Canon Law Collections Research Articles

A Twelfth-Century Handbook of Byzantine Canon Law

Abstract 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.

Viešas reikalas? Bylos dėl impotencijos XVII–XVIII a. Vilniaus ir Žemaitijos katalikų konsistorijose

In Catholic canon law, the terms used to refer to the sexual disorders causing difficulties in marriage were “impotence” (Lat. impotentia) or “frigidity” (Lat. frigiditas). These terms, although not gendered, were nevertheless most often used to describe men’s physiological problems. In the Catholic consistories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, impotence-related cases were perhaps the rarest category of all marital litigation. In the surviving sources of the seventeenth-eighteenth-century ecclesiastical courts, it was possible to find data on ten such cases, of which seven were examined. Due to the scarcity and chronological inconsistency of the data drawing generalising conclusions is problematic, nonetheless, it is possible to observe certain trends and to reveal aspects that are relevant from the point of view of micro-history.All bar one of the cases involved male impotence, and five out of seven resulted in the decisions declaring the marriages null and void. The analysis of case materials clearly reveals an aspect of publicity characteristic of this type of cases that had evolved in canon law since the Middle Ages, namely, third-party inspections. It was the expert insights of women or doctors that had a decisive influence on the decisions on whether to annul the marriage or to order the spouses to stay in it. This rather unwanted limelight may have precluded many of the cases from ever reaching the courts.

LAW AND ITS SOURCES IN THE EUROPEAN PERIPHERY OF BYZANTINE EMPIRE (IX – XV C.). II. COLLECTIONS OF CANON LAW. PENITENTIAL DISCIPLINE. CONCLUSIONS

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.

Venetiis in Rivo alto: Letters for English Recipients issued from Venice in mid-1177

Venetiis in Rivo alto:Letters for English Recipients issued from Venice in mid-1177 Anne J. Duggan There is little doubt that Alexander III's sojourn in Venice was a significant European event.*1 Not only did the reconciliation with the emperor Frederick I end the schism that had divided Catholic Christendom for almost eighteen years, but it set the stage for the making of peace (at Constance, July 1183) with the league of sixteen Lombard cities which had opposed Frederick's political ambitions in northern Italy and also with the Norman kingdom in southern Italy and Sicily,2 even though the working out of the territorial and jurisdictional details led to serious tensions, including another German invasion of northern Italy (1186), led by Henry (VI), Frederick's heir.3 For those five months, between 11 May and 16 October 1177, Jaffé lists 121 letters issued Venetiis, in Rivo alto – at Venice, on the Rialto (JL 12836–12956). This unique address designated the new palace of Patriarch Enrico Dandalo of Grado, where Alexander resided, near the church of San Silvestro and close to the heart of Venice's thriving commercial district.4 Only eight of these 121 letters were [End Page 145] addressed to recipients in England, but other sources allow us to add a further eight to the tally (and there may be more to be recovered). Two of this sixteen were issued on papal initiative, but the remaining fourteen offer a fascinating snapshot of the range of petitioners prepared to send envoys, or even travel themselves, more than one thousand miles, to seek justice, confirmation of privileges, reinforcement of their own authority, or authoritative advice on intricate points of canon law. Acta dated in Rivo alto in Jaffé's register: Papal initiative The letters issued on papal initiative record two stages in the making of the Peace of Venice. The first, Exigunt gratissime (26 July),5 notifies Archbishop Roger of York and Bishop Hugh of Durham about Frederick I's renunciation of the schism in the church of San Nicolò on the Lido, his solemn acknowledgement of Alexander's papacy, 'ante ecclesiam Beati Marci', and the celebratory Mass in the basilica of St Mark, all of which had been conducted with considerable ceremony on the preceding Sunday, 24 July 1177.6 This announcement was very similar to that issued on the following day to Abbot Peter of Montecassino and Archbishop Alphano of Capua; and similar letters were sent to other prelates across Europe.7 The second, Immensas laudes, issued on 6 August to Archbishop Richard of Canterbury, his suffragans, and 'abbots within the archbishopric of Canterbury with a particular attachment to the Roman Church (dilectis filiis abbatibus specialiter ad Romanam Ecclesiam pertinentibus in archiepiscopatu Cantuariensi constitutis)', reports the final [End Page 146] solemnization of the peace on 1 August.8 The remaining six English acta in Jaffé's rivo alto list comprise three privileges for monastic foundations; a papal mandate for the execution of a judge-delegate determination; confirmation of an earlier settlement; and an assertion of the full exemption from tithes for two Cistercian nunneries, respectively in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. All were replies to reports, petitions, or appeals from interested parties. Privileges The three indults are fairly standard products of the papal Curia. Iustis petentium (3 June 1177) for St Augustine's abbey, Canterbury, confirms its prebends in St Martin's Dover, Lenham, and Fordwich, 'sicut eas rationabiliter possidetis', at the request of Abbot-elect Roger;9 Quotiens illud (4 July 1177) is the great privilege listing all properties of the alien priory of St Nicholas at Spalding (Lincolnshire), at the request of its prior, Reginald;10 and Iustis petentium (13 Oct. 1177), for Evesham Abbey, confirms its possession of the church of St Michael in London.11 Although [End Page 147] these are routine products of the papal chancery, their impetration enables us to add the unnamed representatives of St Augustine's, St Nicholas, and Evesham Abbey to the list of English petitioners at Venice during these days. Other letters The final three acta, however, are more interesting for the legal historian, although they left no trace in collections of canon law. 1. Ex litteris dilectorum...

