Gratian, Original Sin, and the Sins of the Fathers: A Question of Sources and the Influence of the School of Laon

Abstract

Gratian, Original Sin, and the Sins of the Fathers:A Question of Sources and the Influence of the School of Laon Atria A. Larson In 1984, Peter Landau published a pioneering article on Gratian's formal sources, the canonical collections from which he drew his auctoritatibus in the Decretum.1 That article inspired subsequent work by Landau and others, especially in light of confirmed stages of development of Gratian's text.2 Certain formal sources seem to have been used extensively in early redactions of the text, culminating in R1, while other formal sources became used or more widely used in later redactions of the text, culminating in R2.3 All the same, ambiguities abound; scholars still cannot, and [End Page 175] perhaps never will be able to, identify all the sources from which Gratian drew his materials, especially since Gratian and/or later redactors of the text as personal agents occasionally made changes in the text, especially by adding or altering inscriptions and rubrics; additionally certain formal sources may be lost to history.4 In research connecting Gratian's De penitentia (Decretum C.33 q.3) to ideas, texts, and methods from the school of Laon, I have previously suggested that a subsidiary question consists in asking in what intellectual milieu Gratian was educated and formed, recognizing that no author worked purely from a physical library.5 Education matters; oral teaching, sometimes preserved in written texts and sometimes not, matters. While Gratian might be connected to the school of Laon on the basis of similar methodologies and usage of the same concepts and sources, the case is made stronger when textual ties are evident. More than any particular collection of 'sententiae' from the school or Anselm of Laon himself, some early glosses on various books of the Bible emerging from that school and soon to become the Glossa ordinaria have been proven to have been known to Gratian.6 This paper will provide additional evidence of Gratian's connection to the school of Laon by looking at his treatment of original sin in connection to the question of the sins [End Page 176] of the fathers, namely, whether children can justly be punished for the sins of their parents. The topic of the Christian doctrine of original sin was also one that attracted the attention of Professor Landau. In 2000, he published an essay entitled 'Der biblische Sündenfall und die Legitimität des Rechts'.7 According to biblical teaching, God created humans good. The first two humans, Adam and Eve, sinned, thus tainting all of creation, including all of their posterity. As a result of this event of the first sin, known as The Fall, all humans generated from the first parents inherit a guilt making them worthy of God's punishment. That 'original sin' in which they are conceived is to be distinguished from the 'actual sins' that they in their own agency commit; it also makes them more disposed to commit actual sins than Adam and Eve were in their original state of innocence. Landau drew out how the Christian doctrine of original sin provided a basis on which to legitimize any system of law, even non-religious ones, since, in a post-Fall world, sin is inevitable and therefore (positive) law must be enacted to restrain that evil. Although the early church developed and the medieval church adopted a view of baptism as that sacrament that wipes out original sin and previously committed actual sins, subsequent actual sin was still an obvious reality; sin would only go away altogether in the world to come. Thus, so too did the church need a law to restrain evil; such is canon law. For Gratian, original sin also pertained to a concern to determine guilt so that the punishments meted out in canon law were just. He applied discussions going on among those associated with the school of Laon about original sin to another widespread intellectual question of the day, namely whether or in what way the sins of the fathers (cf. Ex. 20:5, Ex. 34:7) can be said to return to the sons; in other words, can children be [End Page 177] punished for the...