieval two-sword theory,
at least as it has been framed and championed by two fine but opposing scholars Walter
Ullmann and Alfons Stickler.1 Based on the metaphor of the swords, they worked out
dueling views of the use of coercive power by medieval spiritual and temporal authori-
ties. 2 Their work set the terms of the debate for a generation of scholars which remains
largely intact today. With every re-reading of Stephen, it has become apparent he falls
into neither camp and more importantly the basis on which they made him an adherent
of their respective interpretations has little to do with the principles of Stephen’s political
thought. This paper proposes that at least with Stephen the modern categories of hiero-
crat and dualist established respectively by Ullmann and Stickler should be abandoned.3
It is not so much that these categories are inadequate to their explanatory task, but rather,
at least in my reading of Stephen, they rest on the wrong assumptions. Simply to reject
Ullmann and Stickler out of hand would be the easier half of the task, this paper argues

1 Walter Ullmann, Medieval Papalism, London 1949 and Walter Ullmann, The Growth of Papal Government
in the Middle Ages, 3rd ed., London 1970. See the following articles by Alfons Stickler, Concerning the
Political Theories of the Medieval Canonists, in: Traditio 7, 1949 – 1951, 450 – 463; De ecclesiae potestate
coactiva materialis apud magistrum Gratianum, in: Salesianum 4, 1942, 2 – 23, 96 – 119; Il Gladius negli
atti dei concili e dei RR. Pontifice sino a Graziano e Bernardo di Clairvaux, in: Salesianum 13, 1951, 414
– 445; Imperator vicarius Papae, in: MIÖG 62, 1954, 165 – 212; Magistri Gratiani sententia de potestate
ecclesiae in statum, in: Apollinaris 21, 1948, 36 – 111; Sacerdozio e regno nelle nuove richerche attorno ai
secoli XII e XIII nei decretisti e decretalisti fino alle decretali di Gregorio IX, in: Miscellanea historiae pon-
tificiae 18, 1954, 1 – 26; Il ‘gladius’ nel registro di Gregorio VII, in: Stud. Greg. 3, 1948, 89 – 103. Hartmut
Hoffmann, Die beiden Schwerter im hohen Mittelalter, in: DA 20, 1964, 78 – 114 similarly challenged
Ullmann’s interpretation. Also see the important article by Elizabeth Kennan, The De consideratione of St.
Bernard of Clairvaux and the Papacy in the Mid-Twelfth Century: a Review of Scholarship, in: Traditio 23,
1967, 73 – 115 who supports Stickler’s interpretation of Bernard and the two swords.
2 The principle biblical texts using the two swords in a coercive context are Romans 13:4, Ephesians 6:17,
Apocalypse 2:16. S. Chodorow, Christian Political Theory and Church Politics in the Mid-Twelfth Cen-
tury: The Ecclesiology of Gratian’s Decretum, Berkeley / Los Angeles 1972, 224 points out that the most
important text for the history of the two-sword imagery Luke 22:38 set the number at two, but does not
itself use them as an image for governmental authority. Stephen, however, certainly understood it that way.
Chodorow’s important work should be read in conjunction with R. Benson’s equally important review of it
in: Speculum 50,1, 1975, 97 – 106.
3 A brief summary of these terms as modern constructs for medieval political thought may be found in Joseph
Canning, A History of Medieval Political Thought, 300 – 1450, London / New York 1996, 94. He cannot
quite throw them overboard.
 Policing and the Public Interest in Communal Bologna
Gregory Roberts
Innocent III’s maxim rei publicae intersit, ne crimina remaneant impunita exercised an enormous influence on
the development of criminal law in the thirteenth century. Canonists and civilian jurists alike used the maxim
to justify a number of legal innovations, many of which eroded the rights of the accused. Ne crimina remaneant
impunita served to expand the scope of inquisition, to erode the use of private accusation, and to encourage
public officials to prosecute crime with unprecedented vigor. The records of Bologna’s criminal court offer a
unique window into an important but under-studied aspect of this trend: the creation of full-time police forces in
northern Italian cities. Drawing on trial records, this paper connects the legal theory encapsulated in ne crimina
remaneant impunita with the daily praxis of law enforcement. It argues that the policing of petty crimes such as
curfew breaking, armsbearing, and gambling functioned as a dragnet to catch out notorious and infamous cri-
minals. The need to punish criminals in the name of the public interest explains in part why self-governing cities
like Bologna instituted this new form of legal harassment.

In January 1286, a resident of Bologna named Giacomo di Guido gave the criminal court
a remarkable confession. Giacomo had been arrested for breaking curfew, but somehow
– the record does not indicate – the court determined he was a man of ill repute and
subjected him to torture. After a round of torment, this is the story Giacomo ostensibly
told, beginning with the circumstances of his arrest: the watchmen discovered him in
the street, without a light and carrying a piece of wood. He had stolen the wood from
a carpenter and was bringing it to a tavern frequented by pimps, prostitutes, and ‘bad
men’, where he was planning to use it as firewood while he lay with a prostitute named
Ravignana. He had committed burglary or theft on at least seven discrete occasions –
some just weeks earlier, some years before – and seemed to remember not only what he
stole (usually clothes, linens, and weapons) but also how much the loot was worth. In
some of these thefts he had acted alone, but in others he had accomplices, including two
fellow thieves whom the podestà had executed three years earlier. He was also involved in
a purse-cutting operation with an associate from a neighboring town. Besides the thefts,
he had assaulted a woman with a club in 1282, for which crime he paid a 50-lire fine. He
and another associate had wounded a man with a lance after trespassing in his vineyard.
Furthermore, he had agreed to two different murders for hire, but was unable to carry
them out. Worst of all, Giacomo confessed he was a sodomite. In his own alleged words,
he had ‘practiced the art of the sodomites many, many times and raped many boys, espe-
cially while he was a prison guard for the commune of Bologna’. He even singled out two
individuals by name as his alleged partners in ‘buggery’.1 Unfortunately the record does

1 Item confessus fuit quod ipse Fideguida [Giacomo’s nickname] est sodomita et pluries et pluries artem sodomicto-
rum faciebat et fecit et exercuit, et plures gargiones strupavit maxime dum esset custos carceris comunis Bononie.
Archivio di Stato di Bologna (ASB), Podestà, Inquisitiones, Mazzo 7, Reg. 1, 1r – 2r, quote on 1v. This
transcript is taken from a register of confessions made by torturees; a near identical transcript survives in the
record of Giacomo’s inquisition: ASB, Podestà, Inquisitiones, Mazzo 7, Reg. 2, 10v – 12v. His case is also
mentioned in Sarah Rubin Blanshei, Politics and Justice in Late Medieval Bologna, Leiden 2010, 328. The
word ‘buziria’ (and variant spellings), used in medieval Italian sources to mean sodomy, is etymologically
related to the English term ‘buggery’.
 The Negotium Terrae Sanctae
in Papal-Imperial Discourse (1226–1244)
John Phillip Lomax
Emperor Frederick II and Popes Honorius III, Gregory IX, and Innocent IV were truly and deeply committed to
the relief of the Holy Land and recovery of Jerusalem. It shaped their thinking, their rhetoric, and their policies.
They consistently and repeatedly framed their concern for Christians and Christian states in Outremer in terms
of the canonical requirement to make peace and accept truces in support of efforts to defend and recover the Holy
Land. Nonetheless, a sort of political triage unremittingly pushed the negotium Terrae Sanctae down their list of
priorities. The desire of the popes to retain or recover control of the city of Rome and of the emperor to subdue
the recalcitrant cities of the Lombard League yielded both collaboration and conflict as they strove to achieve
these purposes. The redirection of holy war toward targets other than the Holy Land in the thirteenth century is
not the focus of this essay. Rather, it examines how the emperor and the popes appealed to their real and mutual
concern for the Holy Land to facilitate policy aims that were tangential to holy war of any description.

