Reading Burchard’s Corrector: canon law and penance in the High Middle Ages

Abstract

ABSTRACTAs the nineteenth book of his Decretum, Bishop Burchard of Worms (d. 1025) included a penitential titled the Corrector or Medicus. Although the Corrector has traditionally been described as a manual of private confession, this article argues that it was primarily used to judge public penances at church courts and synods. Focusing on the manuscript transmission of the Decretum in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, we find that the Corrector was almost never copied apart from the rest of the Decretum and that it was almost always copied alongside other legal texts. Turning to individual abbreviations, we also find that Burchard’s collection was frequently reworked and rearranged so as to integrate canonical and penitential texts. These findings call into question current definitions of canon law collections and penitentials which presume functional exclusivity.