Villanova Law Review 59 (2014) 679-706
The Biography of Gratian, the Father of Canon Law
Kenneth Pennington
Who was
Gratian? asked
John T. Noonan Jr. at the beginning of his classic essay on the biography of
the Father of Canon Law. He continued:[1]
That Gratian was the
author of the Concordia discordantium
canonum; that he was a teacher at Bologna; that he was a monk; and that he
was a Camaldolese are assertions made by all twentieth-century historians of
canon law. That he was dead by 1159 is also often added as a fact, that his
school was at the monastery of Saints Felix and Nabor is sometimes stated as
certain or probable, and that he was born at Ficulle near Carraria or at Chiusi
is occasionally noted as likely. An authoritative history adds that he was probably
educated as a monk at Classe in Ravenna. From these statements, meager as they
are, a distinct picture emerges of a scholar, bound to a particular monastic
tradition, and circumscribed by particular places and dates.
At the end of his essay and after a
vigorous use of Ockham’s razor, Noonan concluded that:[2]
we
have reason to believe that Gratian composed and commented upon a substantial
portion of the Concordia. In such
composition and commentary he revealed himself to be a teacher with theological
knowledge and interests and a lawyer's point of view. He worked in Bologna in
the 1130s and 1140s. Beyond these conclusions, we have unverified hearsay,
palpable legend, and the silent figure in the shadows of S. Marco.
Since John
Noonan’s superb historical detective work using the standard tools of criticism
with admirable dexterity, we have added some very important, undoubted facts to
Gratian’s biography. After Anders
Winroth’s splendid discovery
of an earlier recension of Gratian’s Decretum in the 1990’s and the work of
other scholars inspired by his discovery, we can also state with absolute
certainty that he compiled and commented on the Decretum in stages.[3] For that reason in this essay I shall abandon
the terminology of “Gratian I” and “Gratian II.” Referring to the stages of the Decretum as “Gratian I” and “Gratian II”
gives a misleading picture of uniformity in how the Decretum
evolved. Gratian and later jurists who
taught and used the book never thought of it as a fixed text. They added canons to it at all stages of its
evolution. In this essay I will use the
terms pre-Vulgate and Vulgate to refer to Gratian’s great law book. By Vulgate I mean the text that became the
basic, introductory canon law text sometime around 1140, without the numerous
“paleae” added later in the twelfth century.[4]
The research on the pre-Vulgate manuscripts has been
enormously interesting and, not surprisingly, has created areas of disagreement
about aspects of Gratian’s life, work and teaching. These scholarly debates have given birth to a
fruitful and vigorous exploration into the teaching and development of law in
the first half of the twelfth century.[5] The issues are many. Perhaps the most important is the lack of
consensus about how long Gratian worked on the Decretum and how long he taught.
That will be the focus of this essay.
To further complicate the story of Gratian, Winroth has argued
that there were two Gratians. The first
Gratian compiled the pre-Vulgate Decretum that Winroth
discovered; a second “Gratian” — persona incognita — doubled the size of the Vulgate
Decretum during the 1140’s. There is very little evidence for his conjecture.[6]
He was compelled to create a second Gratian because he had shrunk Gratian’s teaching
career to only a few years. I will
examine his reasons for doing so below. My
main argument for not accepting the theory that there were two Gratians is
quite simple. It is difficult to imagine
that if a Gratian compiled the pre-Vulgate Decretum,
and another person doubled the size from ca. 2000 canons to ca. 4000, the first
generation of jurists after Gratian would have not noticed or not known about
the second Gratian’s work and blithely attributed what was now a massive work
to just “Gratian.” Further, as we shall
see, the additional canons were not added in one fell swoop, but over time. Gratian may have had an atelier of
assistants, but it seems unlikely that another completely unknown
person would step in to complete the Vulgate Decretum with not only many canons but also dicta which all the later jurists recognized as Gratian’s.
The main reason that Winroth created a second “Gratian” is because
of a text that is found in all the pre-Vulgate manuscripts. At D.63 d.p.c.34 Gratian cited a papal
conciliar canon. The passage is
contained in all pre-Vulgate manuscripts and also in the Vulgate Decretum:[7]
Nunc
autem sicut electio summi pontificis
non a cardinalibus tantum, immo eta ab aliis religiosis
clericisb
auctoritate Nicolai papae est facienda, sicc
episcoporum electiod
non a canonicis tantum, sete ab aliis religiosis clericis, sicut in generalif synodog Innocentii pape Romeh habita constitutum est.i
a et] etiam PFdBcAa BiFsMeMlMzPd b
uiris uel clericis BiPd c sic] ita
et PFdBcAa BiFsMeMzPd, ita Ml d lectio
Biac
e set] set etiam PBcAa BiFsMeMlMzPd set etiamac,
immo etiampc Fd f gnālaac, gnālaspc Fd g studio add. ante synodo
Biac
g Roma Me hconstitutum est] add. ait enim: Obeuntibus sane episcopis . . . add. Aa in textu, add. Bc in marg.
In translation:
Now, however, just as the
election of the supreme pontiff is not made only by the cardinals but by other
religious clerics, as was established by Pope Nicholas II’s authority, so too
not only canons of the cathedral chapter but also other religious clergy
participate in the election of bishops as was established in the general synod
of Pope Innocent held in Rome.
Gratian’s
comment is the last datable text in the pre-Vulgate manuscripts. Pope Innocent II was the bishop of Rome from
1130 to 1143. If one is convinced, as
Winroth and others are, that this text can refer only to c.28 of the Second
Lateran Council then one is faced with an almost intractable problem.[8] In the pre-Vulgate manuscripts this text is
the only one that can
be dated after ca. 1125. That fact, if
true, would raise the question what was Gratian doing between ca. 1125 and
1139; or to put the question differently, why would Gratian have compiled a
collection of canon law in the late 1130s that ignored all the conciliar
legislation and papal decretals after ca. 1125; or to add further complexity,
why would Gratian add this reference in 1139 to a recent council and not add
the text of the canon; or even more puzzling, why did he not refer to other
canons of that singularly important council in his pre-Vulgate Decretum(s)?
