Die Konzilien Deutschlands und Reichsitaliens, 1023–1059—Concilia aevi Saxonici et Salici, MXXIII–MLIX (review)

This latest volume in the MGH Concilia series covers church councils, synods, and assemblies from Mainz (1023) to the famous Lateran synod of Pope Nicholas II (1059). In keeping with the format of the series, Detlev Jasper has furnished a complete apparatus for each council, including handlists of all manuscripts containing published decrees, acta, or other surviving documentation. In addition, he has noted the relevant secondary literature; provided excerpts from indirect references to the councils contained in letters, annals, saints’ lives, or other sources; and prefaced each with a brief overview of our state of historical knowledge concerning it. Full editions of the canons and their prologues, historical narratives of conciliar proceedings, and charters drawn up at the assemblies round out the contents. The end matter—consisting of textual incipits, biblical and literary citations, terminological index, and concordance—make the volume exceptionally easy to use.

In all, the volume includes forty-three assemblies. More than 60 percent were held in Italy. There was one held in France, and the remainder were held in German lands. Documentary evidence varies tremendously from council to council, and Jasper has included not only minor provincial synods (for example, Venice, 1040; Toul, 1056; and Fontaneto d’Agogna, 1057) but also papal and imperial assemblies, some of which, by virtue of the broad transmission of their canons or decrees, approach something like “universal” status in the Latin Church (e.g., Rome, 1059). The collection makes clear that a council’s wider influence did not necessarily correlate to its size or the number of dignitaries in attendance. The provincial synod of Seligenstadt (August 12, 1023) furnishes an excellent example. In all, six bishops and ten abbots attended, most from the province of Mainz. The famous canonist Burchard of Worms was among them, and the canons issued at Seligenstadt frequently were transmitted together with his Decretum and display many parallels to it; thus, they survive in twenty-nine manuscripts and two recensions, and were copied throughout Italy, Germany, France, and as far afield as Durham. Seligenstadt is an exception rather than the rule, however. The canons of only a handful of councils covered in this volume are extant, and few circulated widely.

The conciliar “high point” of the eleventh century was arguably Nicholas’s Lateran Synod of April–May 1059 (pp. 352–407). The superiority of Jasper’s edition to earlier editions of the conciliar texts, including the 1893 edition of Ludwig Weiland in volume 1 of the MGH Constitutiones et acta publica imperatorum et regum, is evident here. In addition to gathering more than a dozen secondhand reports of the council, Jasper brings together in one place all of its known legislation and acta, previously scattered piecemeal across a variety of publications. Included are the papal election decree and Nicholas’s oration on simoniacal ordinations; the synodal report on deliberations concerning the reform of communities of canons; a sentence of excommunication pronounced against several French bishops; the oath sworn by Berengar of Tours; and the papal letter to the bishops of Gaul, Aquitaine, and Gascony listing the canons issued at the council. Having a reliable edition with all the legislation in one place is a great boon to researchers.

This is, of course, one goal of the MGH Concilia series, which expands and improves on the earlier editions of Giovanni Mansi, Philippe Labbe and Gabriel Cossart, Jacques-Paul Migne, and others. To this ambitious endeavor, Jasper’s volume is a worthy and successful contribution.