Burchard of Worms, Liber decretorum

General

The Liber decretorum is a large canon law collection compiled by Bishop Burchard of Worms and his collaborators sometime between 1012 and 1022 at Worms; it became very widely copied and was used by many compilers of other collections. The collection is divided into 20 books; it contains a preface and normally also capitulationes for the individual books.

In the prologue to the collection Burchard points out how useful the collection will be in the administration of penance and he recommends it to young clerics. As Detlev Jasper has shown, the collection was almost immediately used in synods held north of the Alps, particularly for regulating judicial procedure. It was present in most northern European cathedral libraries at an early date and it found universal acceptance throughout Europe in the following decades. The only other systematic pre-Gratian collection copied more often is the Panormia, which depends, if indirectly, on the Liber decretorum. Altogether over 80 copies have survived. Although Gratian made only scant use of it, preferring the collections attributed to Ivo of Chartres, approximately half of the Paleae to his Concordia discordantium canonum were taken from Burchard. In Italy acquaintance with the collection remained part of the education of clerics well into the middle of the 12th century. It was used by many of the Italian decretists and by the author of the decretal collection Parisiensis secunda, whom Peter Landau has identified as Bernard of Pavia.

Greta Austin has epitomized the reasons for the success of the collection, pointing to the fact that Burchard was more selective than the compilers of comparable contemporary collections. His aim was not simple accumulation, but rather didactic – which is true whatever opinion one has in regard to the question of whether the Liber decretorum was used in a scuola. To quote Austin: „Burchard made the collection easy to use by including essentially two types of canons: (1) canons which gave general principles and (2) canons which provided examples of how these principles should be applied to individual cases. By doing so, and by eliminating conflicting texts, he enabled the reader to find answers to legal questions – even those not explicitly addressed in the canonical tradition.“ Detlev Jasper adds that the formulas spread throughout the collection were another reason for its popularity.

Burchard frequently changed the inscriptions of texts derived from secular law, attributing such to councils or to popes, and removed the references to specific dioceses when using capitula from episcopal capitularies. He changed existing texts, but seldom manufactured new ones.

In the 12th century the Liber decretorum would be copied less often north of the Alps than in the century before because the collections 87 compiled at Chartres at the end of the 11th century had incorporated so many of its texts and because they offered papal decretals issued after the appearance of the Liber decretorum.

Books and Capitulationes

Each book of the collection is preceded by a capitulatio with a rubric for each of the canons. Imbedded in the prologue are descriptions of the contents of each book. In Burchard’s original plan there were only nineteen books, but all surviving copies have twenty. The descriptions of the books are as follows:

Primus liber continet de potestate et primatu apostolice sedis, patriarcharum ceterorumque primatuum metropolitanorum et de synodo celebranda et vocatione ad sinodum, de accusatis et accusatoribus et testibus, de expoliatis iniuste, de iudicibus ac de omni honore competenti ac dignitate et diverso negotio et ministerio episcoporum.

Secundus liber continet de congruenti dignitate et diversa institutione ac nutrimento vel qualitate vite et diverso negotio et ministerio presbyterorum et diaconorum seu reliquorum ordinum ecclesiasticorum.

Tertius liber continet de divinarum domorum institutione et cultu et honore, de decimis et oblationibus et iustitiis singulorum et qui libri in sacro catalogo recipiantur, qui vero apocriphi et quando apponendi sint.

Quartus liber continet sacramentum baptismatis et ministerium baptizandorum et baptizatorum et consignandorum et consignatorum.

Quintus liber continet de sacramento corporis et sanguinis Domini et de preceptione et observatione eorum.

Sextus liber continet de homicidiis sponte et non sponte commissis et de parricidiis et de fratricidiis et de illis qui uxores legitimas et seniores suos interficiunt et de occisione ecclesiasticorum et de observatione et de penitentia singulorum.

Septimus liber continet de incesta copulatione consanguinitatis et in quo geniculo fideles et coniugi separari debeant et de revocatione et de penitentia singulorum.

Octavus liber continet de viris ac feminis Deo dicatis et sacrum propositum transgredientibus et de revocatione et de penitentia eorum.

