To adapt John Henry Newman, we can say that canon law has been long enough in the world to justify us in dealing with it as a fact in the world's history. The editors of this volume state on page one that the influence of canon law has been enormous, long-lasting, and remarkably diverse. They, and the other 26 contributors, focus however on the medieval period conscious that, because of the modern separation between Church and state and the rise of secularism, canon law plays only a limited role in most modern-day societies. By contrast, the ubiquity of canon law in medieval society makes it an important source for the social, economic, political, intellectual, and religious history of the period.
This Cambridge History is divided into three main sections. Part I is an overview of the history of canon law from the time of the early Church to the end of the Middle Ages; Part II discusses the principal sources of canon law and how it was disseminated; Part III examines important aspects of canon law and how they affected society. The volume is a much fuller conspectus than the comparable and still useful Medieval Canon Law by James Brundage, now in its second edition (2022).
Because the volume is lengthy, its text and footnotes can present a substantial historical account of the diverse elements involved. It can also focus on easily neglected periods, such Greta Austin on the years 900–1050, shedding light on what might otherwise seem too dark a period. Given his expertise, Anders Winroth is assigned the chapter which includes Gratian's Decretum, if one can still at least initially speak of author and book in the singular. He states that Gratian ‘almost certainly’ died as bishop of Chiusi, perhaps as early as 1144 or 1145, and adds that the second recension of the Decretum was produced before 1150 ‘probably’ by others. As we see, there are still many uncertainties. Martin Bertram discusses robustly the widely used but somewhat flimsy term ‘classical canon law’, uncertain in content and span. He warns against neglecting the canonical literature of the later Middle Ages as unoriginal, derivative, and repetitive because such writings served to consolidate, diffuse regionally, and anchor canon law throughout society.
Not unrelated to Bertram's contribution, there is the model presentation by Anthony Perron of ‘Local Knowledge of Canon Law, c.1150-1250’. His focus is on the personnel and institutions through which the norms of canon law were articulated at the level of the province, diocese, and parish. The topic of synods and the local selection and adaptation of canon law, a crucial part of Perron's chapter, came to mind vividly on 8 May 2022 when I attended the service of ‘repentance and commitment’ concerning certain very severe medieval norms on Christian-Jewish relations held in Christ Church cathedral, Oxford, on the 800th anniversary of the Synod of Oxford (1222). This influential synod of the province of Canterbury is to be related to the provisions of Lateran IV (1215), an ecumenical (general) council as Norman Tanner SJ describes it in his chapter, but it also produced its own supplementary canons. Going back still further, to early medieval times, Abigail Firey underlines how canon law developed not simply as a sequence of statutes issued by ecclesiastical authorities but from a rich environment of legal traditions, evolving norms, experiments in governing, conflicts, and opportunities to reshape the contours of political power, academic practices, and intellectual exploration.
Cardinal Péter Erdö’s thorough contribution on the canon law of the Eastern Churches confirms the increasingly recognised need to be less Eurocentric and to study legal systems other than Western or Latin. Although said almost as a bracketed aside, which may reduce its impact, Erdö’s method is that the legal sources and works created or used will be as understood in the historiography of each individual church. This chapter is a highly compressed survey, making one wish that Erdö had the space to elaborate on the implications of his subtitle: the diverse Eastern Churches and the different historical periods of their law. This diversity and the related formidable linguistic challenges involved partly explain why a comprehensive history of Eastern canon law is still unwritten, although there is the pioneering The History of Byzantine and Eastern Canon Law to 1500 edited by W.Hartmann and K.Pennington in 2012. As for today's Eastern Catholic Churches, by means of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (1990), the problem of diversity was solved by promulgating one code, and that of different languages by opting for Latin.
John Wei's informative though brief account of theology and the theological sources of canon law opens Part II. The development of theology and canon law into separate disciplines was a gradual process, involving the separation of texts, subject matter, methods, and personnel. Wei acknowledges the importance of Aquinas among Scholastics, but he does not discuss why Aquinas cited canon law often yet did not reflect on it systematically in his elaborate typology of laws in the Summa Theologiae (I-II qq.90-108). This is a puzzling gap in juridical Thomism. There is much learning and intellectual stimulus in Gero Dolezalek's outstanding presentation of Roman law as a ‘symbiotic companion and servant of canon law’, a finely balanced double statement. The important point made early on is that Roman law regained importance in the Middle Ages through canon law; this is why Roman doctrines so often still survive. He does not venture to discuss whether Vacarius, from Northern Italy, long resident in England, and author of the successful Liber pauperum (the poor men's simplified book of Roman law) taught at Oxford. If Vacarius did teach there, and even more so if he wrote or completed his Liber pauperum there, it would contribute to substantiating why Winroth (map 14.1) can classify Oxford among the most important European law school locations. Conjectures aside, Vacarius's book was so prominent in Oxford that its law students were nicknamed pauperistae.
Part II concludes with Susan L'Engle's accomplished chapter on medieval canon law manuscripts and early printed books. As legal iconography is still understudied, the splendid volume Illuminating the Law by Susan L'Engle and Robert Gibbs (2001), containing many illustrations in colour (unlike her chapter here), can be recommended as complementary reading. In discussing differing images of pope and emperor, L'Engle draws attention to a distinctive group of manuscripts illuminated in Paris and northern France portraying the crowned secular ruler as sole representative of the law, promulgating it to secular and clerical individuals. This portrayal is most likely tied to conflicts between the papacy and the Capetian kings. There is a pictorial ecclesiology, we might say.
Under the heading of ‘Doctrine and Society’, Part III contains an extensive miscellany of topics illustrating the scope of medieval canon law. Simply to list the chapter headings: procedures and courts; ecclesiastical property, tithes and spiritualia; the law of benefices; religious life; the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist; confession, penance and extreme unction; saints and relics; marriage: law and practice; family law; criminal law; ecclesiastical discipline: heresy, magic, and superstition; just war and crusades; excommunication and interdict. The list is lengthy, making the absence of the sacrament of order more noticeable. The current definition of a ‘cleric’ in the Code of Canon Law (1983) as someone who has received sacramental ordination as deacon, presbyter, or bishop is narrower than in medieval times, when clerics and their hierarchical structuring and functions were a more pervasive feature of Church and society. Also missing is a systematic account of at least the holders of the highest offices and their part in Church governance: pope, bishops, and cardinals.
In the Conclusion, entitled ‘The Spirit of Canon Law’, (inevitably recalling Richard Helmholz's excellent book with an almost identical title, comparable in some ways to this Cambridge History as a whole), Peter Landau observes that in the history of law, the spirit of canon law imbued public law, penal law, procedural law, and even principles of private law. Gisela Drossbach, examining decretals and lawmaking, comments that the papal law books became models for secular legal works, and Max Weber appropriately characterised canon law as the forerunner for modern legal rationality. Landau expands this by explaining that Weber saw canon law as differing from other religious laws in its unique rationality, its ‘material rationality’. This category of rationality meant the orientation of legal traditions towards ethical principles, utility, and political maxims. Weber, one of the founders of legal sociology, saw in canon law a guide for secular law on its way to rationality in Western legal culture.
History keeps changing, and not only because the available data increases. There are also reevaluations and new perspectives. Although the volumes by Brundage and Helmholz retain their value, ‘indispensable’ is the shortest and most accurate description of this Cambridge History.