At San Germano in July 1225, Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen swore to papal em-
issaries that, in a little more than two years, he would fulfill his much delayed vow to
undertake an expedition to the Holy Land. ‘[W]e will cross over in aid of the Holy Land
(in subsidium Terre Sancte)’ by August 1227, he declared. He also submitted, from that
point forward, to excommunication lata sententia should he fail to depart by the ap-
pointed date or fulfill any of the other terms of the agreement.1 Frederick had by 1225
resolved the political troubles in Germany and the kingdom of Sicily that had repeatedly
prevented him from fulfilling the youthful vow that he had sworn at Aachen in July
1215. He also became the titular king of Jerusalem in September 1225 with his marriage
to Yolanda of Brienne, heiress of that kingdom through her mother, Maria of Montferrat.
Frederick was ready and eager to go. But, as always seemed to be the case with Frederick,
there was a catch.
In March 1226, Frederick proclaimed an imperial diet to take place in Cremona on
Easter Day, 19 April, ‘to restore the rights of the empire’.2 This diet was a fairly straight-
forward attempt to gather support for a restoration of the imperial rights guaranteed
to Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa by the 1177 Peace of Venice,3 which a number of
Lombard cities had subsequently usurped, particularly since the death of Emperor Henry
VI in 1197. Soon after Frederick proclaimed the diet, these cities renewed the Lombard
League and blocked the Alpine passes to Frederick’s son, Henry, and the German princes
who were coming with him to Cremona.4 On 10 June 1226, a group of prelates laid
sentences of interdict and excommunication on the members of the Lombard League for
1 Promissio de expeditione in Terram Sanctam, ed. L. Weiland, Hannover 1896 (MGH Const. 2) [= Weiland],
129 – 131, no. 102; cf. Frederick II to Honorius III (25 July 1225), ed. Weiland, 131, no. 103, in which
Frederick reports to Honorius that he had concluded this agreement.
2 Frederick II to the podestà of Viterbo et al., Historia diplomatica Friderici secundi, 7 vol. in 12, comp. J. L.
A. Huillard-Bréholles, Paris 1852 – 1861 ([= H-B] 2,1), 548 – 549.
3 Pax Veneta, ed. L. Weiland, Hannover 1893 (MGH Const. 1), 360 – 373, nos. 259 – 373; see also Pactum
cum Venetiis, ed. Weiland (MGH Const. 1), 374 – 377, no. 274.
4 For a detailed verse account of Frederick’s attempt to stage a diet at Cremona in 1226, see the Annales Pla-
centini Guelfi, ed. G. H. Pertz, Hannover 1863 (MGH SS 18), 439 – 442; cf. Annales Placentini Gibellini,
ed. Pertz (MGH SS 18), 469; Annales S. Iustinae Patavini, ed. P. Jaffé, Hannover 1866 (MGH SS 19), 152
 The Deposition of Frederick II (1245)
– a Public Lesson in Procedural Law
Thomas Wetzstein
The deposition of the Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick II by pope Innocent IV in 1245 has been regarded by
many historians as an arbitrary sentence promulgated by a biased judge. Notwithstanding the unmistakable
political implications of Frederick’s condemnation, a thorough reading of the documents preserved reveals that
not only the pope applied the procedural rules of a notorium-procedure to the extraordinary, but that also the
objections risen by the emperor’s advocates focused basically on the choice of the procedure chosen by the pope
after consultations with the cardinals. It seems, however, that the level of procedural knowledge necessary to
understand the learned arguments exchanged by both sides exceeded the competence of the contemporaries who
were systematically involved in the conflict. It is not surprising, therefore, that the procedural aspects of this cause
celèbre have not only been ignored by the majority of not only medieval chroniclers, but also modern historians.

I. Introduction
The deposition of the Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick II by pope Innocent IV at the
Lyons council in July 1245 is, without any doubt, the culminating point of a conflict that
had begun many years before.1 Due to its undeniable political implications Frederick’s
condemnation has been regarded almost unanimously as a scandalous example of an ar-
bitrary sentence promulgated by a biased judge, an assessment stimulated by the fact that
no records of the procedure have been preserved and that some temporary chroniclers
have left the impression that the trial itself had taken place not only in the defendant’s
absence but also in secret. The German historian Johannes Haller regarded the deposition
as ‘a political sanction veiled in the mask of law’, and Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz in his
controversial book on the last Hohenstaufen emperor saw his hero as a defenceless victim
‘before a court of hostile priests’.2
In what follows, we will have a closer look at the documents that were exchanged
between the pope and the emperor or, to be more exact, the members of his court. In
doing this, we should be able to answer the question from which sphere the arguments

1 Thomas Curtis Van Cleve, The Emperor Frederick II. of Hohenstaufen. Immutator Mundi, Oxford 1972,
484 – 497; David Abulafia, Frederick II. A medieval emperor, London 1988, 340 – 374; Wolfgang Stürner,
Friedrich II. 1194 – 1250, Darmstadt 2009 (first published in two volumes Darmstadt 1992 / 2000), part
two; Hubert Houben, Kaiser Friedrich II. (1194 – 1250). Herrscher, Mensch, Mythos, Stuttgart 2007 (Ur-
ban-Taschenbücher 618), esp. 39 – 84. On the deposition: Friedrich Kempf, Die Absetzung Friedrichs II. im
Lichte der Kanonistik, in: Josef Fleckenstein (Ed.), Probleme um Friedrich II., Sigmaringen 1974 (Vorträge
und Forschungen 16), 345 – 360; Thomas Wetzstein, Die Autorität des ordo iuris. Die Absetzung Friedrichs
II. und das zeitgenössische Verfahrensrecht, in: Hubertus Seibert / Werner Bomm / Verena Türck (Eds.),
Autorität und Akzeptanz. Das Reich im Europa des 13. Jahrhunderts, Ostfildern 2013, 149 – 182.
2 Johannes Haller, Das Papsttum. Idee und Wirklichkeit, Band 4: Die Krönung, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1965
(Rowohlts deutsche Enzyklopädie 227 / 228), 141 – 142 (first published Urach / Stuttgart 1952; orig-
inally published as Johannes Haller, Das Papsttum, Band. 3,1: Krönung und Einsturz, Stuttgart 1945):
‘eine politische Kampfmaßregel in der Maske des Rechts’; Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz, Kaiser Friedrich
der Zweite, Berlin 1927 (Werke aus dem Kreis der Blätter für die Kunst. Geschichtliche Reihe), 546, here
quoted: Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz, Frederick the Second. 1194 – 1250, ed. Emily Overend Lorimer, New
York 1957 (first published London 1931), 596: Thaddeus of Suessa was ‘entrusted with the most responsible
and difficult task that can be conceived – the hopeless defence of his master before a court of hostile priests’.
 La reprise du terme plenitudo potestatis au profit
des souverains laïques
Péter Molnár
In the past decades a number of studies have discussed the origin of the concept of plenitudo potestatis and its
use by the Papacy. It is also well known that eventually secular sovereigns began to use the term created origi-
nally as an attribute of the Holy See. Hitherto, neither the manner nor the exact chronology of the attribution
of plenitudo potestatis to secular sovereigns has been revealed. This is the task I undertake in this paper. In the
jurisprudence of the first half of the thirteenth century the expression in this sense occurs only sporadically. It
was Emperor Frederic II who first attributed plenitudo potestatis to himself, without opposing it explicitly to the
papacy. Saint Louis, King of France employed the term only once, albeit in his most important legislative act. In
Paris at the same time plenitudo potestatis appears in the works of Thomas Aquinas and John of Limoges, the less
famous moralist. The concept was not adopted by the English Royal Court, the Pope’s vassal. In contrast, the
German monarchs after the ’Great Interregnum’ and Philip the Fair frequently used the phrase. The attribution
of plenitudo potestatis to secular sovereigns came into general use during the reign of the Emperor Henry VII.

