Popes, Bishops, and the Progress of Canon Law, c.1120-1234

By (author) Anne J. Duggan Edited by Travis Baker

Book cover: Popes, Bishops, and the Progress of Canon Law, c.1120-1234

Extent: 506, 506 pages

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Subjects: Medieval Studies, Religious Studies

Series: Brepols Collected Essays in European Culture

Series volume number: 6

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(October 2020)

ISBN: 9782503585475

Price: $175.00

In stock

This book considers the role of popes and bishops in the development of the law of the Church between 1120 and 1234. Although historians have traditionally seen the popes as the driving force behind the legal transformation of the Church in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the primary argument of this book is that the functionin


Bishops have always played a central role in the making and enforcement of the law of the Church, and none more so than the bishop of Rome. From convening and presiding over church councils to applying canon law in church courts, popes and bishops have exercised a decisive influence on the history of that law. This book, a selection of Anne J. Duggan’s most significant studies on the history of canon law, highlights the interactive role of popes and bishops, and other prelates, in the development of ecclesiastical law and practice between 1120 and 1234. This emphasis directly challenges the pervasive influence of the concept of ‘papal monarchy’, in which popes, and not diocesan bishops and their legal advisers, have been seen as the driving force behind the legal transformation of the Latin Church in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Contrary to the argument that the emergence of the papacy as the primary judicial and legislative authority in the Latin Church was the result of a deliberate programme of papal aggrandizement, the principal argument of this book is that the processes of consultation and appeal reveal a different picture: not of a relentless papal machine but of a constant dialogue between diocesan bishops and the papal Curia, in which the ‘papal machine’ evolved to meet the demand.

  • By (author) Anne J. Duggan
  • Edited by Travis Baker