Canon Law in the Age of Reforms (c.1000 to c.1150) has the feel of, but is not the same as, other works that treat collections of canon law in the pre-Gratian era. For each collection, Rolker tends to provide the author’s biography (if applicable); an overview of the collection; information on the dating, manuscripts, and structure of the collection; the formal and material sources of the collection; a treatment of select themes within the collection; and the collection’s influence on the legal tradition. Rolker’s framing of this familiar feel, however, is what makes accessing the collections approachable. He does not proceed chronologically, rather he places collections into broad groups – bishops, monks and canons, “Gregorian” reformers, and the pre-university school masters in northern France – to connect the collections and demonstrate how they were used within their environment. Furthermore, he does not use categories such as “major” and “minor” collections because such categories make a value judgment about a collection. Every collection had value and held a purpose for the compiler who made it or the community who used it.

The book has seven chapters. Chapter 1 (1–19) emphasizes that every collection was the result of selecting, omitting, rearranging, and sometimes reworking a significant number of the canons included. As such, there was not necessarily a sharp distinction between “copying,” “improving,” and “reworking” of older collections and the production of “new” collections as they were never compiled from scratch (13). Though predating a formal legal curriculum, many compilers were versed in the law, and they knew how they wanted to use the normative texts at their disposal. Chapters 2–6 are devoted to the broad groups with chapter 7 serving as a conclusion.

Chapter 2 reflects on a “Europe of bishops” whereby bishops enjoyed a fair amount of independence from the metropolitan. Burchard of Worms skillfully selected, arranged, and abridged the canons he found in older collections to compile his Liber decretorum. Burchard, like other bishops, needed secular and canon law in their daily business. Their freedom to execute their episcopal office and their temporal powers, which brought them into close cooperation with the king and local nobility, necessitated a firm grounding in the law. Also fitting under the umbrella of bishops is the Collection of Twelve Parts, which Rolker argues is not derivative of the Liber decretorum. It examines the treatment of metropolitans and bishops, secular rulers and synods, marriage and incest.

Chapter 3 (84–185) treats monastic canon law, deftly defined as collections that specifically address religious communities, the rights and duties of their members, and their place in the wider Church. Rolker astutely notes that such collections were not only used by monks (85–86). He also treats collections that originated among the regular canons, and the conflicts between chapters and bishop and between canons and monks. This chapter covers eleven different canonical collections, but does so by showing how collections tie together. Compilers drew from larger collections and supplemented with texts drawn from elsewhere to create a collection that fit the needs of that community. The chapter weaves a story of collections that travelled and were adapted for a particular environment.

Chapter 4 (186–286) treats a category of collections frequently known as “Gregorian” collections. The ten collections discussed are normally assessed according to four criteria: being inspired by Pope Gregory VII, closeness to the pope, content, and structure, and impact (186–191). However, Rolker notes that while all the collections meet one or more of the criteria, none meet all of them. What bubbles to the surface is the sheer diversity of content, structure, and treatment of themes: one size definitely does not fit all. What also comes to the fore is that these collections, other than Anselm of Lucca, were not as influential as Burchard’s Liber Decretum or the monastic leaning Collection in 74 Titles.

Chapter 5 (287–420) treats the collections compiled in the milieu of the schools in northern France. Treating seven collections in this chapter, Rolker finds three developments (419): 1. The integration of both Roman law (especially from the Digest) and the Church Fathers (especially Augustine, Ambrose, and Gregory the Great); 2. A new emphasis on the sacraments; and 3. A new focus on canonical authorities and a grappling with how to understand and reconcile those authorities. All three developments emerged from the same scholarly culture: teachers and pupils travelled between centers such as Reims, Liège, Chartres, Beauvais, Laon, Paris, and Orléans; scholars exchanged letters and manuscripts; canons regular built networks in northern Europe and the Mediterranean; popes and their legates travelled between Rome and various regions; and synods brought prelates together (420). These collections engaged in contemporary debates about the Eucharist, episcopal elections, new heresies, and ecclesiastical reforms (287).

Chapter 6 (421–452), authored by Robert Sommerville, treats papal councils from the pontificates of Leo IX to Alexander III. He stresses that at the end of the eleventh century the notion of what earmarked a council as a “general” council may not have been systematically worked out and that a pope may have not recognized a synod over which he presided as a “general” council (435, 437). Sommerville then delves into the source material available for understanding papal councils, where the limitations lie, and areas for further research. Papal registers are not known to have existed, save for that of Gregory VII, prior to Innocent III. To fill this void, the Papsturkunden-Pontificia project (www.papsturkunden.de), sponsored by the Göttingen Academy and the Pius-Stiftung, aims to collect all papal documents which survive in originals or as copies prior to Innocent III (439). Narrative sources can provide insights as better editions of known texts can provide deeper insight into their meaning. For understanding conciliar procedure, alternative sources, such as those that preserve non-papal synods, comments, or encyclical letters, are important areas for inquiry (440). So too are conciliar canons or citations of individual decrees which can be found in chronicles, in histories on various topics, in papal letters, or copied on end pages and blank leaves in any manuscript where a scribe found space (442). “Encyclical” letters, addressed either generally or to specific individuals or churches, are important areas of inquiry as they can recount what happened in a council and provide a list of the decrees issued (446). Finally, inauthentic texts are an area ripe for future work as tampering with and recasting of conciliar “acta” has not been treated in a systematic manner (450).

Christof Rolker has done a tremendous service for those interested in or whose work brings them into contact with canon law between 1000 and 1150. Not only does the reader get a sense of the specifics of the collections themselves, but they also have a greater understanding of how these collections fit together and within the socio-political climate in which they occupy. Law shaped its environment, yes, but it was also shaped by its environment. It is the latter that stands out most clearly to me with this work. As he notes in the conclusion (chapter 7) the period 1000 to 1150 really is one marked both by changing relationships between bishops, metropolitans, the papacy, monastic houses, and laypeople, as well as by the “sacramentalization” of canon law around 1100 (453). To that end, all collections were shaped by the needs of the environment from which they emerged, be it the household of a bishop, a monastery, or the papal curia.