The transmission of the Hibernensis in Italy: tenth to the twelfth century

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

This chapter explores a significant period in the formation, teaching, and application of canon law. Firstly, it marked the emergence of a universal body of Western canon law which remained in force among Catholics down to 1917; and the chapter will survey recent scholarly debate about the development of this corpus of canon law. Secondly, universities appeared and established the systematic teaching and study of canon (and civil) law. Canon law collections were often compiled in this milieu, and university teachers produced commentaries and other literature on this law, which influenced how it was interpreted and applied in practice. Thirdly, regular church courts emerged across Western Europe as forums for settling disputes and prosecuting crimes that came under canon law. These courts formed an international hierarchy with the papal Curia at its apex, the highest ecclesiastical court of appeal, and stretching down to bishops’ and archdeacons’ courts at diocesan level.

The Collectio Canonum Hibernensis is an eighth-century Hiberno-Latin compilation of patristic florilegia that was brought to England by Breton ecclesiastics and employed by Anglo-Saxon reformers as a canonical resource. This article addresses the Hibernensis as an Irish product that was subsumed into the corpus of continental regulatory materials which then circulated throughout the Anglo-Saxon centers and assisted in the articulation of the ideological framework for the English Benedictine Reform in the tenth and eleventh centuries. This discussion delineates the ways in which the Hibernensis was transmitted throughout the English centers, in company with Anglo-Saxon and continental regulatory materials alike (including the Amalarian liber officialis, the Regularis Concordia and Wulfstan’s Canon Law Collection), and shows that the Hiberno-Latin text was employed in the regulatory scholarship of Oda of Canterbury (the Constitutiones), Ælfric of Eynsham (the Letter to Brother Edward), and Wulfstan of York (the Institutes of Polity).

The Catholic Historical Review VOL. LXXXVJANUARY, 1999No. 1 MULIERES RELIGIOSAE, STRICTLY SPEAKING: SOME FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CANONICAL OPINIONS BY Elizabeth Makowski* At the start of the fourteenth century, a religious woman was defined by canon law as one who had not only taken the three vows ofpoverty, chastity, and obedience, but who had also made solemn profession in an already existing religious order.1 Additionally, solemn vows committed the mulier religiosa to strict claustration.2 Community life absent *Dr. Makowski is an associate professor of history in Southwest Texas State University, San Marcos. 'The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) forbade the founding of new religious orders and stated that henceforth anyone who wished to become a religious would have to enter one of the already approved orders: Joannes Dominicus Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova etamplissima collectio (Florence, 1759-1798;rtp.Graz, 196l),XX, 1002;an English facing-text of the council's decree can be found in Norman Tanner (ed.), Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (Washington, D.C., 1990), p. 242. The canons of the Second Council of Lyon (1274) repeated the Lateran ban, adding that any new