Written by specialists for specialists, the studies in this collection show trends in research into canon law before the publication of Gratian's Decretum, the tome that had such impact in the twelfth century. By turning our attention away from Gratian, the authors confirm that an earlier Decretum, that of Ivo of Chartres (ca. 1040–1116), and the even earlier Decretum of Burchard (ca. 1000) had enormous impact as well. If we are to grasp the legal context from which Gratian emerged, we must pay attention to canonistic compilations produced all over Europe, from the episcopal schools of England to the monasteries of southern Italy. Each of these essays contributes another piece to the puzzle of how canon law was transmitted, adapted, taught, and applied in real cases in the centuries before the rise of the professional (paid) juridical caste.

The volume culminates in a rich essay by Anne Duggan that elegantly illustrates the dynamics of episcopal negotiation, even sometimes near determination, in papal judicial opinions. This affirmation of the appellate, rather than legislative, role of the papacy is a useful demonstration that even the “lawyer-popes” of the twelfth century were well aware of the limits of their authority. Duggan reminds us that the notion of a papal monarchy should be tempered with awareness that papal judicial opinions were sought by bishops in places such as Nidaros and Canterbury who needed more authoritative declarations of the law than they themselves could offer, although they knew what principles they wanted propounded.

Duggan's study is a fitting peroration to the volume because it also details the lively environment in which letters and collections of legal texts flew, marched, and roamed across Europe, entering into subsequent collections, sometimes with transformations of content or attribution. Duggan excavates individuals and also sites in the web of transmissions, so that her evidence may be set alongside the research of other contributors. Linda Fowler-Magerl proposes that the road known as the Francigena, with its seventy-nine stations at roughly twenty-kilometer intervals, may well explain the spatial distribution of related legal texts and interests, especially in northern France and Flanders. Her model invites us to imagine the travellers who brought their legal concerns to the books in the ecclesiastical hostels where they stayed, as well as books or legal documents they may have carried with them, en route both to and from Rome. Her essay concludes, as do a number of the other contributions, with the publication of a hitherto unpublished text: in this instance, the inscriptions, incipits, and explicits of folia 151v–155r of ms. Saint-Omer, Bibliothèque Municipale, 364.

Among the texts noted by Fowler-Magerl is the Collectio Tarraconensis, which along with the Collectio Britannica is prominent in this volume. Both collections feature in the excellent essay by Uta-Renate Blumenthal and Detlev Jasper on the decretal on the four annual fasting periods, “Licet nova consuetudo,” of hitherto disputed attribution to Pope Gregory VII. After a fascinating review of the evidence for and against Gregory's authorship, and the sources and spread of the text, the authors provide a critical edition of the decretal, prepared from fifteen manuscripts. The Collectio Britannica itself receives attention in an important contribution by Christof Rolker (whose work questioning the authorship of the Panormia attributed to Ivo of Chartres is noted by several authors). Drawing from Italian sources and associated with northern France, the Britannica contains a “Varia” section oriented around Frankish affairs that, Rolker argues, pertains directly to the disputed coronation of Louis VI in 1108. Rolker appends a transcription of the key texts on Frankish coronations, texts of interest to Carolingian specialists as well as connoisseurs of early twelfth-century canon law.

Also considering canonistic recourse to the Carolingian past, Nicolás Alvarez de las Asturias examines the use of the Collectio Lanfranci, an English collection of Pseudo-Isidorian material. His careful study of manuscripts establishes that we should not presume that reception of Pseudo-Isidore in England occurred through a single portal. The question of reception and changing applications for canonistic material is treated by Peter Landau, whose contribution on the Summa decretorum of Haimo of Bazoches focuses on the preface to the Summa. He does so in order to reveal both authorial intent and also the ways in which canon law collections were excerpted and abridged for practical use by judges. Especially interesting is his observation that in such twelfth-century texts, we can test the presence or absence of the principle “nulla poena (vel crimen) sine lege” (no penalty [or crime] without a law).

Other essays test methods for discerning reception and authorial (or compilatorial) intent. Bruce Brasington proposes that the marginalia and glosses in manuscripts of the Panormia and the Tripartita reflect readers’ interests in topics such as heresy and infamy, as well as providing procedural and lexical clarifications. Glosses to ms. Cambridge, University Library, Ff iv 41 are transcribed in an appendix. Kathleen Cushing mines the differences between recension A and recension Bb of the Collection of Anselm of Lucca for evidence that the Bb recension was revised to lessen the polemical qualities she imputes to recension A. Citing the paradigm called by John Gilchrist “compound independent transmission” (77), Cushing argues for a process of modification and incorporation of other texts to produce a manual useful to a community of reformed canons regular.

The question of the extent to which specific canonists in the eleventh and twelfth centuries rejected integration of secular—usually Roman—law into canon law is explored by Greta Austin, writing on the Decretum of Burchard of Worms, and Anders Winroth, writing on Gratian's Decretum. Both argue provisionally for deliberate exclusion or masking of secular legal sources, but the rapid advance of scholarship since the publication of this anthology should prompt readers to consult Austin's recently published monograph Shaping Church Law around the Year 1000: The Decretum of Burchard of Worms (Aldershot, 2009) and also the much-debated The Corpus Iuris Civilis in the Middle Ages: Manuscripts and Transmission from the Sixth Century to the Juristic Revival by Charles M. Radding and Antonio Ciaralli (Leiden, 2007) for more elaborate presentations of this important and difficult topic.

The volume also includes reports of codicological and paleographical aspects of particular manuscripts. Michael Gullick examines the nota marks “.A.” and “.a.” in ms. Cambridge, Trinity College, B.16.44, which has been interrogated for direct supervision or scribal participation by Bishop Lanfranc himself. Przemyslaw Nowak describes the two Polish manuscripts of the Tripartita, clarifying their German and Fécamp associations. Both articles are accompanied by illustrative plates. Robert Somerville, assisted by Steven Schoenig, identifies, collates, and traces the acquisition of fragments of Ivo's Decretum, University of Missouri, Ellis Library, fragments 5 and 23. Roger Reynolds pursues his career-long interest in the south Italian Collection in Five Books and its derivatives, and offers a comparison of some canons in the Collectio Angelica (Rome, Biblioteca Angelica, ms. 1447). He notes that the comparison is made more difficult because the three known manuscripts of the Collection in Five Books “differ in number and readings of the canons they contain” (14). A fifteen-page transcription of the titles of the canons of Books 3–12 of the Collectio Angelica accompanies the essay.

Although the number of typographical errors is greater than one would wish in writings by scholars who practice meticulous study of manuscripts, and it would have been nice to have Hugh of Lyon (so named in Rolker's essay, 144) presented in the index (from which he is absent) as the same person as Hugo of Die (as named in Blumenthal and Jasper's essay, 51), readers will easily overlook such small complaints as they lose themselves in these intricate displays of erudition in a still lamentably underexplored area of scholarship.