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.

The century between c. 1130 and 1234 was a time of great renewal and transformation in canon law when much of the foundation was laid that would define the legal structure of not only the church but also secular society well into modern times (see Chapter 30). At this time, papal legislation found its stride, in the form of papal decretals and conciliar decrees (notably from the four Lateran councils, 1123–1215). The inhabitants of Europe sought out the pope’s judicial decisions in unprecedented masses, creating a rich body of papal case law. At the same time, legal study grew exponentially at the law schools, particularly in Bologna, where an expanding and often innovative tradition of analysis and commentary, which were also inspired by the recently rediscovered Roman law of the emperor Justinian, brought canon law to new levels of complexity, sophistication, and precision.