L’un des événements fondateurs de la civilisation européenne, la révolution juridique des

XIIe – XIIIe siècles, s’est tournée vers l’héritage de l’antiquité tout comme vers les inno-
vations conceptuelles et théoriques. Du point de vue du champ d’application politique
des droits romain et canonique, nous constatons la même nature ’bicéphale’ des choses.
D’une part, cette période a connu la diffusion assez large du terme, d’origine antique, de
la res publica, qui impliquait de plus en plus d’aspects de la notion moderne de l’État.1
D’autre part, c’est dans une langue vernaculaire, le français, qu’est apparue la toute nou-
velle expression de la souveraineté. Certes, dans le coutumier de Philippe de Beaumanoir
(1283), tous les détenteurs importants du pouvoir sont souverains; chez lui, nous sommes
assez loin de l’exclusivité exigée par la notion moderne.2 Or, il y a eu quand même une ex-
pression qui couvrait pratiquement le champ sémantique concerné dès le début du XIIIe
siècle. S’étant formée dans la chancellerie papale pendant plusieurs siècles, la plenitudo
potestatis est devenue sous le pontificat d’Innocent III l’expression qui s’est rapprochée
le plus de notre notion de souveraineté. De plus, cette expression médiévale documente
admirablement la nature ’bicéphale’ de la révolution juridico-politique des XIIe – XIIIe
siècles. Bien que son origine sémantique la rapproche du droit romain, la plenitudo pote­
statis a été conçue comme une prérogative spéciale de la papauté, prérogative formée au
sein du droit canonique, mais appliquée aussi dans le domaine du droit temporel.3

1 Antécédent étymologique direct de celle-ci, le status reipublicae signifiait l’état garantissant les droits et les
biens indispensables au fonctionnement du gouvernement et de la communauté politique: G. Post, Ratio
publice utilitatis, ratio status, ’Reason of State’, 1100 – 1300, in: G. Post (éd.), Studies in Medieval Legal
Thought. Public Law and the State, 1100 – 1322, Princeton 1964, 241 – 309.
2 Philippe de Beaumanoir, Coutumes de Beauvaisis, ch. 34 (Nr. 1043), éd. A. Salmon, Paris 1899 – 1900
(Collection de textes pour servir à l’étude et à l’enseignement), II, 23: …chascuns barons est souverains en sa
baronie. Voirs est que li rois est souverains par dessus tous...
3 Sur la genèse et sur l’utilisation de la plenitudo potestatis pendant le XIIIe siècle, voir, avant tout, R. L.
Benson, Plenitudo potestatis. Evolution of a Formula from Gregory IV to Gratian, in: Collectanea Stephan
Kuttner, Bologna 1967 (SG 14), 195 – 217; J. A. Watt, The Theory of Papal Monarchy in the Thirteenth
Century. The Contribution of the Canonists, in: Traditio 20, 1964, 179 – 317. Cf. K. Pennington, Pope and
Bishops. The Papal Monarchy in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Philadelphia 1984, 43 – 58.
 Il mare nella canonistica medievale: note normative e dottrinali
Vito Piergiovanni
The journey by sea was in the Middle Ages constantly present in an individual and collective life. Just think about
the church and the pilgrimages and the crusades. In this study we wanted to take the sea as the protagonist of
a research that has brought together the scattered elements in the canonical doctrine. The Middle Ages form a
new commercial law which is borne in the maritime sector, and which goes after into the land, becoming the
commercial common law in the Mediterranean: its main root lies in the ius gentium and it informs the majority
of institutions of commercial law. It has been appeared a periculum maris which can become a periculum animae,
alarming and leads the Church to intervene with its legal doctrine that has an important part in this process by,
on one hand, helping to humanize institutions such as the ius naufragii and the redemptio captivorum and, on the
other hand, condemning illegal practices such as piracy and trade with the infidels.

I. Introduzione
Una connessione tradizionale di due oggetti – il mare ed il commercio – ha sollevato
significative problematiche, morali e teologiche oltre che giuridiche, ed ha sollecitato
l’intervento del legislatore e dell’interprete. Mentre il commercio che, nel Medioevo,
si svolge in larga misura sulle rotte marittime ed ha continui e necessari riferimenti alle
vicende economiche e politiche, ha offerto occasioni di riflessione storiografica agli storici
del diritto canonico,1 ci si può chiedere quali sono state per questi giuristi le occasioni di
approfondimento dell’oggetto “mare”. Lo scopo di questa relazione è quello di riunire e
valutare all’interno della esperienza giuridica medievale le circostanze in cui il mare si erge
a protagonista della normativa e della dottrina canonica.
La scelta dell’oggetto di una relazione è derivata anche da motivazioni soggettive
legate ai percorsi di studio che fanno parte della esperienza scientifica individuale e, nel
caso specifico, lo spunto è emerso nell’approfondimento della personalità politica e scien-
tifica di un grande Papa giurista quale è stato Sinibaldo dei Fieschi, assunto nel 1243 al
Pontificato con il nome di Innocenzo IV. Nella sua biografia ho ritrovato un esempio
significativo di presenza del mare nella storia della Chiesa, sia per il rilievo dell’oggetto
trattato, sia per le sue derivazioni dagli eventi storici del momento: giuridicamente è un
caso di scuola che presenta alcune concrete connessioni con le vicende del Pontificato
duecentesco.2

