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  • The History of Courts and Procedure in Medieval Canon Law by Wilfried Hartmann and Kenneth Pennington
  • Gero Dolezalek
Hartmann, Wilfried, and Kenneth Pennington, edd. The History of Courts and Procedure in Medieval Canon Law. History of Medieval Canon Law. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016. Pp, xiv, 506. $75.00. ISBN: 978-0-81322-904-1.

This is a collection of twelve independent essays—and thus not a handbook which would systematically cover the entire field mentioned in the title. This implies that matters discussed by one author may at times also be taken up by another. In this regard, readers are assisted by a general index.1

All essays circle around the function of the medieval Western Church as a local arbiter or judge in local litigations. In the time period in question (1140 to 1500) this function of the Church was fulfilled relatively homogeneously in all geographical regions of Western Christianity. The uniformity is owing to the endeavour of the reform popes, from 1049 onward, who had set a broad homogenisation of the Western church in motion.

The editors have wisely abstained from considering litigation which directly took place at the Holy See (thus before papal auditors, etc.). This would have needed much additional space, and it was not urgent, anyway, because sources and literature of direct litigation in the papal curia are sufficiently described elsewhere and commented on.

The contributors have furthermore restricted the topic 'inquisition into heresy' to a few scant mentions2—likewise for good reasons. Respective publications are extremely numerous. Already in 1963 a bibliography by Émile van der Vekene had [End Page 299] gathered more than 3000 of them, and his listing was by far not complete.3 The flood of publications on this fashionable topic progresses steadily.

Before I look at the book in detail, I would like to place it into its context beforehand. The book's series 'History of Medieval Canon Law' produces research tools. It comprises guides for beginners (or historians of other disciplines), but it also goes beyond this aim, providing surveys of the present state of research in a field. As a consequence, I place this series next to other publications which serve the same purposes, and I canvass in the subsequent two paragraphs the picture which then arises. It will be shown that the publications in question do not actually compete with each other. On the contrary, they work together and complement each other.

Older historians will recall Stephan Kuttner's admonitions, from the 1972 Congress of Medieval Canon Law onwards, that we need new tools to survey the discipline's various fields.4 Scholars interested in the history of canon law wish to have overviews of medieval literature and its dissemination in manuscripts and editions, together with listings of secondary publications. They furthermore desire biographies of authors, outlines of doctrines, and inventories of documentary evidence from legal practice (and there in particular studies on court structure and procedure). By 1972, all this had become urgent because much time had lapsed since previous tools of the kind had been published, and in the [End Page 300] meantime floods of new research results had arisen. Not only did this hamper scholars of legal history, it also made it virtually impossible for historians of other disciplines to gain reliable insight into the current state of canon law research.

The previous state of affairs and consequential admonitions sparked a variety of initiatives. Although the discipline's needs are not yet fully met, much has been achieved in the meantime. We now have comprehensive data collections which survey juridical literary genres and allow us to trace the dissemination of their specimens. This is the case, for instance, in Lotte Kéry's guide to canonical collections before Gratian (= first volume of the series 'History of Medieval Canon Law')5 and in various data bases.6 Some important data col-lections of the kind couple genres of juridical literature with biographies of authors and listings of publications on them and their works—thus Ken Pennington's bio-bibliographic guide7 in concerted effort with national [End Page 301] biographies.8 Outlines of doctrines of canon...

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