order which had arisen since 1215,without express papal confirmation,was to be suppressed:Tanner,Decrees,p. 326. This decree was incorporated into the collection of canon law known as the Liber Sextus {VI 3.17.1), published in 1 298, and medieval canonists would cite it from this collection . Pope Boniface VIII subsequently removed any ambiguity about the way in which an approved community could admit new members. The candidate for religious life would not only pronounce the traditional vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, but also make formal profession. The public act of profession, signified by the assumption of a distinctive habit, was considered the action by which the vows of religion were made solemn: VI 3. 1 5- 1 ; the Latin text can be found in the standard modern edition of the body of medieval canon law: Emil Friedberg (ed.), Corpus iuris canonici (Leipzig, 1879; rpt. Graz, 1959), II, 1053. The 1298 Bonifacian constitution Periculoso {VI 3.16.1; Friedberg, Corpus, II, 10531054 ) stipulated that all professed nuns observe cloister regulations. Claustration rules strictly limit the occasions on which outsiders, even members of the clergy, could enter a 2 MUUERES REUGIOSAE, STRICTLY SPEAKING: SOME FOURTEENTH-CENTURY OPINIONS one or more of these characteristics was regarded as semi- or quasireligious , and while this juridical status did not automatically involve ecclesiastical censure (both Franciscan and Dominican tertiaries flourished with papal approval), it could. This was especially true for semi-religious women who, in the absence of formal religious profession , lived in uncloistered communities—the well-known condemnation of the Béguines at the Council ofVienne being a case in point.3 Despite the threat of inquisitorial investigation, however, quasireligious women's groups continued to thrive. In the Southern Low Countries, the Béguines found local patrons and new, unenclosed, female religious orders emerged; Italianpinzochere and uncloistered penitential groups abounded, and in Germany canonesses maintained their venerable, if irregular, community life.4 And while there are many reasons for quasi-religious resilience, one stands out in sharp relief: Alongwomen 's monastery, and they forbade unauthorized exits, save for emergencies. For a detailed study of this decree see: Elizabeth Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered Women: Periculoso and its Commentators 1298-1545 (Washington D.C., 1997). Although I disagree with Katherine Gill's statement that"Periculoso did not represent either a dramatic turning point or a culmination in the history of women's religious institutions"—general acceptance of a papal ruling being only one measure of its significance—her observation that the decree might actually have encouraged the spread of semi-religious communities is noteworthy. See Katherine Gill, "Scandala: Controversies Concerning Clausura and Women's Religious Communities in Late Medieval Italy," in Christendom and Its Discontents , edd. Scott Waugh and Peter Diehl (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 177-203.»With the publication of the decree Cum de quibusdam by Pope John XXII in 1317, Béguines, whose semi-religious status defied traditional categorization, found themselves forced for nearly a century to defend against charges of hypocrisy, heresy, or both.The decree was published in the last official decretal collection...