In
a recent article Atria Larson has attempted to provide a possible answer to some
of those questions by arguing that since late eleventh- and early
twelfth-century councils generally, and Innocent II’s councils in particular,
repeated canons of previous councils almost word for word, one might explore
the possibility that Innocent held a council in Rome before 1139 and that is
the council to which Gratian referred.[9] Larson went on to present evidence that
Innocent did hold a council in Rome in 1133 and that council might be the one
that Gratian cited. Since the canons of
this council are not preserved, her conjecture cannot be considered conclusive
evidence. Nonetheless, if correct, it
would explain what Gratian was doing in the 1120s and early 1130s: teaching
canon law in Bologna and working on his textbook. He did not finish the pre-Vulgate Decretum ca. 1140 but rather ca.
1133.
Three of the pre-Vulgate manuscripts added
the text and a rubric to c.28. The
Florence and Barcelona manuscripts placed it in the margins of their main texts.
Florence also had it in the supplementary appendix at the back of the
manuscript. It is striking and important
that the marginal and supplemental texts of the canon in Florence are clearly
from two different textual traditions and must have been added at different
times. The Admont manuscript
incorporated it into the body of Gratian’s text:[10]
Sicut in generali sinodo Innocentii papae Romae habita constitutum est. Ait enim:
Absque religiosorum uirorum consilio
canonici maioris ecclesie episcopum non eligant.a Obeuntibusb sane episcopis quoniamc
ultra tresd menses uacare ecclesiame sanctorum patrum
prohibent sanctionesf sub anathemateg interdicimus, nech canonici de sede episcopalii
ab electione episcoporum excludant religiosos uiros, set eorum consilio honesta
et idonea personaj in episcopum eligatur.k Quod sil exclusism
religiosis electio facta fueritn, quod absque eorum consensuo
et coniuentiap factum fuerit, irritum habeaturq et
uacuum.
Collated: Fdin marg. Fdin
suppl. AaBcin marg.BiCdFsMeMzPdPfSa
a Absque — non eligant Fdin suppl.BcCdBiMeMzPdPfSa, om. Fd in marg. Aa b
Abeuntibus Fdac,
in suppl.BcMzpcPf cqūo
Aa d tres
om. Aaac, add.
super lin. iii. Aapc e ecclesias
COGD2 f prohibent patrum sanctiones tr.
COGD2 anathematis uinculo CdFsMzPd h
ne Aapc, ne Fdin
suppl.BiCdFsMeMzPdPfSa COGD2 i
episcoporum Fdin
suppl. jhonestam
et idoneam personam Fdin suppl.CdMeMlMz k eligant
Fdin suppl.BcCdMeMlMz l si om. Aaac m
exclusis] eisdem add. COGD2 nfacta fuerit]
fuerit celebrata COGD2, legi non potest Fd in marg., fuerit
Fs, fuerit facta tr. Pf oconsensu
eorum tr. Mz p coniuentia Aa : continentia Fd in marg.,
covenienti Saac,
conuenientia Fdin
suppl.BcBiCdFsMeMlMzPfSapc COGD2, conniuentia Pd, var. in apparatu COGD2
q habeant Fs
In translation:[11]
Indeed he <Innocent>
says: Without the counsel of religious men the
canons of the major church may not elect a bishop. Since the decrees of the holy fathers
prohibit a church to be left vacant for more than three months, we forbid that under
anathema and also that the canons of the episcopal see may not exclude
religious men from the election of bishops.
Rather with their counsel may an honest and worthy person be elected bishop. But if an
election is carried out that excludes those religious men, because it was made
without their consent and agreement, the election shall be held to be invalid
and vacated.
Although
the manuscript tradition of the Second Lateran Council is rich, there has not yet
been a critical edition of the canons. The
text in Aa, Bc and Fd, in other words, cannot provide a proof of its origin by
comparing it to any current printed edition.
Nonetheless, one significant variant in this canon gives pause. Gratian’s text has “facta
fuerit” whereas all twenty manuscripts containing
this canon from Lateran II that Martin Brett has collated have the reading “fuerit celebrata.” “Celebrare” is the
verb that one would expect in a papal conciliar decree. The other textual evidence is the word
“consensus” in the tradition of Gratian manuscripts instead of “assensus,” which is juridically
more precise. These two pieces of
textual evidence are not, however, conclusive proof that Gratian’s source for
this text was not the Lateran II decrees, but it does introduce a modicum of
doubt.[12]
What one may more confidently say is that the text in the three
pre-Vulgate manuscripts provides further evidence that Gratian “tweaked” his pre-Vulgate
Decretum after it began to circulate. Of the three pre-Vulgate manuscripts, Florence,
Barcelona, and Admont, in which the text of Obeuntibus is present, in Florence
and Barcelona it is a marginal addition.
In Admont, however, it is inserted into the body of the Decretum. That does not prove that the inserted text is
from Lateran II or from an earlier council, but it does lead one to the
conclusion that the canons added later to the Vulgate Decretum circulated in stages and were not received at other
centers for the study of law at one time.
The evidence for that last statement is contained in the texts, margins
and appendices of pre-Vulgate manuscripts.
They provide textual evidence that the Vulgate canons were not copied
into pre-Vulgate manuscripts from complete Vulgate texts.[13]
There is further evidence in the pre-Vulgate manuscripts
that Gratian probably never conceived of his work as a definitively finished product. In the Paris (P), Florence (Fd) and the Barcelona (Bc) manuscripts Distinctions 100 and 101 are missing and
the canons of D.99 after c.1.[14] In Fd
additional texts are inserted by a later hand. However, the scribe of Fd’s main text may have known more Distinctions were
coming because he ended D.99 c.1 with the notation Ҥ d.c.
(Distinction 100).” The scribe of Admont (Aa) included pre-Vulgate Distinctions
100-101 in the main text. Barcelona
added them on an inserted folia. The
only conclusion that can be drawn from this textual evidence is that these
manuscripts reflect slightly different stages of a pre-Vulgate text that circulated
over a wide geographical area. There was
a pre-Vulgate Decretum circulating with
99 Distinctions and 36 Causae. This version reached Northern France (P) and
the Iberian peninsula (Bc). Scribes
in Italy learned of two new Distinctions (Fd),
left space for them with a notation and added them later. In Bc
the revisions of the text were handled differently. Originally, the text omitted D.100-101
completely. A folio was inserted into
the manuscript at a later time, and D.100-101 of the Vulgate text were included
in their entirety.[15] The Admont scribe had an expanded pre-Vulgate
Decretum at hand and
incorporated parts of D.100-101 into
the text. (Aa fol. 92v-93r). The scribe, however, excluded most of the Vulgate
text.[16]
How much time would have elapsed for these different stages
of the text to have circulated to Northern and Western Europe? Again, the evidence does not provide us with
any clues beyond the text itself. One
may say, however, that the geographical spread of the manuscripts alone would
dictate that the time for these texts to circulate could not have been less
than a few years before they reached the Northern France and the Iberian peninsula. What was
Gratian doing during those years? I
would say: teaching and expanding his text in Bologna.
