"On the life and continence of judges": the production and transmission of imperial legislation in late Ottonian Italy

Abstract

This article focuses on a decree prohibiting imperial or royal judges from marrying that was copied around the year 1000 into a ninth-century manuscript of canon law now in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence (Edili 82). The article sets the decree in the context of Ottonian legislation in Italy, and of early medieval legislation more generally, and provides a detailed investigation of the manuscript’s contents and likely provenance. It argues that the decree should be read as new evidence for the aspiration of the late Ottonian court’s clerical elites to integrate increasingly autonomous Italian legal professionals into the imperial reforming programme. A critical edition of the decree is provided as an appendix.