The Reinvention of Canon Law in the High Middle Ages

doi:10.1017/9781139177221.006

5 - The Reinvention of Canon Law in the High Middle Ages

from Part I - The History of Medieval Canon Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2022

Wolfgang P. Müller

Edited by

Anders Winroth and

John C. Wei

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Anders Winroth: Affiliation:
Universitetet i Oslo

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Summary

Over the course of the “long twelfth century,” the law of the western Church was transformed in ways which made it look very different from what it had been before. To denote the most fundamental aspect of that change, historians have used the word “systematization,” which accurately describes key developments in the intellectual life of the period. However, events that culminated in the appearance of the Concordia discordantium canonum (around 1140) and secured its author, Gratian, distinction as “the father of the systematic study of canon law,” can also be understood in terms of “reinvention,” which appropriately points to a qualitative break away from older legal practices. To speak of canon law as having been “reinvented” acknowledges that some form of it had been in place earlier on. “Systematization,” on the other hand, figures in the modern western mind as an expression that lacks distinctiveness in connection with legal matters. Audiences today are surrounded by a juristic culture that grew out of Gratian’s pioneering effort, and his approach to individual norms as elements of a logically coherent system is now considered to be the only plausible one.

Keywords

Ivo of Chartres Gratian of Bologna Contradiction in canon law Canonical harmonization Judicial ordeal Compurgation Public penance

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Medieval Canon Law , pp. 79 - 95

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139177221.006 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2022

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