The essays in this collection might be said to be about the relationship between theory and practice. Thanks to the detailed manuscript studies of the last century, we know a great deal about the ‘theory’ of canon law – the collections and commentaries – but how did the variation in the collections of the eleventh and twelfth centuries link to practical realities? How did churchmen who were aware of the subtleties of the laws take account of such knowledge in their actions; and how, conversely, did administrative and political events affect the theoretical side?
John Ott examines judges-delegate in the archiepiscopal province of Reims in the first half of the twelfth century. Ott emphasises that the men chosen as judges-delegate had knowledge of local diocesan practice rather than formal legal training. Delegation therefore possessed a degree of continuity with local practice – the way complaints were heard at synods, for example – which doubtless fed into its success. Mia Münster-Swendsen – in a tightly compressed chapter – studies the gift that keeps on giving, the career of Archbishop Eskil of Lund (d.c.1182): imprisoned by imperial henchmen; exiled by the Danish king; swindled by the abbot of Saint-Victor of Paris; and finally forced to resign. Münster-Swendsen offers a convincing account of how Alexander iii’s letter on Eskil's resignation got into the decretal collections; the ambiguous ways the letter could be read (depending on what was cut); and the historical narrative around Eskil's resignation.
Melodie Eichbauer, in her essay, looks at the ‘local concerns’ of two twelfth-century canonists Gratian and Stephen of Tournai. Each offered subtly different interpretations of prescription and ecclesiastical property; Gratian was concerned to emphasise episcopal rights; Stephen – twice an abbot – was more interested in monastic rights. Jason Taliadoros, in a slight change of register, takes Brian Tierney's discussion of natural rights as a point of departure to discuss the use, meaning and understanding of particular terms – ius, libertas etc – in the works of Ricardus Anglicus and Master Vacarius. Whether readers find this is a useful lens will vary but, if Taliadoros is asking slightly different questions from the rest of the contributors, that is not unprofitable.
Greta Austin's chapter argues that the 1023 council of Seligenstadt made use of a collection of canons, now Munich Clm 24726, as well as the Decretum of Burchard of Worms. This leads into an interesting discussion about how – practically – such collections might be consulted. Were collections of canon law ‘pulled out and consulted’, or were they simply ‘present in Burchard's head’? If the latter, then one wonders whether the methods and theory of the study of oral traditions (such as sagas) have something to teach us about the use of canonical authorities – what sorts of phrasing do we tend to remember verbatim, and what do we construct ourselves?
Danica Summerlin, in her chapter, identifies how the local councils of Valladolid (1143), Montpellier (1195) and Westminster (1200) made verbatim use of papal conciliar decrees. What it interesting, however, is that Westminster was the first of these councils that was not presided over by a papal legate (or nuncio). Equally, Westminster only repeated some, not all, of the canons of Pope Alexander iii’s Lateran council of 1179. We might therefore draw a comparison between twelfth-century papal law and ‘weak hegemony’; where the power of an ideology is dependent on its re-production by subalterns, but subalterns possess the agency consciously to manipulate the ideology being replicated.
Stephan Dusil identifies how the decretists developed a rationale behind clerical celibacy which made no use of the decision of the second Lateran Council that marriages entered into by the higher clergy were null. Instead the decretists developed and extended older authorities. Naturally this raises the question of what criteria made some authorities more favourable than others to the commentators. What was wrong with Lateran II?
William North suggests that Bonizo of Sutri pre-empted Gratian in his strategy of including interpretative guiding comments (dicta) throughout his canonical collection (Liber de vita christiana). Further, Bonizo was not merely collecting authorities but aiming to cultivate, in his readers, the right way of reasoning through possible future problems. An extremely interesting example of this is Bonizo's historicisation of the papacy, indicating perhaps that Bonizo wanted his readers to pay more attention to decisions of ‘better’ pontiffs (for example, Leo i) than ‘worse’ pontiffs (for example, John xii).
Finally Kathleen Cushing and Louis Hamilton address the legal arguments of the Libelli de lite and the exegesis of Bruno of Segni respectively. As Cushing notes, if one wants to see how law was used in real disputes then one can do no better than to study the polemics of the 1076–1122 conflicts. Hamilton hesitantly suggests that Bruno of Segni (known primarily for his exegetical skills) knew and used the Collection in seventy-four titles but, more importantly, that the Collection in seventy-four titles and Bruno's commentary on the Pentateuch shared a common methodology, even if they are now placed in distinct genres.
Bruce Brasington – offering, as a good canonist should, a commentary and integration of the chapters (dicta Brasingtoni?) – ends by noting that the essays contribute to the destruction of a ‘static’ interpretation of canon law; ‘what is fixed is not easily moved, not easily used’ (a pithy sentence worth squirrelling away for future use). In this vein, Brasington draws a comparison with E. A. R. Brown's ‘tyrannous construct’. As a basic rule of thumb, if one wants to know what – in popular consciousness – is most associated with the Middle Ages, it is anything which, in the last forty years, someone has called a ‘tyrannous construct’: feudalism, chivalry, the ‘medieval’ itself. The practical use of canon law might not (quite) occupy the same heights as those other categories, but these essays show that we cannot neglect it.
