Looking back on the period between the fall of the empire in the West and Charlemagne, the following typology is discernible: The style of jurisprudence developed by Siricius and Innocent I, and in letters of Leo I and Gelasius I that echoed their themes, was carried on by the Dionysiana and (rearranged thematically) the Concordia Cresconius. This tradition remained a major influence. One may call it the legal type. A second type includes the first and also confines itself to conciliar canons and papal letters, but adds a good deal of Christology, through letters of Leo I about the ‘one nature’ theory; in this type, the Christological content makes the collection as a whole less like ‘positive’ law, more like a general collection of all kinds of papal letters, a hybrid of law and theology (as later understood). It could be called the hybrid type. The Hispana is a prime example. In the third type papal law is present but pushed into the background by much material, Patristic and from penitentials, that is neither obviously legal nor papal. The Hibernensis is a prime example. For want of a better formula it may be called the inclusive type.

The aim of the book is twofold: to uncover the content of the legal uncertainties that led bishops to write to popes in the decades around 400 CE, and to establish the texts of their legal rulings as found in the three earliest canon law collections. Data to enable users to track the subsequent reception of these rulings up to the mid-twelfth century is also provided.

With over seventy surviving texts, canonical collections appear to have been the most prevalent form of normative codification in the early medieval Latin West. Rather than being merely compilations of derivative material, the choices that were made in selecting the material and organizing it are important windows onto regional variation in doctrinal observance and in ecclesiastical governance. Canonical collections are also important sources for social history thanks to the preoccupation of many a collection with such matters of social significance as marriage, landholding, and the socially disadvantaged. This chapter includes a sketch of the development of these collections, insofar as a clear trajectory of development can be discerned. The account is broadly chronological, with a reflection on central themes that have punctuated the study of collections: their sources, their authority, their main concerns, the motivations for their compilation, and their impact.

Christian leaders and scholars during the first millennium in the West were preoccupied with written norms and corrective practices. Law (lex) during this era needs to be understood in a broader normative context. This introductory chapter provides historical and historiographical background to the specialized chapters that follow, explores the notions of lex, ius, norma, regula, and canon, and proposes an overarching schema of four normative fields, as understood by authors of the period: laws, canons, penitential prescriptions, and monastic rules, with their corresponding normative practices and textual compilations. The legal status of conciliar canons and papal decretals during this era is problematic. Although scholars today usually construe these as constituting a body of law, Isidore of Seville did not, and authors of the era usually treated laws (leges) and canons as distinct but complementary categories. The final section of the chapter examines this problem, proposing several fields of inquiry that would shed light on it, and suggesting that canonical collections, as a genre, were practical but not attached to any particular application.