Destroyed but not Lost: A Digital Reconstruction of the Chartrain Copy of Burchard's Liber decretorum (Chartres BM 161)

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...

The Political Background to the Establishment of the Slavic Nomocanon in the Thirteenth Century

The first collection of canon law translated from the Greek into the Slavic language in the ninth century supported the consolidation of Christianity among the Slav peoples. This article focuses on the nomocanon of St Sava of Serbia (Kormchaia), a collection which was original and specific in its content; its relationship to other contemporary legal historical documents will be considered. The article also explores the political background to the emergence of Orthodox Slav collections of ecclesiastical and civil law. The political context in which these collections originated exercised a determinative influence on their contents, the selection of texts and the interpretation of the canons contained within them. The emergence of the Slavic nomocanon is interpreted within a context in which Balkan Slav states sought to foster their independence and aspired to form autocephalous national churches.

Public Penance of Heretics: its Forms and Functions

The Polish version of the article was published in “Roczniki Humanistyczne,” vol. 59 (2011), issue 2.
 The article discusses the origins of public penance for heresy in the early Christian tradition as well as examining its application in the penitential practice of the medieval Church. It demonstrates how public penance for mortal sins, which took shape in Late Antiquity, was later adopted and developed within the system of Medieval Inquisition. In the medieval collections of canon law, heresy was qualified as a religious crime which required special public penance. Following the guidelines set up in the ancient Church, any heretic who declared his or her intention to renounce their wrongs was to be interrogated by a bishop, who would grant them absolution of sins and prescribed due penance. An important aspect of penance for heresy was public solemn penitence, which took place on Sundays and feast days and included a number of rituals. The penitent heretic had to appear in a special garment with his or her hair cut off and barefoot. The ritual of solemn public penitence for mortal sins was formed in Late Antiquity and as such was later incorporated into medieval pontificals.
 The rise of Medieval Inquisition, which was used as an efficient weapon against popular heresy, stimulated the development of penitential discipline for heretics. Papal Inquisitors, who came to be appointed as extraordinary judges in heresy trials since the 1230s, were particularly inventive in the way how public penance might be employed to fight heretics. Medieval registers of heresy trials, carried out by Papal Inquisitors and bishops, are still the main source of information about penalties imposed on heretics who were sentenced for their errors. The public announcement of a sentence and penalty was the final act of the inquisitorial procedure. The charter of penalties (littera penitentialis), which was first read publicly and later handed over to the penitent heretic, listed various forms of penitence which he had to fulfil. In the inquisitorial strategy of penance, which started to be used in the first half of the thirteenth century, a solemn public penitence of heretics became commonplace. The inquisitorial registers and manuals for inquisitors described in detail the ritual of public penance and its functions. The penance imposed on heretics offered them a chance to repent publicly for their public crimes and to give satisfaction to society which had been disturbed by their deeds. That is why solemn public penance usually took place in a cathedral or central market square on feast days to be attended and witnessed by the local community. Through his special appearance and penitential garment with two cross signs, the heretic was highly visible and could not be anonymous. The whole society was responsible for supervising the penance of heretics and controlling their religious and moral conduct. Any act of religious transgression or misconduct was to be reported to the ecclesiastical authorities. Of course, public penitence was aimed at teaching a lesson to all the faithful and preventing them from falling into heresy.

