Prefaces to Canon Law Books in Latin Christianity: Selected Translations, 500-1245

This anthology offers for the first time in any language a selection of key prefaces to ecclesiastical law collections from late antiquity to the mid-thirteenth century. During these centuries the Western church was wrestling with the complexities and ambiguities of its legal traditions. The prefaces in this volume represent various periods of medieval canon law and document how it evolved from a collection of locally applied norms into a system largely under papal control.