15 - Theology and Law

Summary

With both the role of professionalization in the second decretal age, and the divergence between canon law and theology, contingency must be given its due, as against an assumption that the separation of theology from a canon law which was professionalized and based on papal decretals was in any way inevitable. Decretals and professionalization were indeed integrated in Western Europe around 1200, and in a different intellectual sphere from university theology, but there was no necessity about it. Without the legacy of the first decretal age, there might never have been a second decretal age, though there would surely have been a system run by academically trained lawyers. Similarly, there was no necessity about the separation of canon law from theology. A change of theological fashion is part of the explanation, but so too is the direction in which the Breviarium of Bernard of Pavia pointed the system. Bernard was the Dionysius Exiguus of his age.