| Abstract | Paper -a:
This paper shall address the subject of John of Salisbury and the use of canon law within his writing. Does John place the sources of law which he uses in any hierarchical order? If so, what is the importance of canon law, and does he use Gratian XX as a model? I shall discuss whether there is a tendency to favour certain aspects of canon law, for example the words of St Augustine. Essentially, the paper aims to put John's use of canon law into the context of his works, and into the context of the period in which he was writing.
Paper -b:
This paper will investigate one of the ways in which 12th-century canonists went about transforming theology into jurisprudence. In question 3 of Causa 33 of his Decretum (c. 1140), Gratian includes a long tract on penitential theology, the tract De penitentia. Gratian's commentators, the decretists, generally give this section of Gratian's work only cursory attention, if they deign to gloss it at all. Many of these same commentators, however, refer to canons and dicta contained in the De penitentia when elucidating other sections of the Decretum. The goal of this paper is to understand what these decretists found valuable about the De penitentia and how they believed it contributed to understanding canon law.
Paper -c:
Conciliar canons are the closest approximation to legislation from the 12th century. Nevertheless, it is often forgotten that they were subject to similar forces to decretal letters in their dissemination; their transmission was the result of their inclusion by local canonists and their immediate import a consequence of their use and re-promulgation by local ecclesiastics. This paper will investigate the implementation of the 1179 Lateran decrees and their observation by local ecclesiastics. It will illuminate their effect on law at a local level, demonstrating how far they penetrated into local consciousness and indicating which decrees were appreciated or overlooked.
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