The Canons of the Third Lateran Council of 1179
The Canons of the Third Lateran Council of 1179
Alexander III's 1179 Lateran Council, was, for medieval contemporaries, the first of the great papal councils of the central Middle Ages. Gathered to demonstrate the renewed unity of the Latin Church, it brought together hundreds of bishops and other ecclesiastical dignitaries to discuss and debate the laws and problems that faced that church. In this evaluation of the 1179 conciliar decrees, Danica Summerlin demonstrates how these decrees, often characterised as widespread and effective ecclesiastical legislation, emerged from local disputes which were then subjected to a period of sifting and gradual integration into the local and scholarly consciousness, in exactly the same way as other contemporary legal texts. Rather than papal mandates that were automatically observed as a result of their inherent papal authority, therefore, Summerlin reveals how conciliar decrees should be viewed as representative of contemporary discussions between the papacy, their representatives and local bishops, clerics, and scholars.
- Offers the first comprehensive evaluation of manuscripts from the 1179 conciliar decrees
- Uses medieval canon law to examine twelfth-century papal government in an accessible way
- Combines legal and church history to offer a deeper insight into the medieval papacy
Reviews & endorsements
'Undergraduate and graduate students interested in the impact of canon law should profit greatly from this work, as should those interested in dialogues between sacred and secular, theology and canon law, and the papacy and regional churches.' Jessalynn Lea Bird, Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies
'Summerlin uses manuscript evidence intelligently, shining a strong scholarly torch on dark places in the thickets of textual and manuscript data provided by earlier scholars in highly technical studies. She is at home in the major scholarly languages, notably German, so crucial in this field. Her laborious and skilful work makes for a dense text, but there are clear conclusions to each chapter. Her findings are striking and, to this reviewer, convincing.' David d'Avray, Journal Of Ecclesiastical History
Product details
November 2019Hardback
9781107145825
310 pages
235 × 158 × 23 mm
0.59kg
Available
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Table of Contents
- Introduction
- 1. Historical survey
- 2. Disputes, decretals, and the 1179 conciliar canons
- 3. The 1179 canons and the schools
- 4. The dissemination of the 1179 canons
- 5. Use of the canons, ca. 1179–ca. 1191
- Conclusions
- Appendix 1. Manuscript listing of the 1179 canons.