1 J. Gilchrist, The church and economic activity in the middle ages, London 1969; V. Piergiovanni, Il Mercan-
te e il Diritto canonico medievale: Mercatores in itinere dicuntur miserabiles personae, in: Proceedings San
Diego 1988, 617 – 631.
2 V. Piergiovanni, Sinibaldo dei Fieschi decretalista, in: Annali della Facoltà di Giurisprudenza dell’Università
di Genova 6, 1967, 415 – 442, anche in: Studia Gratiana 14, 1969, 125 – 154; e V. Piergiovanni, Innocenzo
IV legislatore e commentatore. Spunti tra storiografia, fonti e istituzioni, in: G. Dilcher / D. Quaglioni
(Ed.), Gli inizi del diritto pubblico, 2, Da Federico I a Federico II, Bologna / Berlino 2008, 195 – 222. Il
riferimento bibliografico più completo è A. Melloni, Innocenzo IV. La concezione e l’esperienza della cristia-
nità come regimen unius personae, in: Istituto per le Scienze religiose di Bologna. Testi e ricerche di scienze
religiose, NS, 4, Genova 1990; e A. Melloni, Ecclesiologia ed istituzioni. Un aspetto della concezione della
cristianità in Innocenzo IV, in: Proceedings San Diego 1988, 285 – 308. Si veda anche A. Paravicini Bagliani,
Innocenzo IV, in: DBI 62, Roma 2004, 435 – 440.
 ‚Unterm Krummstab ist gut leben‘? – Bäuerliche Freiheit
im mittelalterlichen Kirchenrecht
David von Mayenburg

Nun wundert euch nicht darüber, daß dieses Buch so wenig vom Recht der Dienstleute ent-
hält. Aber dies ist so mannigfaltig, daß niemand damit zu Ende kommen kann. Unter jedem
Bischof und Abt und unter jeder Äbtissin haben die Dienstleute besonderes Recht. Deshalb
kann ich es auch nicht darstellen.
(Eike von Repgow, Sachsenspiegel Landrecht III 42 § 2)1
The paper examines if there was a specific canonistic approach to questions of freedom and bondage in high and
late medieval legal thought. Taking into account the economic pressure on church estates to retain their labor
force on the one hand and a humanitarian theology on the other hand, one could expect a conflict of aims within
canonist argumentation regarding peasant’s liberty. Based on an analysis of the most important sources, the paper
comes to the following conclusions: (1) Although accepting slavery and serfdom, canon law and especially the
decretalist literature, was rather careful regarding bondage. (2) Not only in the case of marriage but also regarding
freedom of movement they followed the rule ‘in dubio pro libertate‘. (3) Canon law literature thereby followed
the legists’ rather liberal approach, but added to it specific arguments from the area of moral theology. (4) When
legists like Bartolus tried to soften the strict formalism regarding the proof of bondage, Panormitanus objected
and stressed the contractual requirements of bondage, thereby in a way anticipating later shifts ‘from status to
contract’.

I. Einleitung
Während des gesamten Mittelalters lebten in Europa mindestens drei Viertel der Men-
schen auf dem Land.2 Trotz einer wachsenden Stadtkultur bildeten die ökonomischen
und rechtlichen Strukturen des ländlichen Raums dauerhaft die entscheidende Grund-
lage für die menschliche Existenz. Daß diese Strukturen konfliktträchtig waren, zeigt
nicht zuletzt eine Serie von Bauernrevolten, die vor allem im nordalpinen Europa des 15.
Jahrhunderts an Schärfe gewannen und in das Blutbad des sog. ‘Großen Deutschen Bau-
ernkriegs’ von 1525 mündeten.3 Daß die Wut der Bauern nicht zuletzt auf einem Wider-
spruch zwischen christlich geprägten Freiheitserwartungen einerseits und knechtischer
Realität andererseits beruhte, hat die historische Wissenschaft hinlänglich erwiesen.4
1 Eike von Repgow, Sachsenspiegel Landrecht III 42 § 2, zitiert nach: Clausdieter Schott (Hg.), Eike von
Repgow. Der Sachsenspiegel, 3.  Auflage, Zürich 1996, S.  189. Für die Gewährung von Reisemitteln zur
Teilnahme an der Tagung der ICMAC in Toronto danke ich dem Deutschen Akademischen Austauschdienst
(DAAD).
2 Die Schätzungen zum Anteil der Landbevölkerung an der Gesamteinwohnerschaft im Mittelalter schwanken
zwischen ca. 12% und etwa einem Viertel: Bernhard Schäfers, Bevölkerungsentwicklung und Weltverstäd-
terungsprozess, in: Josef Ehmer / Ursula Ferdinand / Jürgen Reulecke (Hg.), Herausforderung Bevölkerung.
Zu Entwicklungen des modernen Denkens über die Bevölkerung vor, im und nach dem „Dritten Reich“,
Wiesbaden 2007, S. 55 – 63, hier: S. 57; dagegen: Peter Hilsch, Das Mittelalter – Die Epoche, 3. Auflage,
Konstanz / München 2012, S. 187.
3 Eine Zusammenfassung der umfangreichen Literatur bietet: Peter Blickle, Unruhen in der ständischen Ge-
sellschaft 1300 – 1800, 3. Aufl., München 2012 (Enzyklopädie deutscher Geschichte 1).
4 Zu beachten sind hierzu v.a. die Arbeiten von Peter Blickle, z.B. zuletzt: Peter Blickle, Von der Leibeigen-
schaft zu den Menschenrechten. Eine Geschichte der Freiheit in Deutschland, München 2006; außerdem:
David von Mayenburg, Gemeiner Mann und Gemeines Recht. Die Zwölf Artikel und das Recht des ländli-
 How the Language of Transubstantiation
Entered Medieval Canon Law
Thomas Izbicki
There is a common supposition that the Fourth Lateran Council defined transubstantiation as a dogma. The
term actually entered canon law by two routes. The term appears in the commentary Fecit Moyses Tabernaculum,
which drew on Parisian discussions of the Real Presence in the Eucharist. Innocent III, who had studied in Paris,
adopted the term and used it in the decree Firmiter credimus of Lateran IV when affirming the powers of a priest.
Innocent treated transubstantiation as a known term. Innocent more decidedly affirmed this doctrine in the de-
cretal Cum Marthae when addressing the possible transformation of the water added to the chalice. The decreta-
lists, beginning with Johannes Teutonicus, however, interpreted the term as referring to substitution of the body
and blood for the substances of bread and wine. Only in the early fourteenth century would Johannes Andreae
adopt the theology of Thomas Aquinas, who argued for the transformation of the species at the consecration.