Nonus liber continet de virginibus et viduis non velatis, de raptoribus earum et de separatione eorum, de coniunctione legitimorum connubiorum, de concubinis et de transgressione et penitentia singulorum. 88

Decimus liber continet de incantatoribus, de auguribus, de divinis, de sortilegis et de variis illusionibus diaboli et de maledicis et de contentiosis et de conspiratoribus et de penitentia singulorum.

Undecimus liber continet de excommunicandis et excommunicatis, de furibus et de predatoribus et de presumptione et contemptu et neglegentia et reconciliatione et penitentia eorum.

Duodecimus liber continet de periurio et de penitentia eius.

Tertiusdecimus liber continet de veneratione et observatione sacri ieiunii.

Quartusdecimus liber continet de crapula et ebrietate et de penitentia eorum.

Quintusdecimus liber continet de imperatoribus, de principibus et de reliquis laicis et de ministerio eorum.

Sextusdecimus liber continet de accusatoribus, de iudicibus, de defensoribus, de falsis testibus et de penitentia singulorum.

Septimusdecimus liber continet de fornicatione et incestu diversi generis et de penitentia utriusque sexus et diverse etatis.

Octavusdecimus liber continet de visitatione et penitentia et reconciliatione infirmorum.

Nonusdecimus liber, qui Corrector vocatur et Medicus, continet correctiones corporum et animarum medicinas et docet unumquemque sacerdotem, etiam simplicem, quomodo vel qualiter unicuique succurrere valeat, ordinato vel sine ordine, pauperi, diviti, puero, iuveni, seni, decrepito, sano, infirmo, in omni etate, in utroque sexu.

Vicesimus liber Speculationum vocatur: speculatur enim de providentia et predestinatione divina et de adventu Antichristi, de eius operibus, de resurrectione, de die iudicii, de infernalibus pênis, de felicitate perpetue vite.

The 19th book, the Corrector, circulated often alone.

Formal sources

In compiling his collection Burchard used several 9th/10th century collections: the Hibernensis, the Collectio Anselmo dedicata, the collection of Pseudo-Remedius and the collection of Regino of Prüm. He also used a florilegium containing 46 letters of pope Gregory I based on a collection of those letters circulating in the region of Cologne, the so-called C + P collection. There was particularly close cooperation between Burchard and his colleagues and the clergy of Freising, who were compiling their own collection at the time. Burchard used a material collection rich in the canons of early German councils which had been put together at Freising in the late 10th century. 89

The Collection in the Clavis Database

The basis for the present analysis is the copy in the pair of manuscripts Vat. Pal. lat. 585/586 (BU). This copy, made at Worms, is the oldest complete transmission of the collection. Even as it was being copied, however, scribes at Worms were rearranging the sequence of the canons. Only two other manuscripts, both now at Würzburg, and the Editio princeps bring the canons in the same order as the Palatina copy. In all other copies the canons at the end of books 2 and 3 are in the sequence called the „Konstanzer Ordnung“. This renumbering is noted in the location column of the present analysis (BV). The decrees of the council of Seligenstadt (1023) are found at the end of some copies of the Liber decretorum and are noted in the analysis (BX).

The collection was augmented in the second half of the 11th century in southeast Germany, perhaps for the first time at Würzburg. One copy is in the Ms Munich, StB Clm 4570 from Benediktbeuern and another in Vat. lat. 3809. Only the augmentations as found in the Ms Munich 4570 are in the present analysis (BZ). Franz Pelster described this as a Gregorian version. Gérard Fransen was very unhappy with the assuming title because only two copies were known to him and the version was not influential. Rudolf Weigand found a third copy in Würzburg in the meanwhile. Some of the additions in this version are also found in the Collectio XII partium, which, considering the location of the manuscripts, is not surprising. In the second half of the 11th century a more important augmented version appeared in Lombardy and Tuscany. One out of five of the surviving copies of the Liber decretorum belong to this group. It version was enriched with texts opposing simony. This form of the Liber decretorum was used at Poitiers and at Chartres where Ivo had access to both the original and to the Italian version or at least to a mixed form. A selection of most easily identifiable additions are noted in the present analysis (BW) based on the copy in the Mss Paris, BN lat. 4283/Troyes, BM 1386.