More can be said about the stages
evident in pre-Vulgate texts. Melodie
Harris Eichbauer has done a careful study of the canons that were added to the margins
and to appendices in the Florence and Admont manuscripts and to the margins of
Barcelona.[17] Winroth had concluded that these canons must
have been taken from Vulgate exemplars of Gratian’s text.[18] I was puzzled from the beginning why a
jurist, institution, or scribe would go to the trouble of creating an updated
text that would have been so difficult to use.
Eichbauer’s study revealed that
the appendices could not have been drawn from a Vulgate text. The proof is in the numbers and in the fact
that they were added by different scribes at different times. As it is, neither Admont nor Florence have
all the canons that Gratian added when he compiled his Vulgate text.[19]
The numbers are not small: Admont omits
87 canons and Florence 62 from the Vulgate.[20] Significantly, the omitted canons are
different in each manuscript. If one
puts the numbers a little differently, between the two manuscripts ca. 117
canons are missing from the Vulgate text.
In percentage, ca. 8% of the Vulgate’s canons are not included in the
margins or the appendices of these two manuscripts. These numerous omissions could not be
attributed to sloppy, careless scribes.
There are just too many missing canons. These numbers are the evidence for Eichbauer’s
conclusion that the canons added to the pre-Vulgate texts in Paris, Florence,
Barcelona and Admont must have been done in stages and over a period of time. Her evidence also points to Gratian’s having
circulated a large bulk of the additions in one fell swoop but then having updated
these additions afterwards.
There is one last powerful piece of evidence that militates
against pushing the date of the Vulgate Decretum
too far in the 1140’s: the Second Lateran canons. Eichbauer’s research has convinced me that Gratian
did not add the canons of the Second Lateran Council in a flurry of last minute
additions as scholars have previously believed. Gérard Fransen more than fifty
years ago had argued that the Second Lateran’s canons were hasty and last
minute additions to the Decretum. At first glance some of them, but not all, seem
as if they were added without carefully integrating them into the flow of Gratian’s
arguments. In his study of the rubrics or summaries of
the canons, Titus Lenherr found textual evidence that supported Fransen’s conjecture.[21] He charted the textual variants in the
summaries and saw that they varied more frequently than was usual in Decretum manuscripts.
The pre-Vulgate manuscripts have confirmed that the canons
were added only to the later stages of Gratian’s text. However, they were not added at the last
minute. Almost all of the canons attributed to Lateran II are in the margins or
the appendices of the Florence and Admont manuscripts. The Florence manuscript, which is the
earliest of the four pre-Vulgate manuscripts discovered by Winroth, omitted two
canons attributed to Pope Innocent II completely.[22] One of those canons is also not to be found
in Admont. The remaining canons were
added to the appendices or to the margins of the pre-Vulgate manuscripts. One canon that was added to the appendix and
the margin of Florence came from two different textual traditions, i.e. the
text in the margin is different from the text in the supplement.[23] This is good evidence that the canons
attributed to Lateran II were not added to the pre-Vulgate manuscripts at one
time. Consequently, they cannot be texts
that Gratian added in a final, rushed effort to complete the Vulgate as Lenherr
has argued.
An even larger question looms over Innocent II’s canons. Are they all, in fact, canons from Lateran
II? In the Vulgate Decretum modern scholars, but not Gratian, have attributed 15
canons (out of 30 promulgated by Lateran II).
Their attributions are problematic for several reasons. Canon
28 (D.63 c.35) was from the beginning identified as a canon promulgated by
Innocent II in Rome but not as having been promulgated in the Lateran. Without an explicit attribution, as Atria
Larson has argued, one cannot be absolutely sure it belonged to the council of
1139. I have already demonstrated above
that the text of Gratian’s Canon 28 has significant variants not in the
manuscripts of the Lateran II’s canon 28 outside the tradition of Gratian’s Decretum.
Another canon in the Vulgate Decretum combined canons 18, 19,
and 20 of the Second Lateran Council (C.23 q.8 c.32) and is identified only as having been taken
from “a universal council under Innocent II,” which cannot be attributed to
Lateran II with any certainty.[24] As Larson has demonstrated in detail the
adjective “universalis” when attached to synod or council did not mean
automatically what we mean today by an ecumenical council. A “concilium” called by the pope and having
participants of different nationalities could be termed “universale.”[25] All the other canons that scholars have
attributed to the Second Lateran Council have the inscription of “Innocentius
II” and nothing more. Their inscriptions
bear no indication that they are conciliar canons promulgated at the Lateran II
or at any other council. To be
sure, their texts are very close to the canons that we have accepted as products
of the Second Lateran. But many of them
differ significantly from the texts of Lateran II. The common repetition of wording that is
characteristic of conciliar canons in this era and the lack of an explicit
inscription to Lateran II in all the canons makes an attribution to the council
of 1139 problematic. As Martin Brett has
explained to me “there can be no argument about the extremely close resemblance
between most of the canons attributed to Innocent's councils at Clermont,
Reims, Pisa and the Lateran,” which can make attributions to a particular
council difficult.[26] At the very least we should be cautious,
therefore, about attributing some or all of these canons to the Second Lateran
Council. If they are not Lateran II canons
but drawn from other councils over which Innocent II presided during his
pontificate, it would resolve a number of dating issues that have plagued the
study of Gratian’s teaching career and his life. However, much more work has to be done on this
problem before we could come to a more firm conclusion — if a firm conclusion will
be possible. A preliminary edition of
the canons attributed to Innocent II in the early Gratian manuscripts must be
constructed from the best Vulgate manuscripts and then the results compared to
Martin Brett’s edition. This task is
already well underway.
There is an intriguing rubric to in a very early Italian
Vulgate manuscript, Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana Plut. 1 sin. 1 that
casts doubt on one text’s having been taken directly from a text of Lateran
II. The rubric to C.17 q.4 c.17 that
might be an edited version of Lateran II’s c.15 reads “Item ex libris Innocentii
pape ii.”[27] I have not found another early Vulgate
manuscript with that rubric. Without a
stronger textual tradition I would be reluctant to conjecture what it means. Literally, the text asserts that his canon
can be found in a book of Innocent II’s legislation. It does not attribute the canon to Lateran
II. As I have already made clear,
however, no other rubric to the canons identifies the canons as being from
Lateran II. Did Gratian know a
manuscript with a collection of Innocent’s legislation and took all his
Innocentian canons from it? It is a
tempting hypothesis but for now goes beyond the evidence.
