Anselm of Lucca as a Canonist by Szabolcs Anzelm Szuromi (review)

council and an enduring monument to the passionate desire of one dedicated scholar to share with others his encyclopedic knowledge of the most important event in the history of the Catholic Church in the twentieth century. Thomas J. Shelley Fordham University Bronx, NY ANSELM OF LUCCAASA CANONIST by SzabolcsAnzelm Szuromi (Adnotationes in Ius Canonicum 34). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Europäischer Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2006. Pp. X–189. English speakers will be much obliged to the author, who holds a chair at the Postgraduate Institute of Canon Law at Pázmány Catholic University in Budapest, for taking the trouble to publish his studies of the canonical collection of Anselm of Lucca in English, although the meaning of the English phrases is not always easy to decipher. These difficulties are mitigated by very extensive citations from Latin sources, usually taken from published texts such as Friedberg’s edition of the Decretum of Gratian or John Gilchrist’s edition of the Collection in Seventy-Four Titles . Szuromi’s highly technical and statistically oriented work—going back to 1999—is here presented under eleven topics (1–129) and supported by seven appendices (131–172), brief indices and a bibliography that is regrettably brief.1 The most general chapter of the book, with the promising title “Work in Progress”—the transformation of the cathedral schools into the university faculties of canon law at the end of the eleventh century—opens the book (1–10). The chapter reviews the usefulness and uses of some of the best known canonical collections from the period of the Gregorian reform as well as the intentions of their authors. The brief discussion is acbook reviews 237 1 Two absolutely essential reference works for pre-Gratian canon law unfortunately appeared too late to be included: Canonical Collections of the Early Middle Ages (ca. 400–1140) by Lotte Kéry. Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1999 and Clavis Canonum: Selected Canon Law Collections Before 1140 (Access with data processing) (MGH Hilfsmittel 21). Hahnsche Buchhandlung: Hannover 2005. 238 the jurist companied by extensive citations of sources. It leaves the reader with a sense of disappointment, however. Nobody could expect a discussion of the evolution of the universities in such a brief general chapter, but there is no explanation how the eleventh century materials benefited the nascent universities of the later twelfth century. The title “Work in Progress” suggests that this is possibly a topic the author intends to pursue in additional studies. The following chapters (two to eleven) touch on a variety of subjects that either pertain to the collectio canonum of Anselm of Lucca (+1086) and its different manuscripts, or address issues that might be considered related to this collection, e.g., chapter 5: “Ecclesiological and theoretical background of the Gregorian reform concept from the Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae,” or chapter 7: “The Gregorian understanding of bishops in the Collectio in LXXIV titulos digesta and in the Collectio Canonum Anselmi Lucensis.” The latter essay has been published once before in the Proceedings of the Eleventh International Congress of Medieval Canon Law held in 2000 at Catania.2 The other chapters are devoted to some of the manuscripts of the different classes of Anselm codices, the evolution of the differences among them leading to five recensions, and to some of the sources used by Anselm, including papal decretals, patristic material, and Roman law. Theauthorreliedbasicallyonthegenerallyacceptedclassificationsdeveloped by Paul Fournier and Peter Landau, but without differentiating betweentherecensionsAandA1 [alsocalledA1]orBandBb.Heattempts to link this evolution of the collection to teaching activities at cathedral schools, specifically the cathedral of Lucca. At the same time he shows how certain versions ofAnselm, i.e., the unnamed recensionA1, incorporated contemporary papal decretals and conciliar canons in a “second phase” of development because they were “used on a day to day basis” (45), i.e., for episcopal administration of a diocese. In this reviewer’s opinion the same reasoning has to be applied to the “old” texts, however difficult this may appear given the antiquity of some of the texts. Every author is confronted by the quandary of whether to paraphrase or quote earlier scholars or rather to be intent on avoiding duplication. The latter procedure...