Kanonisten und ihre Texte (1234 bis Mitte 14. Jh.): 18 Aufsätze und 14 Exkurse by Martin Bertram (review)

The publication of Stephan Kuttner's Repertorium der Kanonistik (1140-1234) (Rome, 1937) was a significant event in the history of the study of the law of the Church. By carefully examining manuscript sources, Kuttner was able to demonstrate the richness of canonistic development in the hundred years between the appearance of Gratian's Decretum (c. 1140) and the compilation of the Gregorian Decretals in 1234. The scholarly world took note. However, the publication of Kuttner's work had one unfortunate and surely unintended side-effect. It suggested by implication that the important work in the compilation of the classical canon law had been finished by 1234; that what came afterward was lesser stuff. It could be assumed that the few important developments of later years were adequately covered by reference works such as Johann Friedrich von Schulte's Quellen und Literatur des canonischen Rechts (Stuttgart, 1875) or the Dictionnaire du droit canonique (1935-65).

Martin Bertram was convinced that innovation and production of canonical works of consequence did not come to an end in 1234. This collection of some of his most important studies demonstrates the wisdom of his own decision to undertake research in the manuscript resources of European libraries from after that date. It is not the full and systematic treatment of Kuttner's Repertorium—something Bertram himself once hoped to produce. However, it does contain an impressive collection of studies of the work done by canonists in Western Europe. Taken together, the articles describe a process of expansion and deepening in the medieval church's legal resources. It is not a story of decline.

The contents of the volume address a variety of topics. Some chapters deal with special types of "secondary" canonical literature—collections of Quaestiones and Casus legum, for example. The latter, not widely known, were designed partly to help canonists without training in Roman law come to grips with it, something required of them whenever they became involved in legal practice. Other chapters explore the manuscript evidence to extend what is known about the work of individual canonists: Geoffrey of Trani (d. 1245), Pope Innocent IV (d. 1245), Hostiensis (d. 1271), Joannes de Deo (fl. 1250), and Matheus Romanus (fl. 1310). One particularly valuable chapter deals with what can be teased out of fragments of medieval canonical material found in the Swedish National Archives. It enlarges the conclusions about the place of canon law in the Scandinavian lands beyond those drawn earlier by the few prior scholars who have worked on the subject. Another provides a lively account, again based on manuscript sources, of the lectures on the Gregorian Decretals delivered at the University at Orléans in the 1280s. Too little is known about the actual contents of medieval legal education, and this essay adds meaningfully to that small store. The volume also contains English summaries of the articles, fourteen shorter additions relevant to them, and a register of manuscripts and early printed editions cited.

Much of the book is devoted to detailed points of manuscript research, matters of interest principally to specialists in medieval canon law. However, progress in the history of the Church's law cannot be made without detail. Kuttner's Repertorium showed where it could lead. As in that work, the conclusions about the larger subject drawn by Bertram from the evidence are impressive and significant.