There is a common supposition that the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) defined transub-
stantiation as a dogma explaining the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The decree
Firmiter credimus did mention transubstantiation, as a past participle (transubstantiatis)
near the end of the text: ‘His body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of
the altar under the forms of bread and wine, the bread and wine having been changed in
substance (transubstantiatis), by God’s power, into his body and blood, so that in order to
achieve this mystery of unity we receive from God what he received from us.’ Firmiter,
however, was primarily concerned with the doctrine of the Trinity taught by Peter Lom-
bard, only affirming the priesthood and the sacraments briefly near its end. No exposition
of the term transubstantiatis was offered, and contrary opinions were not condemned. It
is notable that the decree emphasizes the identity of the flesh Christ received from Mary
with the Eucharistic body and blood.1 The Lateran canons were circulated as a group,
inserted by subject into Compilatio quarta and distributed under the appropriate titles in
the Decretals of Gregory IX.2 However, transubstantiation did not enter medieval canon
law through the Lateran canons. The term originated at the University of Paris, where it
was created by theologians wrestling with the theology of the Real Presence in a Scholas-
tic context;3 and it entered medieval canon law later in discussions of Gratian’s Decretum.
When the Decretum of Gratian took its final shape in the twelfth century, it had three
major parts: the Distinctiones, the Causae; and a tract on sacramental law, the Tractatus

1 Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman Tanner, 2 vols. London 1990, 1 230 – 231, … cuius corpus
et sanguis in sacramento altaris sub speciebus panis et vini veraciter continentur, transsubstantiatis pane in corpus
et vino in sanguine de suo, quod accepit ipse de nostro. The contrary theology of the Trinity of Joachim of Flora
was condemned in the decree Damnamus; see Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils I 231 – 233; but no opinion
on the sacraments is condemned. For differing interpretations of the Lateran decree, see R. N. Swanson,
Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215 – c. 1515, Cambridge 1995, 21 – 25; Gary Macy, The Dogma of
Transubstantiation in the Middle Ages, in: JEH 45, 1984, 11 – 51.
2 Constitutiones Concilii quarti Lateranensis una cum Commentariis glossatorum, ed. Antonio García y
García, Città del Vaticano 1981; Quinque Compilationes Antiquae, ed. Emil Friedberg, Leipzig 1882 (re-
print Graz, 1956), 135 – 150. Firmiter appears in the Extra as the first canon under the title De summa
Trinitate et fide catholica (X 1.1.1).
3 Joseph Goering, The Invention of Transubstantiation, in: Traditio 46, 1991, 147 – 170.
 Law, Theology, and the Schools: The Use of Scripture in
Ricardus Anglicus’s Distinctiones decretorum
Jason Taliadoros1
The Anglo-Norman canonist Ricardus Anglicus (de Mores or de Morins), as Giulio Silano’s 1982 PhD thesis and
provisional edition argues, was as interested in biblical theology as he was in canon law. This wide interest was a
product of his time in the Parisian schools. How then did his influential commentary on Gratian’s Decretum, the
Distinctiones decretorum, use Scriptural sources to explicate ostensibly canonistic concepts? This paper attempts
to explore these issues in the context of the interaction of law and theology in the mid-to-late twelfth-century
schools, courts, and ecclesial familiae of Bologna and England.

Introduction
The beginning decades of the thirteenth century are generally considered the period
when the disciplines of law and theology came to be clearly distinguished, exemplified
by the distinct faculties of law and theology at the newly-formed universities at Paris and
Bologna.2 Just over a century earlier the two disciplines were not recognised as separate,
for example in the eleventh century works of the canonist Ivo of Chartres and Burchard
of Worms. The twelfth century, therefore, in this narrative presents a period of uncertain-
ty and flux: for the first half of the twelfth century De Ghellinck and others have noted
the common dialectic method employed in Abelard’s Sic et non method and Gratian,
both in subject matter and methods. De Ghellinck in this way acknowledges that canon
law and theology were not distinct fields in the twelfth century (he grouped them both
under ‘sacred science’), but he still conceives of the two disciplines as engaged in mutu-
al ‘borrowing’, a term nevertheless suggestive of a division of disciplines.3 In this vein,

1 Earlier versions of this paper were presented at: the Australian and New Zealand Medieval and Early Modern
Society (ANZAMEMS) biennial conference in December 2008 at the University of Tasmania, for which I
received funding support both from the Australian Research Council as part of my Australian Postdoctoral
Discovery Fellowship and from the School of Philosophical Historical and International Studies (SOPHIS)
at Monash University; the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Monash University seminar series
in October 2012, at which I received valuable feedback; and the XIVth International Congress of Medieval
Canon Law in August 2012 at the University of Toronto, for which I received funding support from the
Deakin School of Law, Deakin University, and the Australian Research Council. I would also like to thank
Professor Dr Dr Peter Landau and Dr John Wei for their comments on the paper delivered at the congress.
All errors remain my own.
2 Gaines Post suggests that between 1208 and 1215 the masters and students of the four faculties of arts, law,
theology, and medicine at Paris asserted themselves as a corporation, akin to the modern ‘university’: Gaines
Post, Parisian Masters as a Corporation, 1200 – 1246, Speculum 9, 1934, 421 – 445 (reprinted in Gaines
Post, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought: Public Law and the State, 1100 – 1332, Princeton 1964, 27 – 60).
See also John W. Baldwin, Masters at Paris from 1179 to 1215: A Social Perspective, in: Robert L. Benson
/ Giles Constable / Carol D. Lanham (Eds.), Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, Cambridge
1982 (reprint Toronto 1991) 138 – 172, at 138.
3 Joseph de Ghellinck, Le mouvement théologique du XIIe siècle: Sa préparation lointaine avant et autour
de Pierre Lombard, ses rapports avec les initiatives des canonistes, 2nd ed., Brugge / Bruxelles / Paris 1948,
418 – 420.
 Les origines théologiques de la personne
en droit canonique médiéval
Elisabeth Schneider1

À la mémoire du Professeur Jean-Pierre Baud

Despite the frequency of the term persona in the legal sources, no Roman legal jurisconsult was able to define
that term. To refute the Trinitarian and Christological heresies, however, early medieval ecclesiastical authors
articulated the first definitions of the term person. Faustus of Riez defined person as persona, res iuris, substantia,
res naturae. Boethius also defined person as the naturae rationalis individua substantia. This Boethian definition
applied to God, to angels, and to all men. From this standard definition of the person, Alexander of Hales formu-
lated the theory of three esse, which is at the origin of the distinction between natural persons and moral persons
in the present Code of canon law. The medieval lawyers, in addition, qualified the concept of universitas by the
expressions persona repraesentata or persona ficta, and the living being by the term persona vera when resolving
legal questions. These expressions are at the origin of great controversies among the lawyers, the theologians, and
the Franciscans in favour of nominalism. To defend the faith, public law, and economic law, the medieval cano-
nists refer to the theological definitions of the person as persona vera and persona repraesentata.

I. Introduction
Actuellement, le Code de droit canonique de 1983 distingue deux catégories de per-
sonnes: d’une part, la personne physique2 c’est-à-dire un être humain incorporé par le
baptême dans l’Eglise et, d’autre part, les personnes juridiques3 à savoir des ensembles
de personnes ou de choses qui jouissent de droits et sont soumis à des obligations dans
l’ordre canonique.4 Le Code emploie l’expression de ‘personne morale’ pour désigner
l’Eglise catholique et le Siège apostolique.5 Au 19e siècle, la doctrine discute âprement à
propos de la nature de la ‘personnalité morale’. Deux grandes théories s’affrontent. Sa-
vigny6 est partisan de la théorie de la fiction de la personnalité juridique d’après laquelle
seules les personnes physiques existent véritablement. En revanche, il appelle personnes