I have postponed a discussion of the St.
Gall Stiftsbibliothek 673 until now. I wanted
to present the evidence for Gratian’s long teaching career in Bologna from the pre-Vulgate
manuscripts of which Gratian’s authorship is not questioned. Scholarly opinion is unanimous that Gratian
compiled the collections preserved in the pre-Vulgate manuscripts that we have
discussed to this point.[28]
If the St. Gall text could be proven to be a version of a
stage that preceded the text of the Admont, Barcelona, Florence, and Paris
manuscripts, there could be little question that Gratian taught in Bologna for
a long time. No scholar questions the
fact that if St. Gall were an abbreviation, it is an abbreviation of pre-Vulgate
Decretum, not the Vulgate text. I have written previously that if an
abbreviator shortened Gratian’s text from those manuscripts he was almost impossibly
clever. He left no undisputable
fingerprints. The very few places where
one may argue about whether he nodded off while doing his cutting are
debatable.
John Noonan and many other scholars have
recognized for a very long time that Gratian’s causae (cases) are wonderful teaching tools and were Gratian’s
stroke of genius.[29]
If it were a version of an UrGratian,
the St. Gall manuscript would be proof that Gratian began to teach using cases
and developed a Socratic case law teaching methodology. He was the Christopher Columbus Langdell of
the twelfth century. There is no
question that his Decretum became a
very popular text because of the causae. Its immediate acceptance as a “liber legalis”
(textbook) that took its place alongside Justinian’s Roman law codification in
the schools all over Europe was not because the first part of the Decretum, the distinctions, offered
exciting and compellingly teachable material.
It was his causae that won
Gratian his unique place in the history of canon law. Before the discovery of the St. Gall
manuscript one could have conjectured that he had begun teaching with the
causae. In this context one cannot be
too surprised that St. Gall exists.
The St. Gall manuscript is not, however,
a pristine UrGratian. From Causa 27 to 36, the text of the
manuscript received significant interpolations and editing by unknown hands, probably
not by Gratian’s. Nonetheless, Causa prima to Causa 23 (causae 24-26
are missing) must have corresponded fairly closely to an UrGratian
(remembering, however, that there is some evidence that stages preceded the St.
Gall text as well).[30] The additions of Roman law authenticae in the margins and glosses
indicate that the manuscript was used in the classroom at a significant law
school (Bologna?) and not one on the periphery.[31]
The authenticae
would not have been known to teachers of canon law outside Italy in the
1130’s. Just as Rolandus, a commentator on the Decretum in the 1150’s, had, it seems,
only used the causae to teach his
students, so too did the early Gratian.[32]
Where was the St. Gall manuscript
produced and used? Scholars who have
examined the illuminated initials have concluded that they were done in Central
or Northeastern Italy in the second half of the twelfth century. The script is certainly older than that. I would date it to the middle of the twelfth
century at the latest. Its provenance is
Italian. The combination of its
carefully prepared script and its elaborate — and quite beautiful —
illuminations is proof that it was the product of a sophisticated scriptorium
in Northern Italy.[33]
Only one piece of evidence seriously
calls into doubt St. Gall’s being derived from an UrGratian.[34] Causa
2 in St. Gall and Causa 1 in all the
other recensions of Gratian’s text dealt with the issue of simony. The case he presented was complicated to say
the least. I will give it in each of the
versions beginning with St. Gall:[35]
A certain man gave his son
to a monastery and, as demanded by the abbot, rendered a payment of ten
pounds. The son was ignorant of this
because of his age. The boy
matured. He quickly became a
priest. The suffragan bishops selected him to
become a fellow bishop on his merits.
Finally, his father interceded
with his consent and prayers to his election and also money gave to a member of
the archbishop's household; he was consecrated
bishop without knowing of his father's consent and of his gifts of money.
As time passed he ordained some clerics for free and others for money. Consequently, he was accused and convicted
<of simony>. He suffered the
judgment that condemned him.
In the
other pre-Vulgate and Vulgate versions presented a more nuanced and detailed
story: [36]
A certain man had a son whom he gave to a very
wealthy monastery. The abbot and the brothers demanded ten pounds to take
his son. His son, because of his age, did not know about the money.
The boy grew and with the passing of time and with a succession of offices, he
came of age and was ordained a priest. Finally, he was elected bishop by
the suffragan bishops because of his talents. His father gave his consent
and prayers to his election and also money to a member of the archbishop's
household; he was consecrated bishop without
knowing of his father's consent and of his gifts of money. In the passing
of time, he ordained several priests for money and to others he gave the
sacerdotal benediction for free. Finally, he was accused and convicted
<of simony> at the archiepiscopal court. He accepted his judgment
of damnation.
A comparison of the two texts makes it difficult
to imagine that the pre-Vulgate text in St. Gall is an abbreviation of the pre-Vulgate
text in the other manuscripts. The pre-Vulgate
hypothetical incorporated specific facts into the case that are left out or
remain ambiguous in St. Gall. The pre-Vulgate’s monastery was wealthy. It practiced simony in spite of its
wealth. After his ordination, the boy
received other clerical offices on his merits, one presumes, and not simoniacally. In contrast, the St.
Gall case suggests that the boy became a priest inappropriately quickly
(convolare = to fly). The description of
the court’s decision in St. Gall (contraria sententia) could be interpreted to
imply that the bishop lived with a decision that was not in accord with his own
views of his actions. In the other pre-Vulgate
hypothetical the bishop accepts his fate.
These differences do not suggest an abbreviator to me. They suggest a reworking by Gratian.
Gratian then listed seven questions that he wished to
consider which are almost the same in all the versions of the
text. Number six was the
question whose text created a problem of interpretation: “Sixth <question> Whether
those who were ordained by him in the past without knowledge of his simony must
be deposed?”[37] There was only one text in the entire corpus
of canon law that could answer that question: two canons that Pope Urban II had
promulgated at the Council of Piacenza in 1095.
