The Role of Hagiography in the Development of Canon Law in the Reform Era

chapter 5 The Role of Hagiography in the Development of Canon Law in the Reform Era

Tatsushi Genka

1 Introduction1

In his “Un tournant de l’histoire du droit 1060–1140,” Paul Fournier argued that the pontificate of Gregory VII and that of Urban II marked two distinct stages in the history of canon law: while the former is characterized by its efforts to identify the texts that represent the authentic tradition and to eliminate those that oppose it, the latter shows more flexible attitudes in this regard. The champions of the new stage of history, says Fournier, are Bernold of Konstanz and Ivo of Chartres, whose methods of interpretation, which consist of principles of hermeneutics as well as a hierarchy of texts, reflect the flexibility towards the tradition that characterizes the pontificate of Urban II.2

1 The present article is a revised version of the paper read at the conference “New Discourses in Canon Law Research” organized by Professor Andreas Thier (Zurich) and Professor Christof Rolker (Bamberg). I would like to thank them for inviting me to the conference and for their hostpitality. I am also grateful to Professor Mathias Schmoeckel (Bonn), Professor Peter Landau (Munich), Dr Martin Brett (Cambridge), Professor Bruce Clark Brasington (Canyon) and Professor Greta Austin (Tacoma) for their valuable comments and supports. I would like to note with gratitude that this article was originally conceived as a part of my research project “Juristic Personality in the High Middle Ages” funded by Tokyo Marine Kagami Foundation (Tokyo). 2 Paul Fournier, “Un tournant de l’histoire du droit 1060–1140,” Nouvelle revue historique du droit français et étranger 41 (1917), 129–80, at p. 130: “L’évolution dont il s’agit s’est produite successivement sur deux terrains. D’abord, au temps de Grégoire VII (1073–1085), les esprits sont surtout préoccupés de la critique des textes canonique adimits plus ou moirns généralement dans l’Église, et de l’introduction de textes, témoignages du passé, que l’on fait sortir de l’ombre où ils sont demeurés. Puis, à l’époque d’Urbain II (1088–1099), on fut amené par les circonstances à rechercher une méthode conduisant à la synthèse par la conciliation des textes. Ainsi l’œvre du pontificat de Grégoire VII concerne surtout la rénovation des textes canoniques; celle du pontificat d’Urbain II a trait à la méthode d’interprétation de ces textes.”

This view of Fournier’s did not go unchallenged, most notably by Stephan Kuttner in his study on Urban II and the doctrine of interpretation3 and by Martin Brett in his study on the canonical collections attributed to Ivo.4 Kuttner attacked Fournier’s assumption that a version of Urban’s letter (JL 5383) found in the Collectio Britannica was evidence of Urban’s contribution to the later developments of hermeneutics. Kuttner argued that the direction of influence was in fact the other way round.5 Brett, on the other hand, called Fournier’s dating of the Ivonian collections into question by re-examining in detail formal as well as material sources of the collections used by Fournier to date and attribute them to Ivo.6 They posed serious questions to some fundamental assumptions of Fournier’s theses. But it was Christof Rolker’s studies on Ivo that have brought us changes that should properly be called drastic. The most notable example is that Ivo’s authorship of the Panormia is now seriously in question. But, more importantly, his way of thinking has now come to be interpreted not in isolation but in the context of the whole Ivonian corpus. As a result, the famous Prologus, for example, is now thought to represent Ivo as a pastor who seeks practical solutions for the problems his flock faced, rather than Ivo as a scholar who seeks to reconcile conflicting traditions. That is to say, this famous text is now placed in the pastoral setting of cura animarum rather than in the academic milieu of a cathedral school.7 As regards Bernold, the advances in research in the last decades have not been as spectacular as those concerning Ivo, but there still have been some notable ones. Fournier’s thesis of the two-stage development of canon law is based on the assumption that De fontibus iuris ecclesiastici, in which Bernold identifies the sources of canon law and formulates a theory of hierarchy of texts as well as hermeneutic principles of reconciling conflicting texts, was written

3 Stephan Kuttner, “Urban II and the Doctrine of Interpretation: A Turning Point?,” Studia Gratiana 15 (1972), 55–85; repr. in idem, The History of Ideas and Doctrines of Canon Law in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed., Variorum Collected Studies Series 113 (London, 1992), no. IV. 4 Martin Brett, “Urban II and the Collections Attributed to Ivo of Chartres,” in Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law: San Diego, University of California at La Jolla, 21–27 August 1988, ed. Stanley Chodorow, MIC Subsidia 9 (Vatican City, 1992), pp. 27–46. 5 Kuttner, “Urban II” (see above, n. 3), p. 58. For a cautious attempt of attenuating Kuttner’s conclusion see Robert Somerville, Pope Urban II, the Collectio Britannica and the Council of Melfi (1089) (Oxford 1996), pp. 104–15. For a careful treatment of the same subject rather in favour of Urban’s authorship see Christof Rolker, Canon Law and the Letters of Ivo of Chartres, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, Fourth Series 76 (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 95–97. 6 Brett, “Urban II” (see above, n. 4), passim. 7 Rolker, Canon Law (see above, n. 5).