1 Nous reprenons les résultats de notre thèse portant sur ‘La personne en droit savant du 12e au 15e siècle’
soutenue le 16 juillet 2013 à l’Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense sous la direction de Madame le
Professeur Michèle Bégou-Davia. Nous préparons la publication de notre thèse qui présentera de manière
plus détaillée l’évolution de la notion de personne en fonction du contexte historique, social et des facteurs
politiques. Nous tenons à remercier également pour leurs conseils M. le Professeur Andreas Thier et Mes-
sieurs Jason Taliadoros et Thomas M. Izbicki.
2 Can. 96 CIC / 1983.
3 Can.113 § 2 CIC / 1983.
4 Can. 114 à 123 CIC / 1983.
5 Can. 113 CIC / 1983.
6 M. F. C. von Savigny, Traité de droit romain (traduit de l’allemand par Ch. Guenoux), t. 2, Paris 1855,
Chapitre II. Des personnes considérées comme sujets des rapports de droit, §. LX, 2: ‘l’idée primitive de
personne ou sujet du droit se confond avec l’idée d’homme, et l’identité primitive de ces deux idées peut se
formuler en ces termes: chaque individu, et l’individu seulement, a la capacité du droit. A la vérité, le droit
positif, et cela est déjà impliqué dans la formule qui précède, peut modifier doublement l’idée primitive de
personne, la restreindre ou l’étendre. Il peut, en effet, refuser à certains individus la capacité du droit en tota-
lité ou en partie; il peut, en outre, transporter la capacité du droit hors de l’individu, et créer artificiellement
une personne juridique’.
 An Early Fourteenth Century Confessor’s Legal Toolkit:
The Origin of John of Freiburg’s Legal Learning
in the Summa confessorum
John A. Lorenc
Around 1298, John of Freiburg, lector of the Dominican priory there, composed the Summa confessorum, a revi-
sion and amplification of his earlier Libellus questionum casualium. As he says in the prologue, John produced the
ponderous Summa confessorum, like the Libellus, as an update to his fellow Dominican Raymond of Penyafort’s
earlier Summa de penitentia et matrimonio, which he intended to supplement with the latest legal opinions and
additional questions not addressed by Raymond. The revised Summa would serve as a comprehensive guide for
confessors in administering the sacrament of penance to their flocks, addressing thousands of specific cases the
confessor might encounter in the penitential forum. Although Raymond’s Summa contained a wealth of legal
learning, John of Freiburg, principally by means of excerpts from the Summa aurea of Hostiensis, vastly expanded
the quantity of legal lore, both canonical and civil, available to the confessor. Focusing on John’s discussion of
usury in the Summa confessorum, in this paper I illustrate the variety and quantity of legal sources that John added
to his Summa and argue that their origin can ultimately be traced to John’s studies in the Faculty of Decrees at
the University of Paris in the last third of the thirteenth century.

Around the year 1298, John of Freiburg (d. 1314), lector of the Dominican priory there,
completed his ponderous Summa confessorum. Like his earlier Libellus questionum cas-
ualium, he intended the Summa as an update to the Summa de penitentia et matrimonio
(1235) of his fellow Dominican Raymond of Penyafort (d. 1275), to which he sought
to add the latest legal and theological opinions, as well as questions not raised by Ray-
mond. Although Raymond’s Summa contained a wealth of legal learning, in the Summa
confessorum John of Freiburg vastly expanded the quantity of legal lore, both canonical
and civil, available to the confessor for use in the internal forum of conscience. Focusing
on John’s discussion of usury in the Summa confessorum, I shall outline the variety and
quantity of legal sources that John added to his Summa, and argue that the source of
these additions can be traced back to John’s legal studies in the Faculty of Decrees at the
University of Paris – a controversial proposition given his status as a religious.
John of Freiburg served for more than thirty years as lector of the Dominican convent
of Freiburg im Breisgau in south-western Germany. He studied theology in Strasbourg
at the Dominican conventual school under Ulrich of Strasbourg (d. 1277), who was a
pupil of the renowned theologian Albertus Magnus (d. 1280). He likely also studied
theology at Paris around 1277. John’s writings indicate a profound study of canon law,
which points to the possibility, which I shall address at greater length below, that he also
sat in on lectures in the Faculty of Decrees at the University of Paris, where he became
intimately familiar with the works of Hostiensis, among other canonists. After complet-
ing his studies, he became lector of the Freiburg convent where he dedicated himself to
producing pastoral guides for his fellow Dominicans. To this end he composed between
1290 and 1298 the massive Summa confessorum – a comprehensive guide to hearing con-
fessions and administering penance.1
1 This summary of John of Freiburg’s life and works is drawn from my much lengthier treatment in the first
chapter of my dissertation. John A. Lorenc, John of Freiburg and the Usury Prohibition in the Late Middle
Canon Law and Theology: John of Legnano’s Part in the Quarrels
between Aristotelians and Jurists in the Era
of the Beginning Theological Faculty
at the Fourteenth-Century University of Bologna
Helmut G. Walther*
The main features of development of universities in Latin speaking Europe, the changing relationships of com-
mune and juristic studies in early fourteenth century Bologna, and thirdly the establishment of non-juristic stu-
dies at Bologna as at other universities since the end of the thirteenth century produced a special milieu, in which
the work of the canonist John of Legnano gained its special importance. Since the 1360s Legnano was already
an experienced mediator in political conflicts of the Commune in Bologna and also in the quarrels between the
jurists, who traditionally dominated the studia at Bologna, on the one hand, and non-jurists on the other, such
as the artists, medical students and theologians who orientated their studies and teaching toward an Aristotelian
understanding of science. In connection with these quarrels, inherited from Paris, the significance of Legnano’s
two treatises Somnium (1372) and De pace (1364) is found. In them he defends canon law and canon lawyers as
an important part not only of contemporary medieval science, but also as a social privileged group of scientific
educated specialists. Legnano had studied problems of Aristotelian philosophy out of his own interest for a long
time. As we can learn from his treatises, jurists in Bologna and elsewhere were not moved by the reproaches of
artists and theologians who tried in vain to get the jurists out of their predominant positions as councilors and
beneficiaries at courts and in ecclesiastical offices. Jurists were not willing to give away any of their traditional
social positions. Only the special conditions of Bologna and the extraordinary intellectual faculties of John of
Legnano led to the result that a jurist of the top of his profession like him should follow his intellectual interests
and argue against pseudoartisti, mendicanti et medici that jurists could claim a position in the hierarchy of the
sparkling stars of the intellectual firmament.

