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The council of Westminster 1175: new light on an old source

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Mary Cheney
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Extract

The text with which this study is concerned is not the text of the canons of the council of Westminster of 1175. It is the text printed long ago by Wilkins from the single manuscript source, Cotton Claudius A IV folios 191v–92, where it has the heading Concilium Ricardi Cantuariensis archiepiscopi. Wilkins gave it the heading Canones condlii . . . and assigned it to 1173, an impossible date, since Richard was not then archbishop. This part of Claudius A IV is a decretal collection, put together from various sources not before, and probably not long after, 1185. Our text, copied as one item in the collection, consists of thirty-seven imperative propositions, all quite short and almost all negative; they all condemn something or forbid something: ‘Christians shall not be usurers’, ‘Lepers shall not in future live among the healthy’, and so on. There is little sign of any attempt at arrangement; related topics may appear more or less widely separated.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 11: The Materials Sources and Methods of Ecclesiastical History , 1975 , pp. 61 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1975

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References

1 Wilkins I p 474. The canons follow on p 476; they are also printed in Houedeneii, 72-7.

2 Duggan, [C]., [Twelfth Century Decretal Collections] (London 1963) p 91.Google Scholar

3 Propositions 11, 21 and 37 were dealt with together in canon 10.

4 The list has been discussed in recent times by Brooke, C.N.L., ‘Canons of English Church Councils in the early Decretal Collections’, Traditio 13 (New York 1957) p 472 n 2Google Scholar; Duggan p 92; Cheney, C. R., Medieval Texts and Studies (Oxford 1973) p 119 n 1.Google Scholar

5 Morey, A. and Brooke, C.N.L., The Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foltot (Cambridge 1967) p 306 no 234.Google Scholar

6 Decretum C.16 q.7 c.10,II.

7 Collectto Wigorniensis 4.50, ed Lohmann, H., ZSR, KA 22 (1933) p 119 Google Scholar. For particulars of the decretal collections mentioned in this article see Papal Decretals relating to the diocese of Lincoln in the twelfth century, ed Holtzmann, W. and Kemp, E.W., LRS 47 (1954) pp x–xvii.Google Scholar

8 Decretals will be cited only by Jaffé numbers where these exist. For the con venience of readers these numbers are listed here with references to printed tects.

12412 Compilatie I 3.33.14, A[ppendix] C[oncilii] L[ateranensis], Mansi 22, cols 248-454, 15.10.

13794 X 4-8.1, ACL 37.2.

13814 Compilatio 12. 20.33, ACL 28.14.

13816 X 1.35.6 and 3.39.11, ACL 28.8.

13817 X 3.7.3, ACL 28.11.

13819 X 5.19.2, ACL 16.3.

13823 Compilatio 12. 20.21, ACL 10.20.

13976 (not in X or Comp. I) ACL 20.3 and 4.

9 It is printed in ‘Coltectio Brugensis’ 19.6, ed Friedberg, E., Die Canonessammlungen zwischen Gratian und Bernard von Pavia (Leipzig 1897 reprinted Graz 1958) p 151 Google Scholar. The decretal occurs also in Coll. Bridlington. c.182 and Coll. Tanner. 3.39. Inc. Quanto magis Deo.

10 On the significance of these practices see Cheney, C.R., From Becket to Langton (Manchester 1956) pp 127–9.Google Scholar

In Bulletin of’Medieval Canon Law ns 3 (1973) pp 52-5, S. Chodorow analyses Paris, Bibl. nationale ms lat 587, fols I33r-4V. Its readings strengthen the arugument of this article by showing JL 13794, about lepers, with address to the archbishop of Canterbury and his suffragans, but they modify it by attaching the second part of JL 13976 (ACL 20.4), about jews, to JL 13810, with address to the archbishop alone.