| Abstract | Paper -a:
Modern scholars have often expressed surprise that Gratian would incorporate a treatise on penance (the De penitentia) into Causa 33 of the Decretum. His choice seems strange because, aside from the De penitentia, all the other sections of Causae 27-36 deal with questions related to marriage. Through an examination of the case statement and other questions in Causa 33, this paper will explore some possible motivations for Gratian's design decision. It will argue that the presence of the De penitentia in Causa 33 is no accident, but rather the result of a deliberate decision on Gratian's part.
Paper -b:
The classic tale of the development of academic disciplines in the second half of the 12th century runs something like this: Gratian produced a textbook which served as the basis for the beginning systematic study of canon law while Peter Lombard produced a textbook which served as the basis for all future systematic study of theology. The study of these two works in the burgeoning universities led to increasing specialization so that, by the late 12th century, canonists and theologians were clearly divided and, in the 13th century, formed different faculties in the now-formed universities. This story, while in its broadest strokes contains truth, has led to such misconceptions as the supposition that Gratian could not have composed the Tractatus de penitentia (Decretum C.33 q.3) since the work is theological and Gratian taught canon law. Vacarius as well was long misunderstood as scholars puzzled over the presence of theological works in his corpus. Jason Taliadoros has done much to enlighten Vacarius' standing as a 'lawyer-theologian', of which Gratian, I maintain, was a predecessor (and even model).
One good way to gauge the development of both law and theology and their relationship to one another is by tracing the reception Gratian's De penitentia by figures usually identified as either canonists or theologians in the second half of the 12th century. Decretists had to deal with the text in one way or another in their commentaries on Gratian's Decretum, but those more famous for theological work also found much of value in De penitentia. They viewed the work as Gratian had written it, as a theological treatise, and they respected Gratian as a theologian. In their and the canonists' reception of this work, one witnesses a more nuanced, less clear-cut, and perhaps more harmonious image of the relationship between law and theology prior to the formal establishment of separate university faculties.
Paper -c:
Ricardus Anglicus, also known as Richard de Mores (early 1160s - 1242), is an enigmatic character in the history of law and theology in the 'long 12th century', principally because of his canonistic literary output between the mid-1180s and c. 1200 (most of which today remains unedited), but also because of his lesser-known forays into theology and biblical exegesis. This paper focuses on his Distinctiones decretorum, composed sometime in the mid- to late 1190s, as an example of the 'lawyer-theologian' method that had been a feature of intellectual endeavour in Western Europe since the appearance of Gratian's Decretum. Of interest is the observation by Giulio Silano, in his 1981 dissertation that provided a 'provisional' edition of the Distinctiones, that part two contained many biblical references. This fact is unremarkable in itself, but for the suggestion that this went 'beyond the usual overlap' between law and theology characterized by the 'sacramental theology' evident in Gratian's De penitentia and De consecratione. I wish to pursue this line of inquiry further in this paper and, more broadly, interrogate the traditional chronology that describes a hardening of the dividing line between law and theology in the later 12th and early 13th centuries.
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