Thomas Izbicki presents a new examination of the relationship between the adoration of the sacrament and canon law from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries. The medieval Church believed Christ's glorified body was present in the Eucharist, the most central of the seven sacraments, and the Real Presence became explained as transubstantiation by university-trained theologians. Expressions of this belief included the drama of the elevated host and chalice, as well as processions with a host in an elaborate monstrance on the Feast of Corpus Christi. These affirmations of doctrine were governed by canon law, promulgated by popes and councils; and liturgical regulations were enforced by popes, bishops, archdeacons and inquisitors. Drawing on canon law collections and commentaries, synodal enactments, legal manuals and books about ecclesiastical offices, Izbicki presents the first systematic analysis of the Church's teaching about the regulation of the practice of the Eucharist.

ВИТОКИ ЛЬВІВСЬКОГО НАЦІОНАЛЬНОГО УНІВЕРСИТЕТУ ІМЕНІ ІВАНА ФРАНКА: ДЕЯКІ ДИСКУСІЙНІ ПИТАННЯ (ДО 360-ЛІТТЯ ВІД ЧАСУ ЗАСНУВАННЯ)

Destroyed but not Lost:A Digital Reconstruction of the Chartrain Copy of Burchard's Liber decretorum (Chartres BM 161)1 Michela Galli and Christof Rolker Part I: Burchard's Place in the History of Canon Law The Liber decretorum compiled shortly before 1023 by Burchard of Worms (†1025) was the most influential canon law collection of the eleventh century. Bishops, abbots, teachers, and many other prelates valued the Liber decretorum as a comprehensive, well-structured canon law collection covering a very wide range of issues; it was copied frequently, and many compilers used Burchard's work as a model for their own canonical collections. Thus, not only are there some 100 medieval copies (or fragments thereof) still extant, but also a large number of other collections drawing on the Liber decretorum. Crucially, this group includes the Decretum of Ivo of Chartres, which incorporated most of Burchard's Liber decretorum and in turn became widely influential both in its own right and via the large number of derivative collections drawing on it. Via these later collections, the decisions Burchard had made in omitting, retaining, reworking, and arranging his material had a profound impact on medieval and even early modern canon law, if only because material not found in his comprehensive collection had a significantly lower chance of being included in any of the most influential collections of the twelfth century. After all, the Tripartita (in part B), the Panormia, and the Decretum Gratiani [End Page 19] all depend either directly or indirectly on the Decretum of Ivo of Chartres mentioned above as an important Burchard derivative. Yet before the Burchadian material ended up (or not) in the collections of the twelfth century, the Liber decretorum already had undergone considerable changes. From early on, the Liber decretorum existed in different versions, as Burchard and his collaborators were still making additions and other changes to their work when the collection began to be used outside Worms.2 As Hoffmann and Pokorny established, the arrangement of canons differs significantly already among the very early copies. In particular, they distinguish two variants of the 'Order of Worms': 'type A' (found only in the Vatican double codex, two Würzburg copies, and the editio princeps), and 'type B', also known as 'Frankfurt' order, which is found in almost all extant copies of the Liber decretorum. For the textual history of the collection, special attention has to be paid to the reception of Burchard in northern Italy, as it was here that several distinct versions emerged in the second half of the eleventh century. The most important branch of transmission are the so-called 'deteriores' manuscripts. As Gérard Fransen demonstrated in a number of studies,3 many copies of the Liber decretorum go back directly or indirectly to exemplars which either have a number of distinctive omissions in books 8, 12, 19, and 20, or 'scars' suggesting that these gaps had been mended one way or the other. By 'scars' we refer to all phenomena which can be best explained as the result of adding some or all of [End Page 20] the missing canons from a complete version of the Liber decretorum. For example, the missing material may be found in the margin rather than the main text, inserted at the end of the respective book, written by a different hand, and/or the gaps may be commented upon; sometimes, canons were conflated (or mutilated) as a result of the insertion of missing material, or inscriptions became muddled, or the capitulatio was not, or not adequately, brought up to date. As already Fransen observed, some of these features were often preserved, at least in part, when new copies were made from such 'mended' exemplars. For example, the phrase 'hic minus habetur' in several Burchard manuscripts is found in the main text of a canon to which it originally was a marginal comment.4 In all probability, the characteristic gaps first occurred with a Burchard manuscript written in or brought to northern Italy in the mid-eleventh century. Indeed, most Burchard copies written in northern Italy display the characteristic 'deteriores' gaps and/or 'scars' in the above sense; vice versa, most extant manuscripts belonging to the...

This article examines the twelfth-century manuscript BAV Vat. gr. 2198 and its contents in light of new research in the field of Byzantine legal history. This codex is most notable for containing a canon law collection known as the Synthesis of the Nomocanon, attributed to “the monk John, the son of the Sebastokrator.” After first introducing the physical details of the manuscript and its history of ownership, the article then lays out the evidence for the identification of John with Adrian Komnenos, nephew of the emperor Alexios I. It next provides a detailed study of the structure and purpose of the Synthesis of the Nomocanon, arguing that it was an attempt to create a practical handbook of canon law that would allow readers to quickly look up canons on particular themes while also being able to check the historical context in which the canons were issued. Lastly, it also surveys the contents of the manuscript’s extensive appendix and offers some general conclusions about the significance of John’s Synthesis within the broader landscape of Komnenian canon law scholarship.