To answer Question six, Gratian
presented the two Piacenza canons as one canon in the St. Gall manuscript.[38] The logical place for the canon was in
question six. That is exactly where it
is in the St. Gall manuscript:[39]
If those
, he said, who were ordained by simoniacs but not simoniacally can be proven
that when they were ordained to have not known the <bishops> were
simoniacs, then they will be considered as Catholics in the Church, and we will
sustain those ordinations mercifully, if their laudable lives endorse
them. Who, however, knowingly is
consecrated by simoniacs, rather one would say execrated, we declare that their
consecration is completely invalid.
In the
transition from the St. Gall Decretum
to the manuscripts in Florence, Paris, Barcelona, and Admont, Gratian added 15
canons to Question one between c.90 and c.113.
One of those canons was decretal of Pope Nicholas II in which
the pope distinguished between several types of simoniacal ordinations:
simoniacs ordained simoniacally by simoniacs, simoniacs ordained by
non-simoniacs, and simoniacs ordained by simoniacs but not simoniacally. Nicholas did not, however, cover all the
possible permutations, the most important being the legal issue of
ignorance. Gratian had already applied
the principle of ignorance to marriage law in St. Gall Causa 26 (=29).
As he considered Nicholas’ decretal Gratian must have thought,
“what about the cleric, as in my hypothetical, who was ignorant that the
prelate was simoniacal? Or a cleric as
in my hypothetical who did not know that someone was paying for his
ordination?” He must have also
considered the issue that his raising the question of ignorance in Question one
and not leaving it for Question six disturbed the organization that he had
created for Causa one. In Question one his question had been: “Is it a sin to buy spiritual things?”[40] In spite of whatever reservations he may have
had, Gratian moved Urban’s conciliar canon from Question six to Question one and
placed it after Nicholas’ decretal. As
Gratian remarked in the dictum he
wrote before the canon:[41]
But these clerics <i.e.
Nicholas’ last category> must be understood as being those who are ordained
by simoniacal prelates, whom they did not know were simoniacal. The decretal makes these simoniacs, but not
guilty of a crime, yet < having> an ordination of a simoniac. Concerning these clerics Pope Urban stated
<in his canon>.
Moving a
canon is unique in the textual tradition of the Decretum. Causa one Question one is the only place
in the Decretum in any of its
versions where Gratian moved a text significantly. We may think with some justification that he
could have placed Nicholas’ decretal in question six. Question one was already ungainly long. His moving Urban’s canons did not improve his
argument or the organization of Causa
one. Nevertheless, he moved Urban’s
text. Gratian then reworked his
introductory dictum to Question six
in his later versions of the Decretum to read:
[42]
What indeed ought to be
done concerning those who unknowing are ordained by simoniacs, which is asked
in the sixth question, is
found above in the chapter of Urban that begins: “Si qui
a simoniacis non simoniace ordinati sunt .”
Previously
in the St. Gall manuscript Gratian had introduced the Piacenza canons with a dictum, and it is this dictum that has created problems of
interpretation and the conviction of some that St. Gall is an abbreviation:[43]
Quid autem de his fieri debeat qui ignoranter a symoniacis ordinati sunt,
quod quidem sexto loco quesitum est supra in capitulo Urbani dictum est quod,
quia forte ibi quantum ad negotium pertinebat integre poni non fuit
necessarium, in presenti ad evidentiam in medium adducamus.
In translation:
What moreover ought to be
done with those clerics who unknowingly are ordained by simoniacs, which is
asked in the sixth question,
<can be found> in the chapter of Urban that has been cited
above, but indeed, because it was not necessary to place the entire text there
as far as it pertained to the issue, I bring it forward here.
Winroth
and others have interpreted Gratian’s dictum at the beginning of Question six
as being proof of St. Gall’s being an abbreviation.[44] They assume that the abbreviator fell
asleep and forgot that he had omitted Pope Nicholas’ canon and also that he had
eliminated Urban’s canons immediately after Nicholas’. With that assumption, Winroth is quite right
that the reference is puzzling and, if he had interpreted the passage
correctly, could be a solid proof that St. Gall is an abbreviation. However, the compiler of the St. Gall text
was quite wide awake. What Winroth
overlooked was that Gratian had, in fact, cited Urban’s canon “supra” in Question
four of St. Gall and in all the subsequent versions of the Decretum. That is the place
Gratian referred to in his dictum
before Question six in St. Gall. He was
not citing a now non-existent text in the first question. He alerted his readers that he could have put
the Urban’s canon in Question four but did not.
In his dictum in question four
he had written: [45]
Again, if someone is
excused from having been ordained unknowingly by a simoniac, just as he can be
excused who is ordained simoniacally but unknowingly.
In the
later versions of the Decretum Gratian
clarified that the dictum referred to
Urban’s canon that was now placed in Question one with an inserted added phrase :[46]
Again, if someone is
excused from having been ordained unknowingly by a simoniac, as seen above in
Urban’s canon <in q.1 c.108>, he can also be excused who is ordained
simoniacally but
unknowingly.
Once
Gratian’s dictum before Question six in the St. Gall manuscript is understood
to refer to his dictum in Question four, the use of this passage as being a
proof that St. Gall is an abbreviation cannot be sustained. An abbreviator did not nod; Gratian was practicing a methodology
he used in all the versions of his Decretum:
referring to canons in other parts of his work with their first few words or as
here with a short reference to a canon’s content.
The other arguments for and against St.
Gall’s being an abbreviation rest upon small textual variants that cannot come
close to being a full proof. A number of
scholars, including me, have made textual arguments taken from Gratian’s dicta in St. Gall. Some are more persuasive than others. None of them makes a full proof for either opinion.[47] As I
have stated above, I believe that the textual anomalies in St. Gall in Causae 27-36 of Gratian’s text cannot be
used as evidence of an abbreviation because I believe the text is a redaction
with interpolations.[48] A significant piece of evidence for my
conviction about St. Gall’s being an early pre-Vulgate version of Gratian’s Decretum and not an abbreviation are the four authenticae that are added to the
margins of the manuscript. Two of them
Gratian included into the text of the Decretum
in later recensions. Two of them he did
not. Gratian did not add them; someone
else did. Whoever added these authenticae to the margins of St. Gall
knew Roman law very well and was using the manuscript to teach canon law in a
center where others were teaching Roman law.
Such a person, I have argued, would not have been teaching with an
abbreviation.[49]
Anders Winroth noticed, as many other
scholars have, that Gratian cited the Bible frequently in his dicta.
