Work record

Decretum (Concord of Discordant Canons)

Gratian

c. 1140 · Medieval · Religious Scripture · Latin

Abstract

Written: c. 1140
Setting: Twelfth century; Bologna (Italy)
Author: Gratian
Country: Italy
Language: Latin
Genre: Legal textbook
Form: Three parts: Distinctions, Causes and a treatise on consecration
Recommended: Grades 11–12 (Abstract only; medieval legal and theological concepts.)

Problem. By the twelfth century the Church's rules lay scattered across many compilations of decrees from councils, popes and Fathers, and these often clashed with each other. Judges and bishops had no single, ordered book to consult.

Method. A Bologna teacher arranged thousands of texts by subject and added his own remarks, asking questions and drawing distinctions that showed how apparently opposed rules applied to different situations. This pattern of question, objection and resolution became the model for teaching in the new universities.

Natural law. The opening section ranks the moral law found in Scripture, summed up in the Golden Rule, above custom and enacted rules. Where custom or legislation contradicts that higher law, the lower rule must yield.

Cases. The middle part poses three dozen imaginary disputes on buying Church offices, property, marriage, heresy, war and repentance, each followed by questions. The questions train students to reason from authorities to decisions in particular disputes.

Sacraments. The last section collects texts on church buildings, baptism, the Eucharist and worship. These texts gave the Church a common reference for its liturgy and discipline.

Influence. Glossed in the schools and supplemented by papal decrees, the compilation became the core of the Church's legal code until 1917 and shaped European ideas of consent in marriage, fair procedure and rights. Modern research shows the book grew in two stages, probably through the work of its compiler and his first pupils.

Key figures

Gratian: Canon lawyer at Bologna
Isidore of Seville: Seventh-century source for definitions of law
Decretists: Later teachers who glossed the Decretum

Summary

The Decretum of Gratian, whose own title was the Concord of Discordant Canons (Concordia discordantium canonum), is the founding textbook of canon law, the law of the Western Church. It was compiled at Bologna around 1140, at the same time that teachers there were reviving the study of Justinian's Roman law. Before Gratian, the Church's law was scattered in many collections of canons from councils, popes and Church Fathers, which often contradicted one another. Gratian gathered several thousand of these texts and tried to show how they could be reconciled. His method was new. He arranged the texts by topic, and between them he wrote his own comments, called dicta, in which he posed questions, set authorities against each other and proposed distinctions that resolved apparent conflicts: one canon applies in one circumstance, another in another; one states a general rule, another an exception. This method of reasoning by question and distinction shaped medieval university teaching in law and theology alike. The Decretum has three parts. The first, in 101 Distinctions, treats the sources of law and the clergy. It opens with the distinction between natural law and human custom, teaching that natural law is contained in the Law and the Gospel, which command each person to do to others what he would have done to himself, and that natural law takes precedence over custom and enacted law. The second part presents 36 Causes, imaginary cases each raising several questions, on topics such as simony, Church property, marriage, heresy, just war and penance. The third part treats the sacraments and worship. The Decretum was never officially promulgated by a pope, but it became the standard text in the schools. Teachers wrote glosses on it, popes issued new decretals to supplement it, and together these formed the Corpus of Canon Law, in force in the Catholic Church until the Code of 1917. Through canon law the Decretum influenced European ideas of marriage by consent, due process, natural rights and the limits of rulers. Recent scholarship has shown that it grew in at least two stages, so the work is best understood as the product of Gratian and his early students.

Plot or Argument

Part I: Distinctions on law
Natural law, custom and enacted law; the sources of Church law; ordination and the clergy.
Part II: Causes
Thirty-six hypothetical cases on simony, property, marriage, heresy, war and penance, each with questions.
Treatise on penance
A long theological discussion set within Part II.
Part III: On consecration
Texts on churches, the sacraments and worship.
Method
Gratian sets conflicting authorities side by side and reconciles them with his own comments.

