Reviewed by: Die Collectio Cheltenhamensis: eine englische Decretalensammlung. Analyse beruhend auf Vorarbeitung von Walther Holtzmann ed. by Gisela Drossbach Uta-Renate Blumenthal Die Collectio Cheltenhamensis: eine englische Decretalensammlung. Analyse beruhend auf Vorarbeitung von Walther Holtzmann (†). Edited by Gisela Drossbach. [Monumenta Iuris Canonici, Series B: Corpus Collectionum, vol. 10.] (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. 2014. Pp. 304. €60,00. ISBN 978-88-210-0925-9.) Papal decretals, in every case “a response from the centre to a consultation or appeal,”1 were the most important element in the formation of the new law, the ius novum, that next to Gratian’s Decretum (c. 1140) dominated the teaching and practice of law at universities and courts prior to 1234, when Pope Gregory IX issued the Liber Extra. The process of collecting these papal decretal letters began in the form of appendices to the Decretum but quickly evolved into what seems myriad individual, independent collections. The impetus to analyze and/or edit many of the almost ninety decretal collections is linked primarily with the names of Walther Holtzmann (†1963), Stephan Kuttner (†1996), Charles Duggan (†1999), and Peter Landau. Gisela Drossbach, who recently coedited with Landau an analysis of the French collection known as Collectio Francofurtana,2 now presents the analysis of the English Collectio Cheltenhamensis, a name derived from the castle of Cheltenham—the home of Sir Thomas Phillipps, who owned the manuscript that is preserved today at the British Library with the signature Egerton 2819. The analysis includes, as usual, incipit and explicit of a text, its identification (where possible), calendar entries (if available), as well as the place of publication of the decretal (p. 25). As in the case of the Francofurtana, Drossbach has also included references to other decretal collections that contained the same decretal, as well as notes and comments whenever applicable, including references to secondary literature. The Cheltenhamensis is particularly noteworthy because it combines English and continental influences, deriving its original nucleus from a source also used by the “Worcester” tradition, but also adding in different stages material from the French Bamberg and Frankfurt collections (p. 19). Drossbach suggests, quoting Charles Duggan, that the Cistercian abbot Baldwin of Ford, in 1180 bishop of Worcester and in 1185 archbishop of Canterbury (†1190), could have inspired the collection (p. 21) and that the Egerton manuscript actually belonged to Ford or his circle, adding that “it was probably written in a monastery in the vicinity” (p. 22). According to Drossbach, the manuscript was completed in its final form in the two decades after 1193 (p. 12). Evidently, the archbishop cannot have owned the extant copy of the Cheltenhamensis. [End Page 598] Given the limitations of an analysis, designed to precede an eventual edition and still less than complete in some respects, a user will not necessarily be bothered by a certain vagueness in the introduction that leaves room for later precision. It should be noted, however, that the author concluded surprisingly and without convincing proof that the text of the canons of the Third Lateran Council of 1179, found on folios 11ra–16rb of the Egerton manuscript as well as in many other decretal collections, were not part of the Collectio Cheltenhamensis (p. 28). The connection between the Third Lateran and the decretal collections is an intriguing issue. Based on Holtzmann’s notes and following Kuttner, Landau insisted that the canons from 1179 cannot be considered an independent section “but instead constitute the first title of the collection.”3 As proof for this assertion, Landau cites a contemporary gloss he edited to c.7 of Lateran III = Chelt. 1.11. This gloss—in the same hand C as other glosses found in the codex—refers to five later sections of Chelt. with a simple infra. Drossbach, who referred to Landau’s respective article, seems to have arrived at her contrasting conclusion simply because the hand of the relevant fascicle differed from that of the scribes A, B, and C whom she identified in other sections of the Egerton codex with the assistance of Michael Gullick and Martin Brett (p. 11n14). She concluded that the compilers must have decided to acquire the 1179 texts from another scriptorium and to “place the quire...