User:Giovanna Murano
My research on Gratian's Decretum
My research on Gratian’s Decretum dates back to the 1990s, when I was preparing my book Opere diffuse per exemplar e pecia. Produced at the height of the twelfth-century renaissance, the Decretum remained in use for nearly eight centuries, until 1917, enjoying exceptionally wide circulation, first in manuscript and later in print. It served as the fundamental textbook for teaching canon law and - together with the Glossa ordinaria - was used in faculties throughout Europe. Since production by exemplar and pecia left identifiable traces, it was necessary to examine directly every copy that might plausibly be of university origin. In Opere diffuse per exemplar e pecia, I listed about eighty manuscripts, while during my research in major European libraries I also recorded numerous additional witnesses of non-university origin.
Unlike most works disseminated within the university context, the history of the Decretum began before it reached the workshops of professional copyists. My research therefore focused both on its early transmission (Dalle scuole agli ‘studia’) and on the figure of the author. In Graziano e il Decretum nel sec. XII I reconstructed Gratian through a re-examination and reinterpretation of historical and literary sources, some long known and others presented for the first time. A Tuscan monk by origin, Gratian spent part of his formative years in France, where he studied alongside the Sienese Roland Bandinelli, later Pope Alexander III. Upon returning to Italy, he taught in Bologna at the Camaldolese monastery of SS. Felice and Naborre. During the same years, while Roland held the chair in the Divina Pagina and Jacob, a student of Wernerius (Irnerius), taught Justinian law, Gratian composed the Decretum, which circulated among his students even before reaching its definitive form. Around 1143, Gratian was elected bishop of Chiusi and died two years later.
Iconographic sources have proven essential for reconstructing Gratian. In MS Saint-Omer 453, the h-initial depicts him teaching, seated at his desk with an open book, holding it with one hand and pointing with the other. The scene shows very young boys, lay and tonsured, standing or sitting, holding books or taking notes, in a realistic composition far removed from later stereotypical miniatures. In this initial, Gratian wears a bishop’s mitre.
Despite its central role in European cultural history, a complete recensio of the Decretum’s witnesses is still lacking. Anthony Melnikas listed 495 manuscripts, but his work contains errors in dating, localization, and methodology, and omits manuscripts discovered after 1937, as noted by Carl Nordenfalk and Hubert Mordek. Between Kuttner’s Repertorium (1937) and Weigand’s study (1991), partial national censuses were published, while research in recent decades has shown that the manuscript tradition of Gratian’s compilation was far more diverse, anomalous, and contaminated than suggested by Emil Friedberg’s edition. For my 2015 study, I considered approximately 250 witnesses (complete or fragmentary) datable to the second decade of the thirteenth century, representing more than one-third of the entire manuscript tradition.
The result of a decade-long research, the list of witnesses - now included in the List of Gratian Manuscripts - almost certainly represents the first comprehensive census since Kuttner’s, providing a more precise and nuanced understanding of how the Decretum was disseminated, varied, and received across Europe.
In my most recent research, I have focused particularly on the depiction of the Decretum’s incipit (Humanum genus duobus regitur). Not a stereotypical depiction, this representation often reflects the longstanding conflict between spiritual and temporal powers, as well as the historical role and significance of the Tuscan monk’s compilation.
Bibliography
Giovanna Murano. Opere diffuse per exemplar e pecia, Turnhout, Brepols, 2005 (Textes et Études du Moyen Âge-TEMA, 29), pp. 897. ISBN 2-503-51922-9.
Giovanna Murano. Graziano e il Decretum nel secolo XII. Rivista Internazionale di Diritto Comune 26 (2015), p. 61-139.
Giovanna Murano. Dalle scuole agli Studia: il Decretum Gratiani tra XII e XIII secolo. In: Scriptoria e biblioteche nel Basso Medioevo (secoli XII-XV). Atti del LI Convegno storico internazionale. Todi 12-15 ottobre 2014, Spoleto, Centro italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo 2015, p. 71-107.
Giovanna Murano. Graziano, monaco benedettino, magister e vescovo di Chiusi. Le testimonianze iconografiche. In: Studia Gratiana. Collectanea Historiae Iuris Canonici. “Gratianus magister decretorum. Il Decretum tra storia, attualità e prospettive di universalità, a cura di M. Sodi, F. Reali, Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2020, p. 115-132.
Giovanna Murano. Il Decretum in Europa nel secolo XII. In: Medieval Europe in Motion 3. The Circulation of Jurists, Legal Manuscripts and Artistic, Cultural and Legal Practices in Medieval Europe (13th-15 centuries), ed. by M.A. Bilotta, Palermo, Officina di Studi Medievali, 2021, p. 301-312.
Giovanna Murano. The Life and Iconography of Gratian: a ‘mise au point’ (Part. I). In: Saeculum Christianum", XXXII (2025), p. 30-42; ill. https://doi.org/10.21697/sc.2025.32.1.3
Giovanna Murano. The Life and Iconography of Gratian: a ‘mise au point’ (part II). In: Saeculum Christianum, XXXII, 2 (2025), p. 5-19; ill. https://doi.org/10.21697/sc.2025.32.2.1