He chose canons with many biblical citations as well. Winroth drew attention to the fact that
Gratian cited the Pseudo-Paul Pastoral Epistles to Timothy and Titus when he
analyzed clerical discipline in Distinctions 25-49. That Gratian would have turned to these
epistles was inevitable. Any medieval
author who discussed clerical behavior and norms of rectitude would have thought
immediately of the Pastoral Epistles. The
canons Gratian compiled for those distinctions cited them many times more than
Gratian did. Winroth concludes his
discussion about Gratian’s use of the Pastoral Epistles with the statement:[50]
Gratian’s use of St. Paul
for his organization is, incidentally, a well-nigh irrefutable argument against
the idea that the text of the Decretum known from the infamous manuscript St.
Gall, Stiftsbibliothek 673 would be the earliest version of Gratian’s work . . . This manuscript makes a hash of that
organization, cutting most references to the Epistle to Timothy, while allowing
a few to stand, orphaned and barely intelligible.
Like
black truffles, rrefutable arguments are hard to find
in scholarly debates. There are two very
good reasons for thinking that Winroth’s conclusions can be questioned. The first objection is that the
Pseudo-Pauline epistles do not provide an “organization” or an “organizing
principle” for Gratian’s distinctions in the ordinary sense of those terms. He does not follow the epistles exactly as
they discussed clerical discipline line by line or chapter by chapter. He skips around in the epistles, quoting them
and taking whichever ideas he found useful for the issues he was discussing. He also cited other texts in the Pauline
epistles in his analysis of clerical rectitude. If there is no organization or
organizing principle in his use of the Pastoral Epistles, it cannot be
violated.
The second objection, and much more
weighty, is that comparing the Distinctions to Causa prima in St. Gall is to compare two different literary genres. In Causa
prima Gratian created a hypothetical, asked a series of questions, and
presented texts that pertained to his case. He presented an hypothetical in which a
student had a concubine, a subdeacon had a wife, and after this
sorry history became a priest and then a bishop. In St. Gall Gratian did not focus on “what
are the virtues a cleric should have?” In
the Distinctions, he did. When he
refashioned that material, the wingspan of his subject matter was much wider. In Causa
prima of St. Gall Gratian explored clerical sexual norms, and how they
might affect a prelate’s status; in the later distinctions that grew out of Causa prima he dealt with a much broader
set of issues touching on clerical discipline and what characteristics a good
cleric should possess. The difference is
not trivial. It is an entirely different
project. To compare the two is to
compare tuber melanosporum (black truffles) to agaricus bisporus (button
mushrooms). To combine the two is not
good gastronomy or scholarly methodology. Timothy and Titus have not much to say about
clerical sexual behavior covered in Causa
prima of St. Gall; they have a lot to say about the topics covered in the
Distinctions.
Finally, Winroth’s conclusion sidesteps another question
about St. Gall that I raised ten years ago; if St. Gall is an abbreviation, why
did the abbreviator ignore the Tractatus
de legibus D. 1-20 and Distinctions 80-101?
Or why did the abbreviator cut out Causae
24-26 and 28? If the abbreviator
went to the trouble of transforming the Distinctions 27-79 into Causa prima,
and if he was using the text to teach, chopping out the Tractatus de legibus is strange. A good reason for deleting the causae is also difficult to find. It is an old principle of humanistic
scholarship that the easiest and simplest explanation for textual changes is
usually the most compelling. To my mind,
when Gratian decided that the issue of clerical marriage and sexual behavior had
been resolved by conciliar legislation of Lateran I, and and
Innocent II’s councils, especially Pisa in 1135, he set to work dismantling Causa prima.[51] He quite logically put together his
distinctions on clerical discipline before his first Causa.[52] To imagine an abbreviator taking the
Distinctions between 27 and 79, omitting half the canons, and creating a
coherent causa is to my mind not only
a much difficilior task, but
also raises the question why did he do it?
If one argues that the abbreviator created Causa prima, one ought
to give reasons why he thought there was a need for that Causa. Was there any longer a need for a causa
with the issues of Causa prima?
Gratian certainly did not think so when he finished the Vulgate Decretum.
No causa of the Vulgate focuses
on the problems Gratian broached in Causa prima.
In the end, what can we conclude
from the manuscript evidence that remains from the early versions of Gratian’s Decretum? He taught many years in Bologna and had many
students. Some of them began to gloss
and comment on his magnum opus.[53] The
glossators began their work very early.
The primitive set of glosses contained in all the early manuscripts of
the Decretum, pre-Vulgate and Vulgate, with its citations to Burchard of
Worms’ Decretum and the Lombarda are undoubtedly of Italian
origin.[54] Nonetheless, they circulated in the margins
of Gratian’s text following it wherever it went.
John T. Noonan wrote his
conclusion without the benefit of what we know today about Master Gratian. It is still a pretty good biographical summary:
Gratian “revealed himself to be a teacher with theological knowledge and
interests and a lawyer's point of view. He worked in Bologna in the 1130s and
1140s.”[55] I would tweak his conclusion only with “also the
1120s.” In my reading of the causae
and thinking about the changes he made in the different versions of his book, I
have been impressed by how Gratian developed and expanded his analysis of the
problems posed by the hypotheticals he created.
One could conclude, as I have, that he could not have done that work and
thought through so many different legal issues in a few years of teaching.
“Horror
vacui” is a metaphor that that applies to almost any field of study. If we do not know what we wish we could know,
we search for evidence to fill in the void of our ignorance. Noonan proved quite persuasively that the
“horror vacui” created a rich tapestry of illusory knowledge about Gratian during
the twelfth and thirteen centuries.
Twenty-first-century scholars have taken up the search to know more
about Gratian. It is a worthy
quest. Anders Winroth has endorsed two medieval
conjectures that have been recently put forward by other scholars: that Gratian
was a bishop of Chiusi and that he participated in a Venetian court case in 1143. Both of these conjectures would mean that
Gratian lived until ca. 1145. Winroth
has done more to revive and invigorate the study of Gratian’s Decretum
than anyone else in the last 200 years.
Not surprisingly he cares about Gratian and thinks often about this man
who did so much to launch European jurisprudence. Although I may not agree with all of his
conclusions or conjectures about Gratian, I must emphasize that Winroth’s work has
opened new vistas and perspectives for thinking about Gratian the teacher, the
jurist, and the man. A few disagreements
do not undermine or diminish his achievement.
