Bologna Law School in the XII Century. The Contribution of Decretists in Creating a System of Western European Ecclesiastical Law

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the transformation of the early medieval canonical tradition into a structured system of church law by the Bologna law school based on the commentary and interpretation of the treatise «Concordia discordantium canonum» by Magister Gratian. It was noted that this process was immediately preceded by: 1) reception of Roman law (according to the codification of Justinian); 2) the emergence of university corporations (including faculties of civil and canon law) in Bologna, Paris, Tours, Reims, Cologne, Oxford and other smaller cities; 3) updating the way of thinking and the emergence of new logical categories (contribution of Aristotelian philosophy). It is stated that they conditioned the legal or jurisdictional renaissance of the XII century. Gratian’s «Decree» explored the entire legal sphere, but was only an entry into the law of the past. It was the starting point for resolving legal disputes, but did not provide direct answers to many modern problems. Lawyers began to create the first tools for building a legal system of society of that time. The opinion was expressed that palei (additions), glosses (comments), apparatus (written on the margins of manuscripts) and summae (written separately from the commented book) to the Gratian’s «Decree» can be considered the most important achievement of Bologna lawyers of the XII and early XIII centuries.

The most extensive, cited and influential commentary on Gratian’s «Decree» in the history of canon law was written by Uguccio. The authors concluded that the three most relevant branches in which legal scholars created a new jurisprudence on principles and concepts borrowed from ancient Roman law were judicial procedure (Paucapalea, Stephen of Tournai), marriage law (Roland) and the structure of church administration (Uguccio). In the first half century after Gratian, lawyers focused on these problems, and their teachings and works reflect the state of development of these problems.

The article analyzes historiographic tradition, available data and the current state of ideas about the personalities and principles of the work of the first post-Gratian generations of canonists – names, origin, places of birth, education, membership in the scientific school of canon law, university and church careers, direct origin and dates of creation of individual texts, sources of borrowing and stages of composition, essence of legal thought and argumentation. It is concluded that the commentators of the Gratian’s «Decree» laid the foundation for canon law, lawyers from Bologna and other law schools made it the central text for study.

The systematic presentation of church law is one of the principled evidence of the medieval intellectual world. Western canon law as a legal system differs significantly from the canon law of Eastern Christian churches. The authors consider it undeniable that Uguccio’s comment marks the end of the Decretist era, after which the transformation of canon law in a discipline based on the explanations of the Gratian’s «Decree» begins into a legal system based on papal decrees.