Lessons

Reconciling authorities
Gratian took contradictory texts seriously and sought distinctions that showed how they fit together. Careful reasoning can find harmony where others see only conflict.
- How did Gratian handle canons that disagreed?
- When two authorities seem to conflict, how should we decide between them?
Related across the library
- Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius, Lesson: Conflict that preserves liberty
  Conflict that preserves liberty. Machiavelli argues in Book I, ch. IV, that the quarrels between the Roman nobles and commons, which others blamed for disorder, produced the laws that kept Rome free. A republic, on this view, needs institutions that give each side a lawful outlet.
- The Muqaddimah, Chapter 3 (end of dynasties)
  Famine and plague increasing at the end of a dynasty, attributed in part to the corruption of the air in crowded cities.
- First Inaugural Address, Lesson: Restoration, not revolution
  Restoration, not revolution. The program promises to "restore, not destroy" and to deal with the economy as it is, not as if writing on "a clean sheet of paper." That claim invites comparison with older republican cautions about federal power and with what Wilson's first term actually enacted.
- The History of Rome, Books I-V, Book III, chs. 6-8 and 32
  Pestilence kills consuls, augurs and much of the people while the Aequi and Volsci press on the city; later plague and famine come together.
- Inaugural Address (Harry S. Truman), Lesson: Help that is not empire
  Help that is not empire. Point Four promised knowledge rather than charity. Truman wanted peoples to produce more "through their own efforts," and he wanted investors' guarantees balanced by guarantees to the people whose labor and resources were used. He also explicitly rejected exploitation for foreign profit. The lesson asks what separates real help from a new form of control. That question belongs to Christian ethics of charity, and also to later disputes about development aid.
Natural law first
Gratian taught that natural law, found in the Law and the Gospel, outranks custom and human legislation. Human law must answer to God's law.
- What does Gratian say natural law commands?
- Why should custom give way to natural law?
Related across the library
- Magna Carta, Lesson: The king under the law
  The king under the law. Clauses 39 and 40 bind the king himself: he may not move against a freeman except by lawful judgment or the law of the land, and he may not sell or delay justice. The charter's lasting fame rests on this idea that even the highest ruler acts within settled law.
- The Common Law, Lesson: Law and morality
  Law and morality. Holmes separates law from morality more sharply than older writers. The Christian tradition of natural law holds that human law must answer to a higher moral law.
- Lex, Rex, Lesson: The ruler stands under the law he enforces
  The ruler stands under the law he enforces. Rutherford's title reverses the royalist maxim that the king is the law: the law is king. In question XXVI he argues that a king exists only by a law that makes this man rather than another king, so the law is prior to him and limits him. The king may be called a living law, but only as the law put into practice.
- Commentaries on the Laws of England, Lesson: Human law rests on natural and revealed law
  Human law rests on natural and revealed law. Blackstone begins his account of English law with God. The law of nature, dictated by God and binding everywhere, and the revealed law of Scripture are the two foundations; human laws regulate matters left indifferent and must not contradict them. Positive law, on this view, is a servant of a higher order.
- Laws, Book IV
  For that state in which the law is subject and has no authority, I perceive to be on the highway to ruin; but I see that the state in which the law is above the rulers, and the rulers are the inferiors of the law, has salvation The Athenian explains why he calls magistrates servants or ministers of the law.
Law in the Church
The Decretum shows that the Church needed order and justice in its own life. Law can serve charity when it protects the weak and settles disputes fairly.
- What kinds of cases did the Decretum address?
- How can law serve love?
Related across the library
- Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, Lesson: Four tests for keeping a precedent
  Four tests for keeping a precedent. Part III-A turns the doctrine of stare decisis into a set of questions about workability, reliance, doctrinal change and changed facts. Students can apply these questions to any precedent and see that both the joint opinion and the Chief Justice accept that precedent matters, while disagreeing about what it requires here.
- Murder on the Orient Express, Lesson: Justice and the law
  Justice and the law. The novel asks whether a killing can be just when the law has failed. Readers can examine Poirot's decision without the book telling them what to conclude.
- On Christian Doctrine, Lesson: Charity as the test of interpretation
  Charity as the test of interpretation. A reading of Scripture that does not build up love of God and neighbour has not yet understood it. Augustine joins this rule to careful study rather than substituting it, and insists that mistaken readings should still be corrected.
- The Massachusetts Body of Liberties, Lesson: God's law and civil law
  God's law and civil law. The capital laws cite the law of Moses. Students can consider how Christians have related the civil laws of Israel to the laws of a commonwealth.
- The Common Law, Lesson: History explains law
  History explains law. Holmes shows that many legal rules make sense only in light of their history. Understanding where something came from helps us judge it.

Context

In the early twelfth century, Bologna became the centre of a revived study of Roman law. Church reformers had also produced many new collections of canons to support the independence and discipline of the Church.

Composition

Gratian compiled the work around 1140. Scholarship since 2000 has shown an earlier, shorter version and a later, expanded one.

Reception

The Decretum quickly became the basic text of canon law in the universities. Commentators called decretists glossed it, and it remained part of the Church's law until 1917.

Justice Law Faith / Religion Power / Politics Virtue Ethics

Comparisons

The Institutes of Justinian
The Roman law revived at Bologna alongside Gratian's canon law.
Summa Theologica
Aquinas, a century later, built on the medieval discussion of natural law that Gratian helped begin.
Magna Carta
Magna Carta was drafted by men, including Stephen Langton, trained in the law and theology of the schools.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

Gratian's method of distinctions.
The ranking of natural law, custom and enacted law.
The structure of the Causes.
The influence on later canon law.

Key terms and names

Canon law: The law of the Church.
Canon: A rule or decree of a council, pope or other Church authority.
Dictum: Gratian's own comment between the texts he quotes.
Natural law: The moral law known by reason and revealed in Scripture.

Seminar Questions

Comprehension What problem did Gratian set out to solve?
Comprehension What are the three parts of the Decretum?
Interpretation Why might Gratian's method of distinctions have been so influential in universities?
Interpretation What does it mean that natural law outranks custom?
Interpretation Should laws be judged by a higher law? Who decides what that law requires?
Interpretation Why do you think the Decretum remained in use for nearly eight hundred years?
Big Question Can law and charity work together?

Faith Connections

Matthew 7:12 (Scripture)
"All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them": the Golden Rule Gratian identifies with natural law.
Acts 5:29 (Scripture)
"We ought to obey God rather than men": divine law above human law.
Isidore of Seville, Etymologies V (Church Fathers)
Gratian draws his definitions of natural and human law from Isidore.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Conflicting Church laws can be harmonized by careful distinctions, and all human law is subordinate to natural law found in the Law and the Gospel.

Rhetorical device: distinction. Gratian resolves conflicts by showing that each authority applies in different circumstances.

Debate: Resolved: that unjust laws are not truly laws.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Explain how Gratian's Decretum shaped the medieval idea of law.

Comparison with Summa Theologica: Compare Gratian's account of natural law with Aquinas's treatise on law.

Creative Prompts

Essay
Explain Gratian's method of reconciling conflicting authorities and apply it to two rules that seem to conflict.
Classroom
Write a short "Cause" in Gratian's style: a hypothetical case followed by three questions.
Dialogue
Imagine a student at Bologna in 1145 asking Gratian why natural law outranks custom.