Winroth
has been convinced by an argument first advanced by Francesco Reali that
Gratian became the bishop of Chiusi at the end of his life. Medieval authors also thought Gratian had been
the bishop of Chiusi.[56] Reali noticed that a necrology of the Cathedral
Chapter of Siena contained a notice that a Gratian from Chiusi who was also a
bishop had died sometime in the middle of the twelfth century.[57] Reali made the assumption that this Gratian
was not only from Chiusi but had been bishop of Chiusi. Winroth has
embraced Reali’s discovery and used it as evidence of
Gratian’s fate in the 1140s. There is,
in fact, as Noonan had already conceded, very early evidence for Gratian’s
having been a bishop. Rudolf Weigand
printed an introductory gloss or prologue that precedes eight Decretum
manuscripts.[58] In three of them, the text states that
Gratian divided the Decretum into two parts, i.e. that the last part on
sacraments, De consecratione, was not yet part of the Decretum;
the other five manuscripts change the two parts to three.[59]
All five manuscripts that contain “three
parts” are later copies of the Decretum.
The reading of the three manuscript witnesses for
this passage is a certain evidence that the gloss was written very shortly
after the Vulgate version of the Decretum left Gratian’s desk in Bologna
without the third part, De consecratione.[60]
The scribe of possibly the oldest of
these three manuscripts, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France lat. 3884-I,
entered the text on the folio preceding the beginning of the Decretum.[61] We cannot know with certainty whether this
short prologue was an attempt to introduce the Decretum to readers or an introduction to the primitive set of
glosses in the margins of the manuscript or both:[62]
In the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ.
The first part of the
Decretum begins with a discussion of written and non-written law. It treats the authority of law, the election
of clerics and their dispensation.
The Concord of discordant canons. In the beginning a treatment of the ius of
constitutions and of nature.[63]
The Concord of Discordant
Canons which Bishop Gratian organized into two parts. The first part contains 101 Distinctions,
although Distinction 49 (48) seems incomplete.
The second part contains
36 causae and you must note that several canons
are edited[64] and
are arranged in various causae so that if indeed you wish to see the entire
canon, <you can find it> in another place; you may not presume to fill
them in or to continue as if this was the the result
of scribal error. Similarly even when
you find other translations
of Greek councils, you should consider those reliable which are inserted into this
work. You should not presume to mix
similar chapters or change a row of translations.
The text
is not without its intriguing ambiguities.
The first line is a standard introduction to a medieval works, but not,
as far as I know, to Gratian. Weigand
did not include this line of text in his edition. If it does occur in the other manuscripts,
that would be a stronger piece of evidence that it is part of a prologue introducing
the glosses, not to Gratian’s text. The
second sentence is a summary of the subject matter of distinctions 1-101. That too might be part of the prologue to the glosses. The Italicized text is taken from a different
tradition that one finds at the beginning of quite a few twelfth-century
Gratian manuscripts. The scribe must
have had two different texts in front of him and combined them. The remainder, that I have taken from the
Paris manuscript and which Weigand calls the early version, called the readers’
attention to three textual matters. The
first is that Distinction 49 (or 48) is not complete. The second is a warning that the reader
should not be concerned if other texts, presumably in other collections, were
different. Gratian had edited them to
suit his purpose. Finally, the Greek
councils that Gratian inserted into the Decretum
should be respected. Gratian, he
implied, made good choices.
I lean towards thinking the text is a
prologue to the primitive and sparse but significant glosses in Paris, BNF
3884-I and II. Weigand had studied
manuscripts with these glosses for years and called them part of the “First
Composition” of glosses when he worked out his categorization of early glosses
to Gratian.[65] He did not mention in his work that this
layer of glosses, which is found in almost all the early glossed Gratian
manuscripts, including the pre-Vulgate Barcelona and Admont manuscripts,
included many references to canons in Burchard of Worms’ Decretum and in the Lombarda.[66] No other pre-Gratian canonical collection
received as much attention from the early canonists in the margins of Decretum manuscripts as Burchard of
Worms’ Decretum. Their function has not yet been studied. Were they to supplement, support, or
contradict Gratian’s choices of sources?
Some were later incorporated into the Vulgate Decretum as “paleae.” The
citations to Burchard disappear from the margins after ca. 1200. The citations to Lombard law are not as
frequent.[67] Citations of the Lombarda are not common in Italian Roman law manuscripts and have
not been noticed before in canonistic texts.[68] Weigand had already concluded that the “First
Composition” was very early, not later than 1150, perhaps earlier. Its presence is a good test for the date of a
manuscript. No canonist would have
needed or wanted these glosses after ca.1150.
This layer of glosses also can provide evidence of its origins:
Italy. Although Paris, BNF 3884-I and II
are written and illuminated in Northern France, it is difficult to think of many
reasons why a Northern French jurist would be interested in Lombard law. These allegations to the Lombarda would have been of interest and use to canonists in
Northern and Southern Italy and make it likely that the First Composition had
its origins in the Italian schools.[69] The presence of a version of this gloss that
graces the margins of the Barcelona and Admont manuscripts is good evidence
that the pre-Vulgate Decretum
circulated long enough for someone to have composed a gloss for it. If the pre-Vulgate manuscripts had a very
short shelf life, no one would have bothered.
There is one more puzzle in Paris, BNF
lat. 3884-I. Carlos Larrainzar discovered
that the front flyleaf was a folio from a pre-Vulgate version of Gratian’s Decretum.[70]
Jacqueline Rambaud had long been convinced of the manuscript’s significance,
and Larrainzar’s discovery raises intriguing if unanswerable questions. The manuscript was produced in an important
center. No expense was spared on its
production. The text was divided into
two volumes and provided with magnificent illuminations. One might presume that when the Vulgate text
arrived, the owners of the pre-Vulgate text decided to trash their old text and
use the manuscript(s) for more mundane purposes, like flyleaves. If one could localize this manuscript and
trace other manuscripts produced at the center, one might find more flyleaves
of pre-Vulgate Gratians. One might guess
that Paris, BNF 3884-I was produced in a major center in Northern Europe for
the study of canon law and that the center had close ties to Bologna. Art historians have connected its
illuminations to Paris or perhaps Sens.
An important center in Paris would make sense.
What does this information mean for
Gratian’s biography? First, the glosses
in Barcelona, Admont, Paris, BNF 3884 I and II and
other manuscripts were not written in Northern Europe but in Italy. This very early Italian glossator(s) of
Gratian’s text who was writing close to 1140 thought that Gratian was a
bishop. For obvious reasons he would
have been in a position to know. The Decretum in its earlier forms was an
immediate success all over Christian Europe. The
oldest three manuscripts of the eight that contained the “prologue” discussed
above identify Gratian as the compiler.
