Canon Law

Introduction

This section provides an introductory guide to the bibliographies and secondary literature of canon law, as well as links to excerpts, full texts, and digitized manuscripts of canon law sources ranging from the second century to the Council of Trent (1545-1563).

General Resources

The Roman Law Library Compiled by Y. Lassard and A. Koptev at the University of Grenoble Alpes, this website serves as a repository for some of the major texts of Roman law, including one of the most influential texts for canon law, Justinian’s Corpus Iuris Civilis. They are not presented in translation. While not searchable (though there is a simple Google search bar embedded on the site), it has a detailed Table of Contents and extensive bibliographies for researchers of this field. Besides the collection of source texts found here (which range from Late Antiquity to the later Middle Ages), the Resources page in particular has hundreds of links to valuable online texts, journals, blogs, and videos on legal history in the West.

• • Corpus Iuris Civilis: Justinian’s Body of Civil Law
  • Principal Sources: Editions and Translations. A bibliography of printed versions of different canon law texts, organized by specific texts, and ending with a bibliography of editions of inscriptions.
  • Legal Texts: Internet Resources. Links to a wide variety of canon law texts and scholarship available in other online repositories.

  Early Christian Writings Compiled by Peter Kirby. This site provides links to over 100 editions, translations, and modern commentary (on authorship, dating, and provenance) of all Christian (and some non-Christian) texts composed in the first and second centuries, organized not by genre, but by approximate date of composition. Included are canons from church councils, legal texts drawn from the New Testament, Apocrypha, Gnostics, and Church Fathers, as well as early collections of Christian law, such as Didache. When possible, texts are made available in their original language (usually Greek

  Carolingian Canon Law Project This project at the University of Kentucky offers searchable, electronic editions of works of canon law and the text of thousands of canons available during the Carolingian era, facilitating comparative analysis of the extent of variation in “standard” legal texts of the period.

  The Medieval Canon Law Virtual Library The website, curated by David M. Freidenreich at Colby College brings together publicly accessible electronic resources for the study of medieval canon law by providing links to texts (both pdfs and digital editions) of special interest to scholars of the so-called classical canon law period, exemplified by the works of Carolingian canonists, Gratian, Stephen of Tournai and a wide range of decretalists and other commentators.

  Medieval Legal History This is the personal website of Ken Pennington, Emeritus Professor of Ecclesiastical and Legal History at Catholic University of America. In addition to class materials such as videotaped lectures and copies of class syllabi, Prof. Pennington provides numerous and valuable introductions, histories, translations and transcriptions of canon law sources as well as linking to the Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law, including its past issues.

  Ivo of Chartres: Work in Progress This website is dedicated to presenting digitized critical editions of the works of canonist Ivo of Chartres (c. 1040-1115). These include draft texts and some concordances for the three collections traditionally associated with Ivo of Chartres: the Collectio Tripartita, the Decretum, and the Panormia. This website also includes a list of manuscripts containing significant numbers of Ivo’s letters, with preliminary editions of a selection of these letters.

  Corpus Iuris Canonici This online edition of one of the most important treatises on canon law (attributed to Gratian) can be viewed as a pdf (of the 1959 edition) or as a plain text file, which is searchable.

  Medieval Canon Law: 800 Years of Dominican Books An online exhibition at the Cambridge University Library of illuminated manuscript folia from canon law books produced by Dominican friars in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The illuminations (presented as high-res images on the site) are mainly drawn from Gregory IX’s Decretals. [Note that CUP was hacked and this site is still down; the link goes to a page on the Dominican Friars of England and Ireland site announcing the exhibition.]

  Stephan Kuttner Institute of Medieval Canon Law Available in both German and English, this website represents the online presence of the Stephan Kuttner Institute at the University of Munich, which promotes research in medieval canon law, particularly Gratian’s Decretum and medieval legalists who expanded and commented on this work, pre-Gratian canonical texts, and collections of papal letters. Includes a searchable library catalogue, a list of past and future publications, and links to other scholarly websites and resources on medieval canon law. [Note that this website is in the process of moving to the Research section of the Faculty of Law at LMU Munich.]

  Papal Documents of the Early and High Middle Ages  A long-running project (2007-2022) that aimed to assemble the documents and letters sent by the pope to bishops, other clergy, judges, and others for the period up to 1198. The project focused on evaluating the diplomatic impact of these letters in the “peripheral zones” of Latin Christianity in the East and West, in connection with another long-standing project, “Göttingen Papal Documents Work.” The resulting Publications include volumes of papal documents for many different regions, such as Italia Pontifica, Germania Pontifica, Gallia Pontifica, Anglia Pontifica, Iberia Pontifica, Dalmatia-Croatia-Pontificia, and others.  It also produced a database in German (with instructions in English), Regesta Pontificum Romanorum Online which can be searched by dates, places, and personal names [note that the database was not available as of Feb. 15, 2025].

  Database of the Letters of Pope Gregory VII Christian Schwaderer provides a database to find where and when letters of Pope Gregory VII circulated within any type of collection, whether a chronicle, letter collection, or collections known as as epistulae (extra) vagantes. Searches can be made on dates, reference numbers, document type, key terms, place of issue, dates, incipits, and persons.