The Sources of Medieval Canon Law: A User's Guide

The Sources of Medieval Canon Law: A User’s Guide is a comprehensive handbook for those working with medieval canon law sources of the period 1000–1500 (CE). It provides an accessible introduction to the myriad of complex legal sources used within the medieval church.

The book’s primary objective is to orient non-specialists with these sources and their potential contributions to historical study, while also raising awareness of how they can be misused. With thirteen chapters written by experts unpicking how to evaluate and deploy these sources, this volume aims to demystify them and explain how they can be used accurately and carefully by those who are new to working with legal material. Each chapter will briefly introduce a particular type of source and then, using selected case studies, demonstrate how such sources should be approached in order to be best-used in scholarly arguments, while also discussing the pitfalls and possibilities encountered in their use, while suggesting ways to avoid the former. Following this standard structure across chapters, the volume thus acquaints users with the sources of medieval canon law, from papal letters and conciliar canons to the paratexts and commentaries written in and for scholastically-trained lawyers, and from procedural manuals and canonical collections to local court documents.

A valuable for researchers at any level, from academics to undergraduate and postgraduate students, this book provides a critical introduction to an immense and complicated body of material.