Brown Discharge And Fever

canon law

The Medieval Review Who: tmr-l

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Brasington, Bruce C. and Kathleen G. Cushing, eds. \u0026lt;i> Bishops, Texts
and the Use of Canon Law around 1100. Essays in Honour of Martin
Brett \u0026lt;/ i>. Series: Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West.
Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2008.  Pp. 224. $99.95. 
Reviewed by John S. Ott /  Portland State University
     
Over the past several years, the community of canon law scholars has
been busily fêting its luminaries.  <i>Festschriften</i> have appeared
for Peter Landau (2000), Roger Reynolds (2004), Kenneth Pennington
(2006), and Linda Fowler-Magerl (2008); another is on the way for
Robert Somerville.  Martin Brett joins their company in this volume of
fourteen essays co-edited by Bruce C. Brasington and Kathleen G.
Cushing.  Both editors have worked directly with the honoree in their
own scholarship; Brasington, for example, has partnered with Brett to
produce an on-line and fully accessible edition of the
<i>Panormia</i>, an influential, late eleventh-century canon law
collection until recently attributed with few qualms to Ivo of
Chartres. [1]  Besides the <i>Panormia</i>, Brett has worked many
years to produce new editions of the <i>Tripartita</i> (also once
attributed to Ivo) and the <i>Decretum</i> (still attributed to him),
as well as the eleventh- and twelfth-century episcopal <i>acta</i> of
Canterbury, and a variety of other projects.  Even to casual observers
of the field of canon law studies, Brett has surely earned this
volume, as the warm praise of its contributors for his work makes
clear.

Following a modest homage to Brett--a list of his publications appears
at the end of the volume (215-220)--and a survey of the volume's
contents (1-3), the editors have divided the essays into two groups:
"Bishops and their Texts" and "Texts and the Use of Canon Law."  The
first group favors contributions which explore bishops' involvement in
the compilation and transmission of canon law collections; the second
group of essays addresses the methods, motives, and interpretations of
the collections' compilers.  The distinctions are by no means
absolute, and one can easily imagine other ways of organizing the
contents of the volume (for example: paleographical and codicological
studies in one group; studies focusing on the formal sources of law
collections in another; and the social, political, and pastoral
applications of canon law in a third).  Nearly all the essays concern
the compilation and transmission of canon law in the period before
Gratian, and studies of the Ivonian corpus and the <i>Collectio
Lanfranci</i>, central to much of Brett's own work, dominate a
significant portion of the volume. Many of the contributions include
new editions of previously unpublished texts.