Canon Law and the Letters of Ivo of Chartres. By Christof Rolker. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, 4th series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, xiii + 396 pp. £65.00 cloth.

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)One of the most influential studies of the development of the western church and of its canon law between the ninth and the twelfth centuries has been the Histoire des collections canoniques en Occident: depuis les Fausses Decretales jusqu'au Decret de Gratien of P. Fournier and G. Le Bras (2 vols. [Paris: Recueil Sirey, 1931-2]). Fournier and Le Bras put forward the case for seeing the great reform of the church in the eleventh and twelfth centuries being carried forward by new collections of law intended to promote papal primacy and to eradicate clerical marriage and lay investiture. Whereas the monumental collection of church law made between 1012 and 1022 by Burchard, bishop of Worms, clarified the responsibilities of bishops, some of the collections made in the eleventh century radically promoted papal primacy and "Gregorian" reforms. The Decretum of Ivo, bishop of Chartres from 1090 to 1115, together with his Panormia and Prologue , also promoted reform and entered the mainstream of academic and practical life in the twelfth century as the "investiture contest" drew to an end. Finally the great Concordance of Discordant Canons produced by Gratian of Bologna in about 1140, which built upon the work of Ivo, closed a long period during which "scholastic" methods for interpreting church doctrine and law had been forged, largely by promoters of reform.In the present book Rolker mounts a sustained assault on this powerful account. This may not have been his original intention when he embarked upon a study of the canon law content of Ivo's letters. But the results of his studies have catapulted him into a position where the grand narrative of Fournier and Le Bras had to be further reconsidered once it became clear to him that Ivo was not a reformer in the way in which Fournier and Le Bras had represented him nor was he the author of the Panormia nor was the earlier work of Burchard displaced by new legislation. The result is a fine book on at least three levels. The first is the tunneling for sources utilized by Ivo in his correspondence. In a concordance that fills over thirty-five pages, he lists the parallels between quotations found in the letters and in Ivonian collections. The second level is that of Ivo's participation as bishop of Chartres in the great affairs of the French kingdom and church, including his principled but rather isolated resistance to the re-marriage of king Philip I. The third level is one on which a fresh look is taken at the broad outlines of the history of church reform and the stimulus it gave to scholasticism. These seem less linear than they did to Fournier and Le Bras, very great though their achievement was and remains. The key is Rolker's finding that Ivo is not only not the author of the very successful Panormia but also that he never used it and that it was probably completed later than is usually thought, in about 1115. …