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

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.

STEPHAN KUTTNER, Medieval Councils, Decretals, and Collections of Canon Law, Selected Essays, 1 vol. de 380 págs., Collected Studies series, Variorum Reprints, London 1980

STEPHAN KUTTNER, Medieval Councils, Decretals, and Collections of Canon Law, Selected Essays, 1 vol. de 380 págs., Collected Studies series, Variorum Reprints, London 1980

Die Juden in den Rechtssammlungen Burchards von Worms und Ivos von Chartres

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

Roman Law Sources and Canonical Collections in the Early Middle Ages

Roman Law Sources and Canonical Collections in the Early Middle Ages Antonia Fiori Canonical 'preservation' of Roman Law It is well known that, being a part of the Roman Empire, the Church lived under Roman law from its earliest organization, and that canon law was one of the most important means for the preservation of Roman law in the early medieval period. But 'preservation' can be understood in two different ways: first, as a preservation of the spirit and the rules of Roman law through canon law; secondly, as a preservation of the original texts themselves. The first is a general problem of legal culture, the second a specific philological matter. But these different points of view are not completely independent of one other, but rather two faces of the same process. In this paper, I shall attempt to analyze the Italian canon law collections up to the year 900 together with some almost contemporary ecclesiastical quotations of Roman law. Yet we must remember the caveat that what happened in the ninth and tenth centuries is only a stage, and not the final one, in the process just mentioned, which would be completed with the Gregorian Reform. At that time almost every part of Justinian's compilation, including some which have since disappeared, were rediscovered by canon lawyers (the only exception being the Tres Libri). The philological passion of the Gregorian supporters—even if not technically well-founded—was an important instrument that helped and sustained the formation of a legal order of the Church in the age of the so-called 'Papal Revolution'.1 In fact, canon law was not an organized body of laws in the early Middle Ages, and it is also hard to see it as the unified legal [End Page 1] order of the Church. There were several canonical traditions greatly influenced by local customs and often strongly devoted to them. Up to the Gregorian Reform these local or 'national' churches, with their canonical councils and canonical customs, were in a dialectical relationship with the Roman Church, which entailed a wide autonomy.2 It was the Roman Church, representing the 'Römische Zentrum', which tried to maintain the spirit of Roman law in this period, and sometimes imposed it on the 'Kirchliche Peripherie' (to use the terminology of a relatively recent congress held at the Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rom).3 In most of Europe during the early Middle Ages Roman law was still represented by the Theodosian tradition, mainly known through the Breviarium Alaricianum, but not so in Italy, where—leaving aside the difficult matter of surviving elements of Theodosian law4—Justinian's compilation was promulgated in 554 after the Gothic Wars. Thus the Pragmatica sanctio introduced the Corpus iuris civilis into Italy less than 15 years before the arrival of the Lombards (568). As he had died three years before, Justinian did not see how vain had been his great effort to reconquer Italy. His Corpus did not have enough time to become known and studied. Along with Radding and Ciaralli, we can say that 'the Justinianic codification simply fell from sight and from use, in Italy and everywhere else, between the end of the sixth century and the end of the eighth'.5 The Church saved the spirit of Roman law, even influencing through it some developments in Lombard law. But there is no [End Page 2] evidence at all of a textual knowledge in ecclesiastical contexts until the Carolingian period, when many Roman law fragments reappeared in a few canonical collections. Two questions are open. First, why did they reappear in the Carolingian period and not before? Secondly, what kind of knowledge did these canon lawyers have or, better, which kinds of texts did they know? The cultural Renaissance which occurred with the birth of the Carolingian empire is obviously one good answer to the first question. But even more significant was the papal idea, or papal hope, that the Western Empire, reborn under Charles the Great, should in its second life still be Roman and, furthermore, holy. While general attention was fixed on Charles and his Frankish kingdom, and Frankish customs were obviously ready to break out into the...