Other manuscripts do as well.[71] It is not accurate to say that Gratian was
unknown or that the glossators did not mention his name. As Noonan illustrated in great detail,
twelfth-century authors thought they knew many details about him.[72]
But was he bishop of Chiusi as Reali and
now Winroth would like to believe?[73]
The passage about Gratian in the Siena
necrology was written after an entry but on the same line as a notice of a
certain Anslem. Anselm’s death is not
dated. It reads: “Obit Anselmus
subdiaconus et canonicus Sancti Martini Lucensis.” At the end of Anselm’s entry a later scribe
added: “et Gratianus Clusinus episcopus.”
Reali and Winroth date both
hands to the twelfth-century, and I think they are right.[74] Nonetheless, there are problems with their
attribution. If one adheres to the rules
of Latin syntax, the text reads: “Gratian of Chiusi, bishop.” “Clusinus” cannot normally be applied to
“Gratianus” and “episcopus” at the same time.
If one can assume the scribe knew his Latin well, one can interpret the
text as stating that Gratian from Chiusi was a bishop. Winroth asserts that it is Magister Gratian
because the name is not common.[75] That is not the case. He overlooked the fact that in the same
necrology that has a modest number of names, there is another Gratian who is
memorialized.[76]
The final problem with this entry in the Sienese necrology is
that if this is the Gratian who compiled one of the most famous textbooks of
the twelfth century and who taught canon law at Bologna for a long time, can we
believe that he would have been given such a modest entry? It is much more modest than Anselm’s and many
others in the necrology. Would the
Sienese scribe have given him no title, no descriptive adjectives, and no clues
that he was a person of European wide fame?
In the end, after reviewing the evidence, I think John T. Noonan would
have concluded that yes, Gratian was probably a bishop. When was he bishop? Difficult to say. Was he the bishop of Chiusi? The evidence, I think he would say, is
inconclusive.
Another Gratian appears in a Venetian court case that was held in 1143. The case concerned tithes, a subject on which Master Gratian had more than a little expertise. The case has been in print for several centuries. Noonan thought it possible that this Gratian could be Master Gratian, but he thought it was only possible, “even plausible,” but not certain. Recently, Gundula Grebner uncovered more evidence that would confirm Gratian’s presence in a Venetian courtroom and change Noonan’ plausible to certain.[77]
Winroth accepts Grebner’s argument. The issues of the case are only sparsely
given, except that it concerned monks holding the rights to tithes. Grebner points out that Gratian dealt with
that issue in his Decretum at C.16
q.7. The judicial sentence was rendered
with the concurrence of “consilio Patriarce Aquilejensis et episcopi
Ferrariensis et magistri Walfredi et Graciani et Moysis et aliorum prudentum” (with
the counsel of the Patriarch of Aquilea, the bishop of Ferrara, Master Walfredus,
Gratian, Moses, and other prudent men).[78] Again, the question: can this be Master Gratian, the Father of
Canon Law, the compiler, by this time, of a famous book? The hesitations are some of the same as they
were for the necrology in Siena.
Walfredus, the Roman lawyer, is given the title “magister.” Gratian is not. Gratian would have been in 1143 at the end of
his life, having taught canon law at Bologna for almost ca. 25 years. Would he not have received at least some
recognition of his contributions to Bolognese legal culture? I think so.
Furthermore, there is another Gratian whom Noonan, Grebner, and Winroth
did not know in the Venetian court records who participated in a case in 1150.[79] In spite of having a cognomen in 1150, he may
be the same Gratian who heard the 1143 proceedings — or another Gratian. In any case as in 1143 he heard the case with
a master but is not given that title. It
is also another piece of evidence that every Gratian is not Gratian.
The man in Venice is someone who has, perhaps, training in
canon law, but he is very likely not the Father of Canon Law. Noonan is right: after you strip away the myth and dubious
evidence, Gratian is a shadowy figure. I
think that Noonan would agree that Gratian was probably a bishop — but where
and more importantly when? Was he a
bishop-elect at the end of his life? He
could not have been a bishop and teaching and compiling his text book while he
was in Bologna.
As we have seen speculation without any or much evidence
has dominated the debate about Gratian for the past ten years. I would like to exercise my right to
speculate about Gratian too. If all my
guesses and uncertainties in this essay about Gratian’s work and life were to
be confirmed as fact, this is the story we might have (remembering that I label
these remarks a conjectural novella):
Gratian began teaching ca. 1125-1130 using a text that looked something
like the St. Gall manuscript. He
expanded his text ca. 1133-1135. He added ca. 1500 canons, including some
canons from Innocent II's conciliar legislation prior to Lateran II. They
derived from Innocent’s other councils or letters. He became bishop of (pick a city). Around 1135 Italian canonists (maybe even
Gratian himself?) provided a primitive set of glosses to his text that
circulated in the earliest manuscripts. He composed a final part of the Decretum on sacraments, De consecratione ca. 1140. This additional text is very
unsophisticated in comparison to the rest of his work and very
old-fashioned: it contains just one dictum and 405 texts. If Gratian compiled it, he could have done it
quickly and without much thought or effort.
Does this story fit the possible facts?
Yes. Is it true? As I hope this
essay suggests, some of these conjectures are more plausible than others. Let’s wait and see whether the scholarly
world of Gratian’s followers reaches a consensus. It may take time.
Gratian would move from the shadows to the brilliant and shadowless
light of day only in the fourteenth century when Dante put him in Paradiso Canto 10, 97-103:
Questi che
m’è a destra più vicino, frate e maestro fummi, ed esso Alberto è di Cologna, e
io Thomas d’Aquino.
Quell'altro
fiammeggiare esce del riso di Grazian, che l'uno e l'altro foro aiutò sì che
piace in paradiso.
Those who are to my right were my
brother and master, Albert from Cologne and I Thomas Aquinas.
That other person with the light shining
from his smile, is Gratian, whose contributions to the secular and the
ecclesiastical courts has pleased Paradise.[80]
Dante knew nothing about Gratian’s life. He did
know that Gratian composed a book known to every educated person in Europe. He
knew it was a book that every student of law studied and that it influenced the
development of ecclesiastical and secular jurisprudence. Dante imagined that Gratian
sat in heaven with Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas at his side. He may have
also known that Albertus and Thomas both used Gratian’s Decretum in
their great summae. Do we have to know more
about Gratian than Dante knew? Maybe not.