The Presence of the Church

In ecclesiastical circles, investigation of human nature, human be­havior, and social order was able to exist and develop. This investiga­tion was an all-out effort that included what the classical jurists, the Roman legislators, the ^ccFathers of the church” (the Latin and Greek patristic tradition), and the normative organs of the church had had to say about all aspects of individual and collective life.

Collections of norms from a broad variety of sources came into be­ing in Europe, the texts of which circulated, in whole or in excerpts, in a number of ways, and at times these excerpts were collected and gave rise to new and different collections. The most prominent of these were the Collectio CanonumAnselmo dedicata of the ninth century (ca. 882-96); the Lex romana canonice compta^ revised on several occa­sions between the ninth and the tenth centuries; later (in the eleventh century), the Decretum OfBurchard of Worms and the Panormia, the Tripartita^ and the Decretum of Ivo of Chartres.

It is difficult to establish where many of these collections were writ­ten or by whom. The oldest among them generally circulated as anon­ymous anthologies, and, according to where they happened to take hold, they were added to, abridged, rewritten, or reorganized. At times they were faked for the demands of the faith or politics: one example of these is a collection attributed to a monk in Mainz, Bene­dictus Levita, a text made up of broadly counterfeited canonical sources and barbarian and Roman norms presented as Carolingian “laws.”

In general, we can guess that these compilations came out of cen­ters for study or at least for reading and meditation; thus we should look toward great monasteries standing in rural isolation or perched on a hillside—Montecassino, Casamari, Nonantola, Bobbio, or Cluny—toward the great cathedral churches—Chartres, Ravenna, Metz, Aachen, Worms, or Mainz—or toward important collegial churches energized by the presence and activity of some learned canon. The vast network of city and country parishes had little to do with this movement, and most of the smaller dioceses were more likely to be caught up in city politics and in a difficult struggle with the local count and his court than to be occupied in the task of peace­ful elaboration of doctrine or to take even a minimal interest in ele­mentary instruction.

Thus we have very few points of reference in a continent that was sparsely populated, fragmented, and divided by nearly insuperable geographical barriers. Although such points were few in number, however, they were homogeneous, not only thanks to the universality of the church and its general structures but also thanks to the diffu­sion of the Benedictine Rule (and, to a lesser extent, the Rule of St. Columban) and to the mobility and “social” availability of the Latin clergy, who—unlike their Byzantine counterparts—sought the rela­tions offered by the collective life (in particular, through the activities of the canons) and integration into the community life of the monas­teries.

When the twelfth century ushered in a new age, terms were needed to designate those who knew how to read and write and those who did not: the first were always called clerks (clerid)^ even if their garb and their state were not religious; the second were called laity (laid). This distinction expressed a notion that had been current for centu­ries and that combined faith and sapientia_y the responsibilities of the religious life and a dedication to both the spiritual and the civil life.

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