Fälschung als Mittel der Politik? Pseudoisidor im Licht der neuen Forschung: Gedenkschriftfür Klaus Zechiel-Eckes ed. by Karl Ubl and Daniel Ziemann, and: Gefälschtes Recht aus dem Frühmittelalter: Untersuchungen zur Herstellung und Überlieferung der pseudoisidorischen Dekretalen by Steffen Patzold

Falschung als Mittel der Politik? Pseudoisidor im Licht der neuen Forschung: Gedenkschrift fur Klaus Zechiel-Eckes. Edited by Karl Ubl and Daniel Ziemann. [Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Studien und Texte, Band 57.] (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. 2015. Pp. vii, 268. euro48.00. ISBN 978-3-44710335-0.)Gefalschtes Recht aus dem Fruhmittelalter: Untersuchungen zur Herstellung und Uberlieferung der pseudoisidorischen Dekretalen. By Steffen Patzold. [Schriften der Philosophisch-Historischen Klasse der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Band 55.] (Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag Winter. 2015. Pp. 76. euro24.00. ISBN 978-3-8253-6511-0.)These two books outline recent thought and current lines of enquiry on the origins and dissemination of the great canon law forgeries widely known as Pseudo-Isidore, which today are commonly believed to have begun life at or around the monastery of Corbie in the 830s. The Pseudo-Isidorian decretals are often considered one of the most influential forgery collections of the Middle Ages; many Pseudo-Isidorian concepts would go on to provide a platform for the Gregorian reform and the growth of papal power in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Recent Pseudo-Isidorian studies have been galvanized by the work of Klaus Zechiel-Eckes, who died in 2010 and is honored by the collection Falschung als Mittel der Politik?, edited by Karl Ubl and Daniel Ziemann. In 2000, ZechielEckes' discoveries shattered an old consensus on Pseudo-Isidore's origins; since then, the field has been developing rather quickly, as these two volumes attest. Both works are oriented firmly towards specialists, and the uninitiated will probably want to chase up some of the introductory references provided to grasp the full import of this latest scholarship.Falschung is based on a colloquium held in 2013 in Zechiel-Eckes' honor. According to the editors, contributors were asked to test Zechiel-Eckes' hypotheses concerning the provenance of Pseudo-Isidore, to interrogate the relationship between the various versions and combinations of the forgery complex, and to consider the role of forgery in political culture more generally. Abigail Firey tackles the question of Corbie origins head on with an exemplary paleographical analysis of a canon law collection usually deemed to have been an early product of PseudoIsidore's workshop. She shows how Corbie's role in the Carolingian economy of book production presents a methodological problem in the pursuit of manuscript provenance. Eric Knibbs uncovers evidence for what looks to be a hitherto unnoticed early recension of the corpus in the manuscripts of the so-called A1 version. Semih Heinen and Steffen Patzold argue from different perspectives that the forgery project was stimulated not, as Zechiel-Eckes believed, by the rebellion against Louis the Pious of 833-835, but by the earlier rebellion of 830-831. …

The Augustinian Reform, the Panormia Glosses, and Reading the Bible in the Medieval Latin Liturgy of Jerusalem

This study aims to discuss some of the intellectual traditions informing the liturgical rites instituted by the Latin clergy of Outremer. At the height of the clerical reform’s proliferation in Western Europe, in 1114, the canons of the Church of Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem adopted the rule of Augustinian rule. Recent scholarship reveals how the ordinal of Jerusalem (Rome, Bib. Vat. Barb. Lat. 659) contains a passage of liturgical prescriptions copied from the Panormia, a twelfth-century collection of canon law long associated with Ivo of Chartres. This passage stipulates the distribution of biblical readings for the entire liturgical year, the accompanying chants, and introduces novel glosses on the season’s devotional meanings. A comparative analysis of this text with the practices of continental sister rites, and a discussion of the patristic texts used to interpret the Biblical readings it stipulates, allows the present study to demonstrate two conclusions: The marked influence of the Augustinian reform on the rite of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, and also equally significant, the distinctiveness of this liturgy’s devotional character in comparison to European counterparts.

