Clavis Canonum: Selected Canon Law Collections Before 1140 (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Clavis Canonum: Selected Canon Law Collections Before 1140 Constant J. Mews Fowler-Magerl, Linda, Clavis Canonum: Selected Canon Law Collections Before 1140 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Hilfsmittel 21), Hannover, Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2005; hardback; pp. 282 + 1 CD-ROM; RRP €25.00; ISBN 3775211284. Canon law collections are a rich mine of historical information about the foibles and weaknesses of ecclesiastical practice throughout the medieval period, as well as about the desire of administrators to impose order on an uncomfortable diversity of practice and interpretation of ecclesiastical law. This volume provides a clear and accessible summary of all the major canon law collections compiled between the fourth and early twelfth centuries, giving valuable bibliographical summaries of scholarship on each of these collections, some of which occur only in a single manuscript, while others survive in many copies. It is a product of the Stephan-Kuttner-Institute of Medieval Canon Law, based in Munich. It is the character of such a Hilfsmittel that attention is given to bibliographical thoroughness rather than to explaining the significance of these collections for the novice, who has no particular familiarity with the genre. The volume is accompanied by a CD that supplies a database of 20,000 canons from canon law collections compiled before 1140. This database provides an indispensable research tool for investigating the contents a manifold range of canon law conclusions prior to the great systematisation of Gratian. The database itself required some effort to make it usable. It is characteristic of the dominant [End Page 186] concern of historians of canon law to identify and classify texts that the database provides opportunity to search by incipit and explicit, but without providing the full contents of a canon (for which one still has to hunt out the critical edition). Canon law is still a domain in which specialists are fascinated by the relationship of one collection to another. While this volume can help the more expert student work through this literature, the novice still needs assistance to understand why these collections are important. Constant J. Mews School of Historical Studies Monash University Copyright © 2007 the author