In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Readers, Texts and Compilers in the Earlier Middle Ages: Studies in Medieval Canon Law in Honour of Linda Fowler-Magerl
  • Kenneth Pennington
Readers, Texts and Compilers in the Earlier Middle Ages: Studies in Medieval Canon Law in Honour of Linda Fowler-Magerl. Edited by Martin Brett and Kathleen G. Cushing. [Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2009. Pp. xviii, 205. $99.95. ISBN 978-0-754-66235-8.)

Linda Fowler was a student of Gaines Post at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; taught at the University of Nebraska; migrated to the [End Page 777] Max-Planck Institute in Frankfurt; and remained in Germany after she married, settling with her husband in a small town near Regensburg. These moves did not hinder her scholarship. This volume honors her dedication to the study of medieval canon law and especially her indefatigable exploration of pre-Gratian canonical collections. Her great contribution to the field was her Clavis canonum, which she published in 1998 and issued in a revised edition under the auspices of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica in 2005. Those who have ventured on the treacherous terrain of pre-Gratian collections cannot avoid using her Clavis as a secure pinion to which they may attach their scholarly lifelines.

The essays in the volume originated as papers at the Medieval Congress in Leeds and focus primarily on canonical collections of the eleventh and early-twelfth centuries. Peter Landau's essay on Vacarius's career in England and James Brundage's essay on courtroom decorum as found in thirteenth-century procedural tracts go beyond the framework of the other essays. Abigail Firey looks at the practice of penance in the Carolingian period and argues that bishops used penitential "courts" to assert claims of jurisdiction over crimes committed against clerics. The evidence for this development is sparse, as it is confined primarily to a difficult, composite text printed by Hermann Wasserschleben. It seems an exaggeration to conclude that "the apparatus of ecclesiastical discipline was evolving into a judicial system in competition with secular courts" (p. 32 and note 56).

Greta Austin plunges into the difficult territory of attribution of texts in early canonical collections. Fowler-Magerl's Clavis canonum provides detailed evidence that if medieval compilers of canonical collections had a large library (which they certainly did not), they would have scratched their heads repeatedly by the variety of attributions that they would have found in their collections. Austin's essay compares the inscriptions of Burchard of Worms's Decretum to Ivo of Chartres's Decretum. She concludes that Burchard was much more cavalier than Ivo when he copied the inscriptions of canons. He even "invented" inscriptions (for this intriguing generalization she cites her book, Shaping Church Law around the Year 1000: The Decretum of Burchard of Worms [Burlington, VT, 2009; see this issue]). Both compilers gave pride of place to the writings of the Church Fathers, early popes, and the first councils.

Christof Rolker has written a splendid, analytical essay that should be read by everyone who teaches the history of canon law and the Gregorian Reform. Since the time of Paul Fournier, the Collection in 74 Titles has been viewed as a papal collection compiled in Italy whose purpose was to provide a legal foundation for the Roman reformers. Rolker argues that the collection was compiled north of the Alps and was later brought to Rome. His evidence for that conclusion has been staring us in the face for decades: the collection's emphasis on monastic privileges conferred by the papacy and monastic liberties [End Page 778] in the first titles. I find his arguments thoroughly convincing and will have to revise my lectures.

After wisely observing that "historians . . . recognize the extreme difficulty of establishing precise links between [sic] canonical collections" (p. 73), Kathleen Cushing's analysis of the Collectio canonum Barberiniana (Vat. Barb. Lat. 538) "reveals connections or at least engagement"(p. 79) with many other collections. In an appendix she uses Fowler-Magerl's Clavis to list the "parallels" found in other collections of a selection of the canons. If she could have proven connections among the collections, this work would have been especially...

pdf

Share