This book is a tool for scholars doing research in Medieval Canon Law; it is the first volume of a projected eleven-volume History of Medieval Canon Law, edited by Wilfried Hartmann and Kenneth Pennington. In the Foreward, the editors express their "hope that this volume will serve as a 'vademecum' for scholars working in the archives. It will provide them with the latest information about canonical collections before Gratian." (xii)
Kery's book begins with an abbreviation list and a listing of more than 300 "Short Titles", articles and books containing information on canonical collections. This list serves as a general bibliography. Kery proceeds to describe 168 canonical collections in a chronological sequence arranged in three chapters: Part I: "Late-Antique and Early-Medieval Collections"; Part II: "Carolingian and Post-Carolingian Collections"; and Part III: "Collections from the Gregorian Reform Period (up to Gratian)". Each of the chapters is split between collections of general and those of local significance. Many of these collections exist in only one or two manuscripts while others, such as the Decretum of Burchard of Worms, have complex textual traditions. The entry for each collection is organized under seven rubrics: author, date, place, type, edition(s), manuscript(s), and a bibliography of works discussing the collection. Indices for manuscripts and for collections by title complete ! the book.
This project headed by Professors Hartmann and Pennington, and this volume in particular, are scions of a lineage of scholarship brought to the United States in the 1950's by Stephan Kuttner (d.1996), whose Repertorium der Kanonistic: Prodromus corporis glossarum (1937), provided a listing of manuscripts in European libraries containing canon-law works from the time of Gratian's Decretum (ca.1140) through the first generation of decretal compilations, ending by 1234. Through the Kuttner Institute of Medieval Canon Law in Munich and through the many historians trained and encouraged by Professor Kuttner over the years, the modern study of medieval canon law has reached a vigorous maturity.
Canonical Collections of the Early Middle Ages is an exemplary work of metascholarship, a comprehensive presentation of manuscript information derived from hundreds of books and articles written by European and American scholars over the last century. The information is well-presented: controversial issues under the various rubrics are supported with the evidence and citations to the bibliography. For example, here is the first portion of the entry on Ivo of Chartres's Panormia (pp.253-254):
1. Author: Ivo of Chartres. 2. Date: Not before 1095 (about 1094-1095), because the Panormia depends on the Decretum [of Ivo]; the Panormia, however, contains neither any canons of the Council of Clermont nor any documents which can be dated to the last years of the pontificate of Urban II; therefore it has to be concluded that the Panormia was also compiled around 1094, i.e., very shortly after the Decretum (Fournier-Le Bras 2.95-97); Sprandel thinks that it is quite likely that a longer period of time elapsed between the compilation of the Decretum and the Panormia (cf. Sprandel, Ivo von Chartres 73 n.61); cf. approving this view, Fuhrmann, Einfluss und Verbreitung 2.560 n. 372; but cf. Landau, TRE 16 (1987) 423: 'Fournier's dating must be maintained'; according to Brett after 1095.
For scholars working in medieval canon law before Gratian, this will be an indispensable work. It is to be hoped that the companion volume on canon-law jurists and collections from 1140-1500 that is named as part of the series will appear soon.