Annual Report 2015

The Conference and Grand Opening of the Stephan-Kuttner Institute of Medieval Canon Law at the Yale Law School in New Haven, Connecticut on May 21^st to 22^nd 2015 has to be considered the main event of the year in our common field of medieval canon law. My talk and Greta Austin’s talk at Yale are published in this volume to commemorate the event.

Many scholars in the field will remember the years from 1964 to 1970, when the Institute had moved from The Catholic University of America to Yale University under the presidency of Stephan Kuttner. When Kuttner accepted an offer to take over the directorship of The Robbins Collection at the University of California in Berkeley in 1970 the Berkeley Law School became the new home of the Institute.

During the conference at Yale Law School 2015 President Peter Landau referred to the State of Bavaria, Germany, hosting the Institute for 25 years from 1990–2015 at the Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich. Peter Landau gave a key-note lecture on the origins of the maxim ‘Quod omnes tangit, ab omnibus approbari debet’ in classical canon law. The conference in New Haven, Connecticut was very successfully organized by Anders Winroth, secretary of the Institute.

The editorial work done by the Institute made some progress in 2015. The third tomus of the Summa ‘Omnis qui iuste iudicat’ sive Lipsiensis (C.11 - 22) was published at the end of 2014; tomus IV with the last part of the text has been sent to the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana for publication. Tomus V with the Registers will follow at the end of 2015. So we can expect the complete edition of the Summa Lipsiensis — the major work of the Anglo-Norman school of canon law - to be presented at the Fourteenth Congress of Medieval Canon Law in Paris in July 2016. Editorial work on early decretal collections of the twelfth century was also continued in Munich during the last few years. In 2015 Gisela Drossbach published her precise analysis of the Collectio Cheltenhamensis combined with an interesting apparatus of early glosses, as Volume 10 of the Corpus Collectionum in the series B of the Monumenta Iuris Canonici. A preview of other editorial projects of the Institute will be given by the president in Paris 2016.

Our colleague and friend Chris Coppens, Radboud University Nimwegen, died on August 27^th 2015 at the age of 68 years. Chris Coppens had worked on the critical edition of the Summa ‘Animal est substantia’ (also known as Summa Bambergensis) for many years and was able to finish a preliminary edition of the four manuscripts on the internet. The Institute will take care to publish a printed edition of the last important work of the Parisian school of canon law during the first decade of the thirteenth century as a volume of the Monumenta Iuris Canonici. Chris Coppens’ last essay on the Summa suggesting the Dominican Reginald of Orléans as the possible author ends with the remark: ‘S’il nous en reste le temps.’¹ It will be a nobile officium for his colleagues and friends to preserve the results of his long-lasting research for the future.

The Institute Munich could again welcome guests from foreign countries in 2015. They were Prof. T. Genka (Japan), Prof. S. Kawashima (Japan), Prof. Wolfgang P. Müller (USA).

We look forward to the International Congress of Medieval Canon Law in Paris in July 2016.