Chartres, BM, 161

Chartres, BM, 161 was a copy of an Italian version of Burchard's Liber decretorum (pace Pokorny who assumed it belonged to the ‘Order of Worms, type B’ tradition). The 'Italian' featuers include an Ordo synodalis (almost certainly Schneider’s no 5) at the end of book three, the displacmend of Burchard 2.23 between canons 18 and 19; at the beginning of book three, two canons are switched (cc. 9/10) and after c. 15, an excerpt from JE 1317 is added; finally, the interpolated versions of Burchard 3.179–180 are probably Italian, too.

The additional material, and some of its readings, bear resemblance to the Burchard copy behind Ivo's Decretum, but Chartres 161 itself cannot have been the (only) Burchard copy used by Ivo, and in any case on palaeographical grounds can be excluded as his exemplar. The copy was made in the early twelfth century, perhaps from an exemplar used by Ivo as one of at least two Burchard copies. By the late 15th century, it was in the cathedral library; there is no evidence that it ever was outside Chartres. In 1944, it was badly damaged in the fire that destroyed most Chartrain manuscripts. The fragments have been restored and digitized. Galli and Rolker provide a detailed analyses.

Links

• description and digital images: https://arca.irht.cnrs.fr/ark:/63955/md46qz20w92w

Literature

Michela Galli and Christof Rolker, Destroyed but not Lost: A Digital Reconstruction of the Chartrain Copy of Burchard’s Liber decretorum (Chartres BM 161), in: Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law n.s., vol. 39, (2021), pp. 19–58. URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/849736. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/bmc.2021.0014