2 - Disputes, Decretals, and the 1179 Conciliar Canons

Summary

Starting from the idea that all papal government in the twelfth century was responsive, this chapter uses papal letters from the period ca. 1148–79 to investigate how far the canons of the 1179 council were grounded in disputes that emerged locally. It has two principal intentions: firstly, to demonstrate how and when Pope Alexander III would have grappled with the issues tackled by the canons in the years prior to the council, and secondly to consider how far these problems emerged from the quotidian business of the Latin Church. Although grounded in the study of twelfth–century papal decretals, the letters sent by popes in response to queries, and requests for adjudication, the chapter also considers the evidence provided by other papal letters which were not included in contemporary legal collections. The result is a broader analysis of the processes of papal government and the question of the existence of a papal ‘agenda’ at the time, accompanied by consideration of the logic behind the inclusion of particular letters into legal collections and whether, and if so why, there were substantive differences between the measures put forward in the letters and those in the 1179 conciliar acta.