I.
Modern research agrees about the fact that there exists an indissoluble connection in the
development of the students’ universities of the Citramontani and Ultramontani with
that of the Bolognese Commune of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: as the Latin
term universitas means an autonomous corporation of students, coming from divergent
nations, these corporations of law students could only develop and increase as firm insti-
tutions by means of a long fight against the adversary claims of the Commune, looking
for a strong control of all inhabitants of the town, whether they were Bolognese citizens
or not.1

* My warmest thanks go to Mrs. Irmgard Maassen for her help with the English version of this paper.
1 Peter Landau, Bologna, Die Anfänge der europäischen Rechtswissenschaft, in: Alexander Demandt (Ed.),
Stätten des Geistes. Große Universitäten Europas von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Köln / Weimar / Wien
1999, 59 – 74; Carlo Dolcini, Lo Studium fino al XIII secolo, in: Ovidio Capitani (Ed.), Storia di Bologna
2, Bologna 2007, 477 – 498 (summaries of recent research); Helmut G. Walther, Die Anfänge des Rechts-
studiums und die kommunale Welt in Italien im Hochmittelalter, in: Johannes Fried (Ed.), Schulen und
Studium im sozialen Wandel des hohen und späten Mittelalters, Sigmaringen 1986 (Vorträge und Forschun-
gen 30), 121 – 162 (to the first stages of development); Antonio Ivan Pini, I maestri dello Studio nell’attività
amministrativa e politica del Comune bolognese, in: Ovidio Capitani (Ed.), Cultura universitaria de pub-
blici poteri a Bologna, Bologna 1990, 151 – 178; Anuschka de Coster, La mobilità dei docenti: Comune e
Collegi dottorali di fronte al problema dei lettori non cittadini nello Studio bolognese, in: Gian Paolo Brizzi
/ Andrea Romano (Ed.), Studenti e dottori nelle università italiane. Origini – XX secolo (Atti del Convegno
di studi Bologna, 25-27 novembre 1999), Bologna 2000, 227 – 241.
 Wichtiger als Wahrheit?
Grenzen des Beichtgeheimnisses im kanonischen Recht?
Mathias Schmoeckel
What could be more important, in the tradition of the Church, than the truth? Nevertheless, there is already a
strong medieval tradition that the seal of confession prohibits any testimony of the confessor in court, and thus
guilty persons may never be discovered. Recently, in case of child abuse, this caused political debates all over the
world: Should there not be exceptions in order to pursue culprits and to prevent further crimes? A glimpse into
the past shows that the medieval canon lawyers, especially Huguccio, allowed for major exceptions to the seal of
confession. The confessor should inform his bishop or other authorities and interested parties, “who would know
how to help and not to harm”, in order to find guidance how to respond to the confession, but also to provide
for an appropriate reaction to the offences. The priest even had an obligation to prevent further crimes which had
been announced during the confession. The decretals reflect the existence and use of such exceptions to the seal
of confession. After the Council of Trent the privacy of confession was confirmed as a major dogmatic feature;
the law books, however, were not changed. The authors therefore lay emphasis on the principle, but continued
to know of the exceptions, especially in major writings. Protestants in Saxony retained private confession and
therefore also the seal of confession. Here again, the old exceptions of canon law were known and accepted. But
only the rare monograph pointed them out, whereas briefer treatments of the question rather restated the general
rule alone. In the course of the nineteenth and twentieth century hardly any major text kept the memory of the
exceptions alive. Huguccio’s exceptions, therefore, may be an inspiring rediscovery.

I. Einleitung
1. Aktuelle Dimension
Was könnte wichtiger als Wahrheit sein? In der Geschichte des römisch-kanonischen
Prozesses kam der Abbildung der objektiven Wahrheit als Ziel der Rechtsprechung eine
besondere Bedeutung zu.1 Ein jüngerer, der Anlage nach hochaktueller Fall zeigt jedoch
eine beachtliche Ausnahme. Pierre Pican, bis 2010 Bischof von Bayeux und Lisieux in der
Normandie, wurde 2001 von einem französischen Gericht zu drei Monaten Gefängnis
auf Bewährung verurteilt, weil er einen Priester in seiner Diözese beschäftigt hatte, von
dem er wusste, dass er Kinder schändete. Tatsächlich wurde dieser betreffende Priester
1998 wegen mehrfacher Vergewaltigung von Kindern zu 18 Jahren Haft verurteilt. Der
Bischof hatte ihn nicht nur weiter beschäftigt, sondern auch versäumt, ihn bei der Staats-
anwaltschaft anzuzeigen. Wegen des letzteren Umstands wurde der Bischof verurteilt.
Im Gericht hatte sich der Bischof darauf berufen, dass er seine Kenntnisse nur durch
die Beichte gewonnen habe. Er hätte diese Informationen daher nicht weitergeben dür-
fen und würde jederzeit wieder so handeln.2 Kardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos dankte
damals in einem Schreiben dem Bischof, dass er „das Gefängnis dem Verrat an einem
Priesterbruder vorgezogen“ habe.3 Bei diesem Kardinal handelte es sich um den Präfek-
ten der Kongregation für den Klerus. Diese war bis dahin für solche Fälle innerkirchlich

1 Näher Mathias Schmoeckel, Erkenntnis und Wahrheit in der europäischen Rechtsprechung, in: Joachim
Bromand / Guido Kreis (Hg.), Was sich nicht sagen lässt. Das Nicht-Begriffliche in Wissenschaft, Kunst und
Religion, Berlin 2010, 409 – 431.
2 „Bishop kept quiet over paedophile“, BBC News vom 15. Juni 2001, [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/euro-
pe/1390018.stm, zuletzt 10.7.2012].
3 „Bischof vertuscht Missbrauchsfall – Kardinal dankt“, Die Welt vom 16. April 2010, [http://www.welt.de/
politik/ausland/article7206798/Bischof-vertuscht-Missbrauchsfall-Kardinal-dankt.html, zuletzt 10.7.2012].
 Peter Landau’s Contributions to Scholarship
on Canonistic Doctrine and Jurisprudence
Peter D. Clarke
This paper will assess Peter Landau’s contributions to scholarship on canonistic doctrine and jurisprudence in
the medieval West and focus especially on his two monographs, respectively on canonical infamy and ius patro-
natus. It will highlight the major themes which these books illuminate, including relations between secular and
ecclesiastical power; the formation of the ius comune; and the interaction between papal decretals and canonistic
doctrine. It will also consider Landau’s methodology, notably his extensive use of manuscripts and his interest in
canonistic writings outside Bologna, especially from the Anglo-Norman and French schools, and how canonists
in these different centres exchanged ideas. The paper will close with some reflections on Landau’s efforts to make
medieval canon law more accessible and mainstream as a subject and to encourage younger scholars entering the
field.
Professor Landau’s contributions to scholarship on canonistic doctrine and jurisprudence
are so numerous that I could easily spend much of this paper simply listing their biblio-
graphical details, but I hope to offer something more imaginative than that.1 Their sub-
ject-matter is immensely varied. It extends from legal philosophy in nineteenth-century
Germany to the capacity of the unfree to marry in medieval canon law. These wide schol-
arly interests naturally reflect Peter Landau’s position as a jurist in German law schools,
where he was expected to master not only canon law but also Roman and German law,
ranging across legal systems from ancient to modern. In this paper I intend to focus on
Landau’s studies on medieval canon law (and two in particular), but these also illustrate
his wider knowledge of different sorts of law. I will indicate this and other distinctive
features of his most substantial studies in our field, namely his books on canonical infamy
and ius patronatus, which originated as his doctoral and Habilitation dissertations at the
University of Bonn and were published in 1966 and 1975 respectively.2
Both books are specialised studies of legal institutions but they also illuminate wide
historical themes. Firstly, infamy originated as a penalty in Roman law but was incor-
porated into canon law from Gratian onwards, where it became associated with an in-
dependent set of definitions, procedures and doctrines by the thirteenth century. This
naturally illustrates the emergence of canonistic jurisprudence as a separate discipline
from civilian learning since the mid-twelfth century, a fundamental development in the
European legal tradition. Furthermore, given that infamy existed in both canon and Ro-
man law by the late twelfth century the power to remove it belonged to both pope and
emperor, hence this issue was a touchstone for canonistic views on relations between
secular and spiritual powers, a topic much debated by medievalists since the 1950s. Ac-