Die Hibernensis-Redaktion der Kölner Domhandschrift 210

The transmission of the Irish Canon law collection (Collectio Hibemensis) is still a less than well-known subject. Manuscript 210 of the Cologne Cathedral Library, an early witness from the second half of the 8th century, stands out for two reasons: the Collectio ends at book 38 and is blended with alien canonical material. This article proves that the scribe of the manuscript derives the additional canons from the Collectio Sancti Mauri, that he used a script similar to that of Corbie and that he worked in a region circumscribed by the dioceses of Cambrai, Laon and Amiens. The manuscript is therefore a prime example of canonical activity before the start of Charlemagne's reform.

II . Boniface, Incest, and the Earliest Extant Version of Pope Gregory I’s Libellus responsionum (JE 1843)

Article II . Boniface, Incest, and the Earliest Extant Version of Pope Gregory I’s Libellus responsionum (JE 1843) was published on August 1, 2014 in the journal Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: Kanonistische Abteilung (volume 100, issue 1).

Aeternum Dei servitium ad sanctum locum. Pokuta zabójców Pięciu Braci Męczenników w relacji Brunona z Kwerfurtu

Aeternum Dei servitium ad sanctum locum. The Penance of the Murderers of Five Martyred Brethren in an Account by Bruno of QuerfurtThis article is a first attempt at systematically considering the penance imposed by Bolesław the Brave on the assassins of the so-called Five Martyred Brethren, described in Vita Quinquae Fratrum Eremitarum by St. Bruno of Querfurt (BHL 1147). The killers of the hermits were condemned to life-long penance in an abbey founded by Duke Bolesław on the site of the desecrated hermitage soon after the crime (about 1003–1006). The posed research questions concern, predominantly, the reasons for this particular penance, its purpose and character, as well as sources and cultural context in the form of the tradition of monastic penance (Klosterbuße).The conducted analysis leads to a conclusion claiming that putting murderers in monastery was the result of a carefully planned decision of the Polish ruler, taking into consideration a number of the factors, including legal requirements. Comparative survey made it possible to find many significant West European analogies to the penance imposed on murderers of Five Martyred Brethern both in normative sources (capitularies, penitentials, canon law collections, synodal statutes) and those referring to the penitentiary practice of the early Middle Ages. Their confrontation with the account by Bruno of Querfurt demonstrates that the solution accepted by Bolesław the Brave took into consideration regulations known from penitential or canonical tradition condemning the killers of clergymen to life-long penance in a monastery known from the seventh century as servitium Dei. Following their contents, the duke resigned from his original intention to incarcerate the felons in ducal prison or to sentence them to death in favour of chastisement corresponding to standards that should be respected by a Christian ruler. The penalty did not deprive the perpetrators of the perspec tive of salvation.The proposed analysis casts a new light not only on the issue of penitential practice during the Early Piast era but also on the wider problem of the application of regulations borrowed from Western culture in the domain ruled by Bolesław the Brave. The article expands heretofore knowledge about the part performed by Duke Bolesław in binding his state with the circle of post-Carolingian Latin civilisation through a conscious acculturation of Christian customs and norms.

Saint-Denis au XIe siècle : un nouveau départ

Around the middle of the eleventh century, the monks of Saint-Denis undertook a revision of their liturgy : in response to the monks of St. Emmeran of Regensburg, who claimed to possess the whole body of the saint, they introduced new feasts and composed new liturgical books. At the same time, to defend their privileges from the attacks of the bishop of Paris, they fabricated a series of papal privileges. But the monks seem to have lacked the textual resources they needed for such a variety of projects. This context explains the numerous and diffuse references to links with the abbey of Saint-Vaast of Arras, which had a far more active and expert scriptorium. The liturgical books of Saint-Denis, its first cartulary and a collection of canon law all reveal the influence of Saint-Vaast, whose monks were aiming to improve monastic life and defend monastic liberties against outside interference.

New Evidence for the Influence of Gallic Canon Law in Anglo-Saxon England

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.

Cultural Memory and Gender in Iceland from Medieval to Early Modern Times

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...

Lanfranc of Bec’s Version of Decretals in a Canonistic Context

During the eleventh century canon law collections, generated for different purposes but including the same texts, were used in the reform of the Church. The author presents a comparative study of important texts in collections such as the Collectio Lanfranci, an abridged version of the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals used in the reform of the English Church. A close study of the manuscripts provides insight into Lanfranc of Bec’s legal thinking and his position as ruler.