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Papal Reform and Canon Law in the 11 and 12`n Centuries. By Uta-Renate Blumenthal. [Variorum Collected Studies Series CS 618.] (Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company. 1998. Pp. xii, 334. $99.95)
This recent volume in the "Variorum Collected Studies Series brings together eighteen essays written by the distinguished historian of medieval canon law, Professor Uta-Renate Blumenthal of the Catholic University of America. Focusing on the eleventh and twelfth centuries, her period of specialization, these are based on extensive manuscript research and offer the reader insights into jurisprudence, theology, and political theory and practice. The papacy's increasingly centralized, normalized control of the law is the connecting theme.
The essays may be divided, roughly, into four groups. The first treats the transmission of non-conciliar, non papal-texts. These detailed studies shed light on key events in the ecclesiastical reform movement from the pontificate of Leo IX to that of Honorius III. Key moments in the reform, as well as in the crisis of church and state that ensued under Gregory VII, are treated in essays such as "Canossa and...