1 For a recent list of Landau’s publications: Grundlagen des Rechts. Festschrift für Peter Landau zum 65. Geb-
urtstag, ed. R. H. Helmholz / P. Mikat / J. Müller / M. Stolleis, Paderborn / München / Wien / Zürich 2000
(Rechts- und Staatswissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der Görres-Gesellschaft N.F. 91), 1119 – 1135.
2 Peter Landau, Die Entstehung des kanonischen Infamiebegriffs von Gratian bis zur Glossa Ordinaria, Köln
/ Graz 1966 (Forschungen zur kirchlichen Rechtsgeschichte und zum Kirchenrecht 5) and Peter Landau, Ius
Patronatus. Studien zur Entwicklung des Patronats im Dekretalenrecht und der Kanonistik des 12. und 13.
Jahrhunderts, Köln / Wien 1975 (Forschungen zur kirchlichen Rechtsgeschichte und zum Kirchenrecht 12).
 Peter Landau at Yale
Robert Somerville
Peter Landau was a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of Medieval Canon Law at Yale University from early
1965 into the autumn of 1966. During this period Stephan Kuttner was seriously ill and Dr Landau took over
the canon law seminar. The members of this class included Charlie Donahue, Ed Peters, and this writer, and the
seminar planted the seeds for enduring friendships.

In May of the year 1999, at the International Congress of Medieval Studies at Kalama-
zoo, I was on a panel in memory of Stephan Kuttner, who had died in August of 1996
(indeed, at the beginning of the Syracuse Canon Law Congress). My topic was ‘Stephan
Kuttner at Yale’. My paper today, obviously, has a connection with that one, for ‘Peter
Landau at Yale’ must be framed by the activities of Stephan and the Institute of Medieval
Canon Law during the years in New Haven and at Yale. Let me also add, by way of intro-
duction, that this paper is made up primarily of memories, and relying on unwritten tra-
ditions can be a very slippery slope. The particular memories embedded in what follows
are culled from information provided by Angelika Landau, from my own recollections,
and also from exchanges with Charlie Donahue and Ed Peters, both of whom were in the
Kuttner-Landau canon law seminar with me in academic year 1964 – 1965, and both of
whom have kindly exchanged e-mails with me about the class and about recollections of
the time. Charlie, Ed, and I do not always recall things exactly the same way, but there is
more harmony than dissonance.
Let me now sketch some background information that will be known to many of
you but surely not to everybody. The Institute of Medieval Canon Law had been found-
ed at the Catholic University of America, in Washington, DC, by Stephan Kuttner, in
1955. The Institute then moved to Yale University in New Haven, CT, in the summer of
1964, when Stephan accepted a chair at Yale as the first T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of
Roman Catholic Studies in the Department of Religious Studies. In his first year in that
post, that is in academic year 1964 – 1965, Stephan offered a year-long seminar on the
history of the sources of canon law. There were about eight of us in the course, designed
as a two semester sequence, the end product of which was a long research paper. Keep in
mind also that this was 1964. A very vivid memory for me, as a non-smoker, was that the
class was conducted amid the omnipresent aroma of cigarette smoke, as Stephan lit and
smoked one Pall Mall cigarette after another. In the mid-1960s American universities and
their classrooms and libraries were not, as we would say today, ‘smoke free zones’.
This information can help evoke a bit of the environment of the first Kuttner sem-
inar at Yale. The class took place on Thursday afternoon, and after Christmas and New
Year’s of 1964 / 1965 the course met twice in early January. Then there was a gap; the
next session occurred nearly a month later, in mid-February. The interruption was due
to illness on Stephan’s part. In the damp, chilly January weather he caught a cold that he
simply could not shake. Finally submitting to a doctor’s recommendation, a thorough
medical examination revealed that he had lung cancer, and surgery was ordered.
 Peter Landau’s Contribution to the Study of Gratian
and Twelfth-Century Canon Law
Atria A. Larson
Professor Landau is a scholar of exceptional range in the field of medieval canon law. His work has reached from
late antiquity to the modern era. This essay examines his contributions to the study of developments in canon
law in the twelfth century, specifically from Gratian through the early decretal collections (pre-Compilationes an-
tiquae). Landau has popularized a methodology for identifying formal sources in canonical collections and in the
process confirmed the traditional assertion that Gratian worked from Bologna. He has traced the work of early
decretists and used manuscript evidence to elucidate the development of early schools of canon law, especially
in the Anglo-Norman realm and Cologne. His immersion in manuscripts and their contents has allowed him
to make connections between texts on the one hand and schools on the other. In the process, he has recently
been able to put forward several plausible hypotheses about the authorship of works previously known only as
anonymous. More than anything, he has explained the importance of this era in the development of canon law
and the establishment of a common legal culture with the pope as supreme legislator in the church, and he has
demonstrated how connected these developments were to the major cultural and political figures of the time.

For the reader who immerses himself in the numerous articles by Professor Peter Landau,
what will impress him, among other things, is the subtlety and modesty of Landau’s
work, the tentative conclusions based on meticulous research, his willingness to present
einige Beobachtungen, Thesen, und Hypothesen, as he put it in one of his most well-known
articles,1 and his habit of presenting his own conclusions as personal, albeit well-found-
ed, ideas which he intends to be further investigated and tested. In short, in his career,
Professor Landau has been reluctant to issue dogmatic conclusions but eager to make
learned suggestions. He has done so in historiographically grounded, logically formulat-
ed, intensely documented articles. The often modest nature of Landau’s claims, however,
belies the significance of his work. In this essay, I will focus my comments on some of the
most significant contributions of Professor Landau’s work on twelfth-century canon law,
especially Gratian, the development of regional schools of canon law, and the emergence
of papal decretals as the foundation of the ius novum.
In 1979 John T. Noonan published his now famous article, ‘Gratian Slept Here’.
In 1978, canon law scholars ‘knew’ much about Gratian; in 1980, thanks to Noonan,
they knew virtually nothing at all.2 Landau sought a new way of going about the ques-
tion, ‘Who was Gratian?’ That was in fact the main question behind Landau’s 1984
article, ‘Neue Forschungen zu vorgratianischen Kanonessammlungen und den Quellen
des gratianischen Dekrets’, now one of his most-cited articles. Landau hypothesized that
scholars could uncover more information about Gratian if they understood how he put
his Decretum together. What were Gratian’s formal sources, the works and canonical col-
lections from which Gratian adopted all his capitula? If scholars could determine these
1 Peter Landau, Neue Forschungen zu vorgratianischen Kanonessammlungen und den Quellen des gratian-
ischen Dekrets, in: Ius commune 11, 1984, 1 – 29, at 14 (also in Peter Landau, Kanones und Dekretalen.
Beiträge zur Geschichte der Quellen des kanonischen Rechts, Goldbach 1997 (Bibliotheca eruditorum,
Internationale Bibliothek des Wissenschaften 2), 190*).
2 John T. Noonan, Gratian Slept Here: The Changing Identity of the Father of Canon Law, in: Traditio 35,
1979, 145 – 172.