Sources and Literature of the Law from the Liber Extra to the Black Death
The century between the promulgation of the Liber Extra and the death of Johannes Andrea during the first major outbreak of the Black Death was a peÂriod of consolidation and systematization in canon law.
Three major figures, sometimes called “The Princes”, dominated canonistic scholarship during that century: Sinibaldo dei Fieschi, better known as Pope Innocent IV (d. 1254),[1600] Henry of Segusio, cardinal bishop of Ostia, usually called Hostiensis (d. 1271),[1601] and Johannes Andreae (d. 1348), the first layman to make a significant contribuÂtion to canon law.[1602] The three Princes were enormously hardworking men, who coupled keen intellects with wide-ranging scholarship. Numerous Iesserjurists of the period also left lasting marks on the law’s development, among them BerÂnard of Parma,[1603] who compiled the Glossa ordinaria on the Liber Extra, Geoffrey of Trani (d. 1245),[1604] who wrote an influential Summa super titulis de- cretalium, William Durand (d. 1296),6 called “The Speculator,” the greatest procedural authority of the later middle ages, Bernard of Montemirato (d. 1296)/ a Benedictine monk who was commonly called “The Old Abbot” (Abbas Antiquus) and whose legal writing was marked by a keen critical sense, and Guido of Baysio (d. 1311), also known as the Archdeacon, the most important commentator on Gratian’s Decretum during this century.8The period also saw continued growth in the numbers of universities and consequently in the numbers of canon lawyers who taught in them and who wrote commentaries on canonistic texts and themes.9 Within these new univerÂsities, as also in the older studia generalia, the faculties of canon law claimed increasing autonomy from civil law faculties and from theology.
Graduates of these faculties followed a wide variety of careers: many became ecclesiastical functionaries, considerable numbers of them became bishops, and a few ended their careers as cardinals or even as popes—notably Innocent IV and Boniface VIII. But large numbers made careers in secular government as well: in EnÂgland, for example, a majority of those middle-level administrators about whose training we have information in the government of Edward I (1272-1307) had studied canon law.10 Still others became judges or practiced as advocates or proctors in the burgeoning courts of this age. Canon law had a well-deserved reputation as an avenue to wealth as well as to power.11The period between 1234 and 1348 witnessed further additions to the body of canon law. Decretal letters continued to pour forth from Bome and, during
βLAC, pp. 319-21; L. Falletti, “Guillaume Durand,” in DDC 5:1014-75; Ronald J. Zawilla, “Durand, William,” in DMA 4:314-15; Schulte, QL 2:144-56.
7LAC, p. 315; A. Villien, “Abbas,” in DDC 1:1-2; Schulte, QL 2:130-32.
8LAC, ρρ. 326-27; G. Mollat, “Cui de Baysio,” in DDC 5:1007-1008; Schulte, QL 2:186—go; Filippo Liotta, Appunti per una biografia del Canonista Guido da Baisio, ar- cidiacono di Bologna (con appendice di documenti),” Studi Senesi, 3d ser., 13 (1964) 7-52.
9In France new centers of juristic study and teaching appeared at Avignon (ca. 1256), MontpelIier (ca. 1260), Orange (ca. 1265), and Cahors (before 1332), while in Italy uniÂversities developed at Rome (1244/45), Pcrugia (1307), Treviso (1318), and Pisa (1339). New universities were also being created in the Iberian peninsula at Valladolid (before 1293), Lerida (1300), and Coimbra (1290). The first university east of the Rhine was founded at Prague in 1348; Coing, “Juristische Fakultiit,” pp. 42, 46-47; Rashdall, UniÂversities 3:65, n. 2.
10Ticrney, Religion, Law, and Constitutional Thought, p.
11.11 Stephan Kuttner, “Dat Galienus opes et sanctio Justiniana,” in Linguistic and LiterÂary Studies in Honor of Helmut A. Hatzfeld, ed. Alessandro S. Crisafulli (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1964), pp. 237-46; James A. Brundage, “English-Trained Canonists in the Middle Ages: A Statistical Analysis of a Social Group,” in Law-Making and Law-Makers in British History, ed. Alan Harding (London: Royal Historical Society, 1980), pp. 64-78; T. H. Aston, “Oxford’s Medieval Alumni,” Past and Present 74 (1977) 11-16, 19, 22-23, 27-31; T. H. Aston, G.D. Duncan, and T. A. R. Evans, “The Medieval Alumni of the University of Cambridge,” Past and Present 86 (1980) 57-θ3> 70-83∙
the latter part of the period, from Avignon, where the popes resided between 1309 and 1378. Three general councils—1 Lyon (1245), 2 Lyon (1274), and Vienne (1311-12)—added ninety-six new constitutions and decrees to the Church’s legal arsenal, and numerous local councils and synods adopted many times that number of new canons. Much of the new law was collected, arranged in systematic order, and disseminated in canonistic collections, the most imporÂtant of them issued by the papacy itself. Innocent IV published no less than three collections of Novellae (1245, 1246, and 1253), and Gregory X (1271-76) issued the Novissimae, consisting mainly of the constitutions of 2 Lyon in 1276. The most comprehensive official collection of the period was the Liber Sextus of Boniface VIII (1294-1303), which incorporated most of Innocent’s Novellae and Gregory’s Novissimae, along with much else, and was promulgated in 1298. Not long after the beginning of the new century a much smaller collection, the Constitutiones Clementinae, was published by order of Pope John XXII (1316-34).[1605]
Although a great deal was added to the already bulging storehouse of eccleÂsiastical law, there was during this period far less fundamental innovation in the canon law concerning marriage and sexual behavior than in the preceding cenÂtury. The basic changes had already been made. Marriage law remained relaÂtively static; so, too, did the law concerning clerical sexuality and sex offenses. This was an age not of innovation but of consolidation and refinement in the canon law about sex. Canonists during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries were far more concerned with enforcing the existing sex laws of the Church than with creating new law. While academic legal commentators wrote at length about sexual behavior, much of what they said echoed earlier concluÂsions. The most striking novelties of the age had to do with procedures and evidence, not with innovations in the substantive law on sex and marriage.