Sacri canones servandi sunt: Ius canonicum et status ecclesiae saeculis XIII-XV

The power to punish with imprisonment or worse is an accepted element of legal command. The idea that people live under a single national legal code enforced by the government of the particular state that alone has authority in its territory to fine or imprison, goes almost unquestioned in Western society today. A little thought may suggest that the military have legal codes, powers and enforcement rights that differ from ordinary civilian laws but the assumption is that they are ultimately also under government authority. While churches may still today hold courts, hear and settle cases with ecclesiastical punishments such as excommunication, they have no effective ability to compel obedience.

This is a major difference from the situation in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period when there were ecclesiastical prisons and other means of enforcing Church law on individuals. The common Christian life and creed that resulted, stressed by the clergy, who used pastoral penitentials, shaped social life at the time.

Communist governments in central Europe discouraged the study of this ecclesiastical authority but recent changes have opened the way for a reconsideration of the role of Canon law in Czech, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Krafl in his foreword uses the phrase 'emancipation as an independent academic discipline' for the position of the recent scholars who have studied the relationship of these countries with Rome, and the means whereby general Canon law was brought to them.

The division of authority between the secular power, the moral authority of the church and the influence of one on the other varied from country to country and historians need to know more about its structure in central Europe. The extent to which the size of the bishoprics, the power of the metropolitan and the influence of patrons affected the enforcement of the law is important. Historians also need to appreciate how papal authority was maintained despite local Canon law courts by the use of such Roman offices as the Apostolic Penitentiary that could grant particular graces such as an overriding power of absolution or dispensation, as Kirsi Salonen shows in a study of void monastic professions.

Peter Wiegard uses the particular conflict in Meissen where the authority of the metropolitan archbishop of Magdeburg was deployed to remove Meissen from the authority the pope had granted, as legatus natus to the archbishop of Prague, to show this had a significant influence on the law promulgated by the local synod. As several of the chapters make clear, within the overarching Canon law laid down by the major Church Councils, there were local laws, specific to the diocese, and laws specific to various religious orders. Another distinctive aspect of church culture in some countries like Georgia is the local influence of the Byzantine church's different Canon law.

This substantial collections of essays covers a wide range of subjects related to the law. These include the basic issue of ecclesiastical law in the different kingdoms, the mutual interaction of ecclesiastical and secular law, ecclesiastical legislation and the role of bishops and Episcopal synods, the judicial structure inside the church, the influence of the papacy, the position of the monasteries and the secular clergy and particular aspects of canon law such as matrimonial rules. Mary E. Sommar's chapter on Innocent III's doctrine of spiritual marriage shows how such ideas were manipulated by Canon lawyers to underpin papal authority.

The education of hundreds of clergy in Universities such as Bologna and Paris adds to our understanding of the way concepts that held Western Europe together were disseminated, and underlines the contribution such clergy were eventually to make to doctrines like the law of nations as well as to important later Councils like that of Constance (1414-18). There, Charles J. Reid Jr shows, Paulus Vladimiri made a major restatement of natural rights, which developed an argument on the nature of human freedom that was to have considerable influence on the later development of Western political ideas.

Tuomas Heikkila illustrates through the life of Johannes Hundebeke, how the brightest of the local canonists were intimately tied into the Roman network by being appointed to important curial positions, such as Auditor of the Rota, before returning to an Episcopal position.

A number of contributions examine the role of ecclesiastical law in the local society and its culture through a detailed study of local synodal decrees. Others look at the relationship of such law to theology and to church practice in the areas of liturgy and the sacraments. With the coming of Hus and his continuing following, many aspects of a continuing development and modification of Canon law were brought under stress, as is shown in several chapters.

There are one or two important essays on areas outside the main focus, such as Frederik Pedersen's analysis of the political imperatives that underlay the conversion of Southern Scandinavia, that offers some fascinating insights into the movement of missionaries from England and elsewhere. Sverrir Jakobsson's piece on the Peace of God in Iceland in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries shows how the church might become involved in the secular imposition of government in order to ensure its independence and the peace of the country.

From the point of view of those familiar only with English and the romance languages some of this is disappointingly inaccessible. Translation is a difficult and delicate art but one must hope that more can be done in the future to enable the sharing of this important knowledge and understanding of developments in a critical border area of medieval Europe. Indeed, an integrated study of Canon law throughout Europe in the period is much to be desired.