Printed Editions

The Editio princeps of the Liber decretorum was published at Cologne in 1548. A less reliable version was printed in Paris in 1549/50. Migne used the latter for volume 140 of the Patrologia latina. In 1992 the first edition was reprinted under the supervision of Theo Kölzer and Gérard Fransen. The reprint is accompanied by a new edition of the prologue by Fransen.
A new critical edition is in the making; it will provide a critical edition of the Worms version(s) of Burchard's collection. The project is funded by the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature; for details, see the project page at https://www.adwmainz.de/en/projekte/burchards-dekret-digital/description.html

Literature:

See the contributions to Bischof Burchard von Worms 1000–1025, ed. Wilfried Hartmann (Quellen und Abhandlungen zur mittelrheinischen Kirchengeschichte 100, Mainz 2000). Three contributions are of particular interest here. On pages 161–166 Wilfried hartmann gives a revue of the problems involved in his Stand der Forschung und offene Fragen. On pages 167–198 Detlev Jasper describes the reception of the Liber decretorum by the „reform“ canonists in the late 11th and early 12th centuries in his: Burchards Dekret in der Sicht der Gregorianer. He lists the synods which used the collection immediately after its appearance. On pages 199–226 Ludger Körntgen describes the sources of the 19th book in his: Fortschreibung früh-mittelalterlicher Bußpraxis. Burchards „Liber corrector“ und seine Quellen. See also the Tagungsband to the colloquium: Bischof Burchard I. in seiner Zeit, ed. by Thomas T. Müller (Beiträge aus den Archiven im Landkreis Eichsfeld 1, Heiligenstadt 2001) which was held at Heiligenstadt October 13–15, 2000. On pages 162–181 is found the contribution of Jörg Müller , Die Kirchenrechtssammlung Bischofs Burchard I. von Worms. See also Greta Austin, Jurisprudence in the Service of Pastoral Care: The Decretum of Burchard of Worms, Speculum 79 (2004), pp. 929–959. – For the scriptorium of Worms see Hoffmann – Pokorny, Das Dekret, pp. 11–28. A list of the sources of each canon appears on pp. 165–276. For the cooperation between Worms and Freising see Jörg Müller, Untersuchungen zur Collectio Duodecim Partium. For sources of Burchard see Kerner/Kerff/Pokorny/Schon/Tills, Textidentifikation, pp. 23–24 and 33. – For the frequent changing of inscriptions and interpolations and for the less frequent forging of texts, see Landau, Gefälsches Recht, pp. 16–19. For the use of two copies of the Liber decretorum or a mixed form by Ivo, see Fowler-Magerl, Fine Distinctions, pp. 146–152. See also Schneider, Die Konzilsordines, pp. 31–37 and 230–257. For Gratian and Burchard see Peter Landau, Neue Forschungen zu vorgratianischen Kanonessammlungen und die Quellen des gratianischen Dekrets, Ius commune 11 (1984), pp. 18–19; Idem, Wandel und Kontinuität im kanonischen Recht bei Gratian, in: Sozialer Wandel im Mittelalter, ed. by Jürgen Miethke and Klaus Schreiner, Sigmaringen 1994, pp. 217–219; Idem, Burchard de Worms et Gratien: A propos des sources immédiates de Gratien, RDC 48 (1998), pp. 233–245. For the use of Burchard in the summe of the decretists and in the decretal collections, see Peter Landau, Vorgratianische Kanonessammlungen bei Dekretisten und in frühen Dekretalen-Sammlungen, in: Proceedings of the 8th ICMCL, pp. 94–116. – For the southern German variant see R. Weigand, Die Lambacher Handschrift XVI des Dekrets Burchards von Worms und Bischof Adalbero von Würzburg, in: Würzburger Diözesan-Geschichtsblätter 52 (1990), p. 25–36. For the editions see Émile Van Balberghe, Les éditions du Décret de Burchard de Worms. Avatars d’un texte, Recherches de Théologie ancienne et médiévale 37 (1970), pp. 5–22. For an English translation of the prologue see Somerville and Brasington, Prefaces, pp. 99–104. – Kéry, Canonical Collections, pp. 131–155. For a full description of the known manuscripts and a distinction of the recensions see the listing of Rudolf Pokorny on pp. 134–148. 91