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INTRODUCTION The text presented in English in this volume is the introductory section of a textbook on Church law from the Middle Ages. In the hundreds of years since it first came into circulation in the middle of the twelfth century, this textbook, formally entitled the Harmony of Discordant Canons, has helped to shape the thinking of lawyers and legal scholars, clergy including popes from Alexander III to John Paul II, and, however indirectly, lay people of all standings. For the canonist, it was long the starting point of study, a fundamental text to be mastered and made an integral part of one's mental furniture. Its contents had to be reckoned with by merchant and theologian, politician and pastor. The modem scholar cannot genuinely understand the high medieval Church without coming to terms with its nature and its influence. As a central text of western Christian ecclesiastical law and lawmaking, the Decretum, as it was (and is) commonly called, was drawn upon by Aquinas, Dante, and Chaucer, publicly denounced and burnt by Luther (although appreciated and used by Melanchthon and Calvin), sniped at by John Donne even as its traces lingered in the legal traditions of his Anglican Church.1 In print by 1472, lovingly and rigorously reedited in the sixteenth century amid the tensions of the Reformation, the Decretum continued to guide the work of canonists from Rome to Maryland, Mexico City, Manila, and Macao for another three centuries, and retained a quiet influence within the evangelical tradition of church law as well. It was a major source for the codification of Roman Catholic canon law promulgated in 1917 by Pope Benedict XV and, through it, the 1983 revision of Pope John Paul IL2 Usually referred to during the Middle Ages simply as the Decreta, more frequently as the Decretum,3 this text was not commissioned by any pope or bishop. Rather, it was originally the work of an individual scholar of genius and modified by later scholars who followed his lead, all seeking to make sense of the law of the Church and to teach it more effectively to others. The text of the Decretum presents an understanding of its subject 1 Aquinas used Gratian frequently; Dante placed Gratian with Aquinas in the fourth heaven, the sphere of the sun (Paradiso X, 103-6). Chaucer assumed much of the Decretum's teaching, especially on marriage; cf. H. A. Kelly, Love and Marriage in the Age of Chaucer (New York: Cornell Univ. Press, 1975), ch. 3. Luther is usually remembered as having burned the Extravagantes; papal legislation was his particular hete noire among canonical materials. But the Decretum went into the flames as well; cf. Luther's letter to Georg Spalatin describing the famous 1520 book burning, in his Letters I, Works 48, tr. G. G. Krodel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1963), pp. 187-88. On the reform tradition's relationship in general to Gratian, see below, f.n. 30. 2 The Decretum has no legal status in the Roman Catholic Church today; it ceased to be authoritative with the promulgation of the 1917 Code, which has in tum been superseded by the 1983 Code. Gratian's text remains of great historical interest and often sheds light on the thinking behind modem canons (cf. P. Gasparri and J. Seredi, Codicis luris Canonici Fontes, 9 vols. (Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1923-39), for the place of the Decretum among the sources of the 1917 Code; unfortunately no parallel work is available as yet for the 1983 Code). But it could not now be cited as "the law" in an ecclesiastical court. 3 S. Kuttner, "The Father of the Science of Canon Law," The Jurist I (1941), IS. x INTRODUCTION from the first half of the twelfth century, drawing on the accumulated traditions of the Church from apostolic times. The commentary, the "Ordinary Gloss" (Glossa Ordinaria), which accompanies the main text, was written about three-quarters of a century later, and reflects both the growing legal sophistication and the ecclesiastical concerns of the intervening years. The excerpt translated here, Distinctions I through 20, constitutes a treatise on the nature of law and lays the foundation for the subsequent discussion of particular topics. The medieval law student, lay jurist, or cleric would have approached the Decretum, if not with a conscious knowledge of its history, at least with a sense of its structure and its underlying preconceptions. Modern students must try to reconstruct that sense for themselves, as well as seek to understand...

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