Alger of Liège, De misericordia et iustitia

Selected Canon Law Collections, ca. 500–1234
Title Alger of Liège, De misericordia et iustitia
Key ?
Wikidata Item no. Q136679396
Size Small (100 to 500 canons)
Century saec. XII
Place of origin Liège
European region of origin Eastern France
Author Christof Rolker
No. of manuscripts some (2–9)


Alger of Lüttich around 1100 composed a Liber de misericordia et iustitia which can be described as a tract very rich in canon law quotations or a collection unusually rich in comment (even more than Bonizo). The canons are often heavily abbreviated; often, Alger presents canons that are, or appear to be, to contradict each other. Very much like Ivo, whose Prologue strongly influenced De misericordia, Alger did not 'solve' contradictions but stressed the need to take into account the circumstances of individual cases.

Material and formal sources

Alger shows a clear predilcetion for ancient authority, above all Saint Augustine, Gregory the Great, Gelasius I, Jerome, Leo the Great, Ambrose, and Innocent I. These authors provided him with the dogmatic and legal materials he cited, paraphrased, and commented upon in the Liber. Conciliar canons, are largely absent, and while Alger evidently addressed the pressing needs of his own time, he refrains from citing any post-Carolingian canon law.

Alger's De misericordia et iustitia is discursive in nature; the canon law he uses is a mix of mostly short verbatim quotations, paraphrases, and allusions; he rarely cites long series of canons coming from one source, both rather rearranges materials according to the argument. It is clear that Alger had access to a well-stocked library, but given the way he uses canon law, it is very difficult in many cases to establish which formal sources he was using for which canons.

Among the known formal sources of De misericordia et iustitia are the Collection in 74 titles and the Dionysio-Hadriana. For other collections, the evidence is less conclusive. For example, many of the canons Alger refers to are found in Burchard, but it is not entirely clear whether he really used the Liber decretorum as a formal source. However, given that in two letters Alger can be shown to have used Burchard, there can be little doubt that he was familiar with the collection. Of all the works attributed to Ivo of Chartres, only the use of the Prologue is manifest in De misericordia et iustitia; the canon law citations, however, do not come from the Prologue or any of the Ivonian collections.

Manuscripts

Complete copies:

Excerpts:

Links

Links and Literature

Kretzschmar, Algers Traktat.- Kéry, Collections p. 272.- Rolker, Canon Law pp. 357-368

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