Cultural Memory and Gender in Iceland from Medieval to Early Modern Times Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir Thanks to the humanistic movement of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, many of the great Icelandic manuscripts from the Middle Ages were collected, transcribed, and preserved.1 Ever since Michael Clanchy’s From Memory to Written Record in the late 1970s, there has been a growing research interest in the field of medieval literacy and memorial culture in a European context (Clanchy 1979, 202). In the Icelandic case, much more can be done.2 Clanchy underscored that for a long time after the introduction of literacy, an oral culture continued to exist: written words were, for instance, communicated by being read aloud, and throughout the Middle Ages, memorial culture continued to be a mixture of the oral and the written. In this context it is important to remember what Elisabeth van Houts has convincingly argued, namely that writing was not only produced by an isolated group of men in monasteries, since women, as well as laymen, actively participated in textual production (van Houts 1999, 1–2, 2001, 1–16). This paper will first focus on the fact that the transmission of certain texts and stories became an important part of the cultural memory of [End Page 378] the Icelanders, while other texts were forgotten and lost. Second, we shall ask who the bearers of the textual transmission were, and why some stories became more popular than others. The third question to be treated is what role gender played in collective memory in Iceland during the time of transmission from the medieval to the early modern period. Throughout this paper I will focus on the transcription and preservation not only of literature, but also of legal documents as well as devotional literature and—to a certain degree—various artifacts. In his Varieties of Cultural History from 1997, Peter Burke underlined that the social history of remembrance is selective, adding that it is our task as historians to identify the principles of selection (Burke 1997, 45). To be able to study this problem historically, one needs to identify how memory in past times was made and produced. Normally in social and cultural studies, this memory is related to communication of a collective character through some sort of media. Here we shall focus on some of the medieval media used for transmitting memory in the Icelandic context (Hermann 2009). There was a selective remembrance of the past, and—following Peter Burke—our task is both to identify this selection and to determine the principle behind it. Not all historical sources are media for cultural memory, but the earliest textual production of the Icelanders was to a very high degree, in a way that gave storytelling an entirely new platform.3 Something similar can be said about the printing revolution of the early modern period. After the Reformation, printing technology was introduced in Iceland, and greater stress was laid on publishing religious texts, not least the Bible, in the vernacular. Thus, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a shift in media from handwritten manuscripts on parchment or paper to printed books occurred, which had profound consequences for the art of memory, sometimes even described as “the death of the medieval memory” (Le Goff 1992, 81–82). That point is open to debate, but it is certain that with the introduction, first of paper in the fifteenth century, then of printing in the sixteenth century, it became easier and cheaper to make all kinds of transcriptions. Just as important was that the new faith introduced with the Reformation had consequences with regard to the type of books being published. The Reformation was followed, as we have already noted, by a growing interest in new religious literature in the [End Page 379] vernacular, but it also made some of the Latin writings from the medieval period—for instance, collections of Canon Law and ecclesiastical statutes, or sermon collections—outdated.4 Canon Law and Latin Manuscripts With the Christian religion, the Latin language was introduced in Iceland. Icelandic history was written in the vernacular, but during the twelfth century, how to place the history of Iceland in the...

This article investigates the characteristics and function of Book 19 of Burchard's Decretum. It demonstrates how the penitential questionnaire, usually considered the most original part of this text, was the result of Burchard's systematic expansion upon his main source, Regino of Prüm. It argues that Book 19 was not a conventional penitential, to be used to support the administration of penance by priests, but rather that it was meant to be both an exemplary penitential and a summary of the preceding eighteen books. Burchard thus sought to ensure there was no contradiction between his collection of canon law and his penitential.

The article focuses on the study of the legal sources and the sources of legal history, with an accent on the reception in the European neighbours of the East Empire of the canon law of the Orthodox Church, created primarily in Byzantium. It is strongly related to this enormous impact that arrived principally via ecclesiastical ways. We pay particular attention to the different canon law collections and their diffusion in the countries of Slavia Orthodoxa.

Although the surviving written texts must be our evidence, they are not identical with the subject to be investigated. The great bulk of legal activity was oral, and on this the written sources often shed only an indirect light. In spite of this difficulty, however, we must be concerned with the totality, both written and unwritten, since otherwise explanation will be impossible. It will also be necessary to examine the principal Irish text of canon law, the ‘Collectio canonum Hibernensis’. I shall refer to the vernacular texts as native Irish law or as secular Irish law.

