Annual Report 2012

The main event in the field of medieval canon law in 2012 was the Fourteenth International Congress in Toronto from August 5th to August 11th, organized by our colleague and friend Joseph Goering with his collaborators from the University of Toronto. The Congress held 40 concurrent sessions and seven plenary sessions with altogether 135 speakers. They read papers on a multitude of subjects in many areas of the history of canon law. Participants and speakers came from most European countries (Italy, France, Spain, Germany, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Greece, Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland), from the United States and Canada, and even from Australia. The papers dealt with problems and questions of canon law, its sources and institutions from late antiquity (sixth century) to the end of the sixteenth century. It was very satisfying for older scholars from the generation of Stephan Kuttner’s disciples to meet and to learn about the research of young scholars all over the world. The memory of Stephan Kuttner was remembered by a touching lecture of his son Thomas about the years of his father’s life in the Nazi period. A report on the Stephan Kuttner Institute was given by its president. The General Assembly of ICMAC, presided by Kathleen Cushing, took place on August 11th in the afternoon. The Congress ended with a splendid closing banquet on the evening of that day.

An excursion on August 8th brought the participants to the region of Niagara Wine Country with a visit of Niagara Falls. It was a memorable event — some older congressists remembered that the same region had been visited during the Fourth Congress of Medieval Canon Law in Toronto on August 24th 1972.

The Board of Directors of the Stephan Kuttner Institute of Medieval Canon Law met in the evening of August. During that most important meeting the general secretary Anders Winroth presented the proposal of Yale University to transfer the Institute to Yale University, where it had been from 1964 to 1970 under the guidance of Stephan Kuttner. The conditions will be fixed by a formal agreement between Yale University and the Stephan Kuttner Institute. The proposal of transfer was generally welcomed by the members of the Board, because President Peter Landau is now a retired professor and will also step down from the presidency during the next Congress in 2016 at the latest. A draft for the agreement between Yale University and the Stephan Kuttner Institute was drafted and signed in 2013. Yale University will guarantee the support and hosting of the Institute on its campus in New Haven, Connecticut for the next 25 years. Transfer of the property of the Institute to New Haven will be paid by Yale University. The transfer began in July 2013. A branch office of the Institute will stay in Munich under the President Peter Landau until 2016.

During the afternoon of August 10th a long prepared Liber amicorum for Robert Somerville was presented in Toronto. It has the title ‘Canon Law, Religion and Politics’ and was edited by Uta-Renate Blumenthal, Anders Winroth and Peter Landau and its contents are listed in this volume’s Bibliography. The tribute contains nineteen essays, written by contributors from the United States (Austin, Beach, Blumenthal, Brasington, Brundage, Constable, Donahue, Trumbore Jones, Makowski, Pennington, Peters, Shrader), the United Kingdom (Brett, Cushing), Canada (Reynolds), Germany (Jasper, Landau, Schneider) and France (Roumy). The book also has a comprehensive bibliography of Robert Somerville’s many publications in the field of canon law history and general church history, starting already in 1966. Bob Somerville was one of the first disciples of Stephan Kuttner, a professor at Yale University from 1964-1970. Another Liber Amicorum, published in 2012, concentrates on the history of canon law and is dedicated to the scholar E. C. Coppens, born in Belgium, Professor for History of Canon Law at the Catholic University Nijmegen since 1989. This Liber amicorum contains twenty essays, written by authors from many countries: Netherlands (Ackermans, Dondorp, Hallebeek, Neve), Belgium (Vleeschouwers-Van Mellebeek, Waelkens), France (Basdevant-Gaudemet, Lefebvre-Teillard, Roumy, Siméant), Germany (Dolezalek, Landau, Fowler-Magerl, Daniela M...