Collectio Lanfranci

Title	Collectio Lanfranci
Key	LA
Size	Medium (500 to 1000 canons)
Terminus post quem	1059
Terminus ante quem	1070
Century	saec. XI
European region of origin	Northern France
General region of origin	Northwestern Europe
Main author	Linda Fowler-Magerl
No. of manuscripts	many (10 to 99)

Some progress has been made in recent years in tracing the development of Lanfranc before he became archbishopric of Canterbury. Having acquired a reputation in northern Italy in dialectic, Lanfranc moved to northern France to study theology. There he became known for his ability to adapt to the emerging scholastic methodology. He became adviser to William the Conqueror in Normandy whom he would follow later to England. The Collectio Lanfranci is a shortened form of Pseudo-Isidore in two parts, the first containing decretals from pope Clement to Gregory II and the second conciliar canons from Nicaea to Seville II. Many of the texts are condensed.

The original manuscript, Cambridge, Trinity College Library, B.16.44, belonged to Lanfranc of Bec, and the present analysis is [182] based on this copy (LA). Lanfranc acquired his copy while abbot of Saint-Étienne at Caen (1066–1070). The circular letter of pope Nicholas II (JL 4405) containing a selection of the decrees of the Lenten synod of 1059 and the oath taken by Berengar of Tours at that synod is also found in the manuscript. When Lanfranc became archbishop of Canterbury in 1070 he brought the manuscript with him and had it copied for use in the English bishoprics.

Recently Nicolás Álvarez de las Asturias completed an exhaustive study of the Collectio Lanfranci on the basis of all known manuscripts. He has modified the description of Lanfranc’s collection in earlier versions of Kanones in the following way: 1.) some of the texts in the Cambridge manuscript are posterior additions and should not be considered parts of the collection itself; 2.) the numeration found in the location column of Kanones with the key LB, which I took from the critical remarks in the margin of the Ms Cambridge, should be retained as the collection’s true numeration; 3.) the internal divisions in Kanones are not characteristic of the transmissions as a whole. I am grateful for the information and have altered the data bank in a number of ways, but was limited by time and in some cases by the structure of the existing program. The numbering of Álvarez de las Asturias should, of course, be accepted entirely once his publication appears; 4.) many of the texts which I have presented as inscriptions or rubrics should be consider glosses; other manuscripts contain other glosses.

Álvarez de las Asturias pp. 24-30 argued that the Collectio Lanfranci was closely related to Eton, College Library, MS 97 (his Eb); the latter may well have been a copy of Lanfranc's Pseudo-Isidore, he concluded (p. 24):

Eb ... potrebbe trattarsi di una copia di un testo completo, da cui si originò un compendio della Lan [= Collectio Lanfranci].

Manuscripts and Influence

Lanfranc had his collection distrubuted in England when he was archibishop of Canterbury, and hence there are an impressive number of English manuscripts extant. Kéry, pp. 70- lists 14 medieval manuscripts containing the complete Collectio Lanfranci (including one that was destroyed in 1944) and four more that contain only the decretal part of the collection. Brett has identified four smaller collections that draw heavily on the Collectio Lanfranci.

See Category:Manuscript of LA (number of entries: 3).

Literature

Robert Somerville, Lanfranc’s Canonical Collection and Exeter, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 45 (1972), p. 303 n. 5; Schieffer, Die Entstehung, pp. 65 n. 81 and 209–210 (on Nicholas' circular letter); Martin Brett, Collectio Lanfranci, pp. 157–174; Kéry, Collections p. 239–243; Michael Gullick, The Englishowned manuscripts of the Collectio Lanfranci (s. xi/xii), in: The Legacy of M. R. James, ed. by Lynda Dennison, Donnington 2001, pp. 99–117; Álvarez de las Asturias, Lanfranco di Bec nelle origini del „Rinascimento“ culturale del secolo XII, in: La cultura giuridico-canonica medioevale. Premesse per un dialogo ecumenico, ed. Enrique De León and Nicolás Álvarez de las Asturias, Milano 2003, pp. 275–302; Álvarez de las Asturias, La "Collectio Lanfranci": origine e influenza di una collezione delle chiesa Anglo-Normanna (2008) [183]