Reviewed by: Der Einfluss der Kanonistik auf die Europäische Rechtskultur, Bd. 6: Völkerrecht ed. by Orazio Condorelli, Franck Roumy and Mathias Schmoeckel Jessalynn Lea Bird Condorelli, Orazio, Franck Roumy, and Mathias Schmoeckel, edd. Der Einfluss der Kanonistik auf die Europäische Rechtskultur, Bd. 6: Völkerrecht. Norm und Struktur, Studien zum sozialen Wandel in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit 37/6. Wien: Bӧhlau Verlag, 2020. Pp. 392. €79.99. ISBN: 978-3-412-51891-2. One of a generation of medievalists who, in the aftermath of World War II, researched and held positions with equal facility on both sides of the Atlantic, Peter Landau (1935-2019) left a powerful legacy not only of critical editions, articles, monographs, and textbooks but of scholars trained in legal history. A prolific writer who engaged not only with the medieval legal tradition (civil, canon, and natural law) but Protestant and modern law and history, Professor Landau also played key roles in associations devoted to legal studies, including the Max Planck Institute for the European History of Law and the Stephan Kuttner Institute of Medieval Canon Law. The weighty collection of essays on canon law's impact on international law under review here (in a journal co-edited by Professor Landau for decades) is therefore fittingly dedicated to his memory. The modern world's globalized culture means that international law is more relevant than ever before, as increasingly international governance and alliances determine not merely war and peace but economies and environmental welfare. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have thus far been dominated by the tension between residual national, ethnic, and religious loyalties and international collaboration, by Axes and Allies, the League of Nations, NATO, the Warsaw Pact, NAFTA, OPAC, the World Bank, RPEC, the European Union, and Brexit. In order to understand the expectations concerning international law which those cultures heavily shaped by European legal traditions brought and still bring to the bargaining table, a consideration of canon law's effect on medieval and early modern international law is essential. But what falls under the purview of international law and what are its bases? The Roman advocate and politician Cicero and [End Page 237] other Roman jurists viewed the ius gentium (literally: law of the peoples), as stemming from human consent, as equal in primacy to natural law, and as truly independent from civil law (ius civile), which applied only to individual countries. However, as the introduction (v-xxii) and Peter Landau's article (xxiii-xxv) explain, most pre-modern canon lawyers adopted their definition of international law from Isidore of Seville's vastly influential Etymologiae. As a bishop, Isidore hybridized Christian morality with the Roman legal tradition and concepts of universal human obligations. He defined the ius gentium as an universal collection of rules originating from human nature, not legislation; international law was used by nearly all peoples to limit strife and uncertainty and therefore dealt with occupation, construction of fortifications, weapons, warfare, prisoners, slavery, the right of return, peace treaties, armistices, the inviolability of ambassadors, and the prohibition of marriage between those of different origins. Isidore's definition was incorporated into the foundational textbook for medieval canon law, Gratian's Decretum. His list of topics therefore provided canonists with focal points for discussion and could well serve as the table of contents for this volume, which also compares medieval concepts of international law to those of other periods (vi-vii). Contracts Must Be Observed But Can Be Broken The volume proper begins with Franck Roumy's investigation of the canonical origins of the clausula rebus sic stantibus (the ability to cease observing or to revise a contract or treaty should the circumstances under which it was originally formulated change to the significant detriment of either party). As Roumy notes, James Muldoon and many others have elucidated the ways in which rules and principles established by medieval canon lawyers influenced modern international law. The particular clausula discussed here was adopted by the pioneering Italian jurist Alberico Gentili (1552-1608), who argued that juridical principles governing private contracts were transferable to [End Page 238] conventions between powerful sovereigns. After Gentili, common opinion decreed that the clausula applied to every accord...

The importance of canon law collections to Anglo-Saxon legal culture has long been thought negligible, especially in comparison to the considerable importance of an alternative genre of canonical literature known as the penitential handbook. Over the past several decades, however, evidence for the use and circulation of continental canon law collections in pre-Conquest England has been mounting, to the extent that it could challenge traditional notions about the dominance of penitential law in the early English Church. This study presents new evidence for the reception in Anglo-Saxon England of a major continental collection known as theCollectio vetus Gallica.

Abstract:The essay assesses all the regulations in these collections that relate directly or indirectly to Jews, dividing them into four topic-based groups (protection and toleration; the mission of the Jews; proselytism; reduction of rights and condemnation) each with further subdivisions. This provides a solid foundation for comparing the treatment of Jews advocated by Burchard and Ivo, as well as for comparing their propositions with those of other canon law collections. Since older systematic canonical regulations for Jews apparently did not serve as immediate examples for either Burchard or Ivo, whereas the latter had an influence on Gratian, it can be assumed that Burchard’s collection formed the beginning of a direct line of canon law developments for Jews. If we compare Burchard’s and Ivo’s regulations we notice a clear negative progression in the treatment of Jews between the former and the latter, even though Ivo, in principle, also advocated the protection of Jews. With either it becomes apparent, however, that the great majority of the later canonical regulations for Jews trace back to the distant past. Moreover, the comparison of Ivo’s